Great Race of Yith
Grande Race de Yith The essence was always the same—a person of keen thoughtfulness seized with a strange secondary life and leading for a greater or lesser period an utterly alien existence typified at first by vocal and bodily awkwardness, and later by a wholesale acquisition of scientific, historic, artistic, and anthropological knowledge; an acquisition carried on with feverish zest and with a wholly abnormal absorptive power.
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— H. P. Lovecraft This creature has a large conical body topped by four long tentacles ending in a variety of useful organs. It is intelligent and long-lived. The human discoverer of the Great Race (Peaslee, 1936) has discussed at length systematic and long-ranged Great Race researches into natural history, psychology, and temporal physics. Given their intellectualism and moderation, the reader might think of the Great Race as so many placid monks, were he or she to ignore the species genocidal invasions and ferocious Earthly wars. The Great Race is so-named because it conquered time. It developed the ability to send minds across eons to take over the bodies of other beings. The species originated on a distant world, emigrating when that world faced destruction. They came to Earth by taking over the bodies of ancient conical entities who then lived on Earth and of whom we know almost nothing. This invasion occurred hundreds of millions of years ago.
ive Comparat t r a h c t h heig
The Great Race are great scientists and scholars, and sometimes exchange minds with chosen humans to study our present-day culture. They have formed a small cult among humanity to find and assist their time-traveling scholars; the cultists give aid and assistance in return for technology or wisdom. These Great Race time-travelers are also sought by ruthless sect connected with Hastur and the Yellow Sign, which captures researchers and tortures them for information. Habitat : all non-arctic climates, but tropical preferred over temperate. Distribution : the Great Race became extinct many millions of years ago, wiped out by an incursion of Flying Polyps, q.v. Before this catastrophe, however, the species sent the minds of leaders and selected scientists into the distant future, there to seize coleopteran intelligences which follow humanity in the geologic scale. Life and Habits : a Great Race member takes exclusively liquid nourishment, feeding through the four red trumpet-shaped organs on its hinder tentacle. It breeds in shallow water by releasing spores from the edge of its great snail-like foot. Distinguishing a Member of the Great Race : •
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Its conical shape makes it unmistakable.
