Elder Things
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Elder Things are fictional characters of the Cthulhu Mythos, created by Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Also known as "Old Ones", Elder Things are the first alien species ever to come to Earth, which they colonized in the early Cambrian. Barrel-shaped beings with vegetal as well as animal characteristics, they built huge cities both underwater and on dry land. They may be responsible for the apparition of the first life-forms indigenous to Earth, including (although sources differ in this regard), Ubbo-Sathla. They bio-engineered the dreaded Shoggoth as their all-purpose slave race, but the latter eventually rebelled, an event that hastened the decadence and ultimate collapse of their civilization. They are known to have warred against the Star-spawn of Cthulhu, the Great Race of Yith, and the Mi-go, but it was the gradual cooling of the planet during the last Ice age that spelled their doom when their last surface city, located on a high plateau in the Antarctic, was frozen in ice. The ruins of this city were discovered in 1931 by two members of the Miskatonic University's Antarctic expedition, as related in Lovecraft's novella "At the Mountains of Madness". Additional references to the Elder Things also appear in Lovecraft's short stories "The Dreams in the Witch-House" and "The Shadow out of Time".