Cthalha is the Elder God of the Elder World maps in Quake Champions.
Cthalha
Cthalha's insignia
Description[]
Cthalha is the Elder God of the Elder World. Cthalha is an enormous aquatic creature with a humanoid torso and a long, mermaid tail. She has elongated arms with sharp claws, and a series of crab-like appendages connected at her back. Her head looks like that of an octopus, with tentacles that hang around her face, and six eyes that see in all spectrums of color and across realities. She has knowledge that stretches almost to the dawn of time, due both to her age and all the secrets the oceans hold. This is one of the greatest sources of her power, as she has access to knowledge from ancient times. She currently possesses the Rune of Elder Magic.
The Elder World[]
Cthalha reigns over the seas and all that lies within on both Earth and beyond. Ancient creatures, sunken temples, and lost treasures are under her control. Although Cthalha values bravery and the spirit of exploration, she is as cold and merciless as the seas she commands. Many ancient aquatic races swear fealty to Cthalha, and she draws upon them for her needs. These creatures have inspired many myths ranging from leviathans to mermaids to fish people. Besides the creatures of the sea, many seafaring folk pledge themselves to her for protection from sea.
Under the guidance and control Cthalha are her three Sirens, who live in the seas of Earth and are known for luring lost sailors to follow them into storms and dragging their bodies to the deep. Tales of their cruelty and seduction have come to be known even more so than those of Cthalha who in comparison is rarely seen.
Lore scrolls[]
in search of mu lore scroll 1
“R/V Hina-Oio log, Feb 2 1995, Emma Johansen, research lead. Finally at sea. Minimum 5 days to point Nemo, arriving 2 weeks off schedule. Lost 6 days in Valparaiso: Cpt. Sarmento was 2 days late, and Eng. Ebbers took 4 to fix the ROV damaged in transit. Also lost 3 days in Hanga Roa finalizing the eccentric deal terms with Alerttrust via IRC: resupply by aerial drop, no one else allowed aboard. That meant much more prep, even for an abyssal zone project. I still don’t even know who or what Alerttrust is. But the funding is beyond my dreams.”
In Search of mu lore scroll 2
“Feb 5. Three tranquil days, only engine hum. Bits of plastic in the water, even here. Sent ROV down to gauge the pollution. Observed the so-called spacecraft cemetery: satellite debris scattered on the abyssal plain. There is no place humans can’t ruin. UPDATE 19:49:48: If I didn’t have footage I would think I hallucinated this. Tribrachidium fossils. Thousands! The seafloor is tiled with them. There aren’t like the few millimeters-wide specimens known. They are meters across! Some maybe be decameters! This will rewrite our understanding of the Ediacaran. No one will believe – I need to sleep.”
In search of mu lore scroll 3
“Feb 6. Awoke to noise on the deck: an AlertTrust fuel drop. I had dreamt of countless tribrachidia, alive!, slowly turning, pinwheels of tendrils. Immediately rechecked yesterday’s footage to ensure I wasn’t imagining what I saw. As the ROV ascended, a pattern emerged in the fossils: a Fibonacci-like spiral curve. I know this sounds insane. I have to follow it, obviously. I can’t tell Sarmento. I’ll come up with some scientific excuse. Update 14:11:33: Hydrothermal vents clustered on the seabed. Black smokers with spires of a meter or less. They’re what I came to find, but they’re not important anymore.”
in search of mu lore scroll 4
“Feb 7. Dreamt of something incredibly vast moving under the seafloor. It seemed … female? Then it seemed like it was Riley. Or within Riley? Made no sense. You swore you wouldn’t think about her. Many more smoker vents below now, like a city of smokestacks. Too many to pilot the ROV through. Some of the spires are over 100m. I should be ecstatic but I can barely function through this migraine. There was a sound in the dream, like a reverberated moan. I still hear it. It won’t stop.”
In search of mu lore scroll 5
“Ftb 8. The tribrachidium fossil pattern is clear now. The curve is one of three spiraling out from the central point obscured by smoker spires. Depth measurements at that point are … implausible. Just a black gash in the seabed. The shape of the pattern is the same as the one in each fossil. Many miles across. Many many. Sleep didn’t make the thrum go away. It comes and goes like a tide. It’s trying to say something. “Fta.” “Fhta.” Other noises, guttural, infrasonic. Can’t hear. The men. Their muttering and shuttering and breathing. I need to hear it. I need quiet.”
In search of mu lore scroll 6
“Fhta ç. Now I hear it. The thrum. The stars are so bright. Never seen them this way. Finally, no one else. The men are dead. I made it quickquick. Sleep face cover throat slit. Over the side. float down to the gash. kiwa will catch them. then worms worms. the thrum-moan. I hear it. the hot black. the vastness within. stirring. I need to hear it. feel it. for myself. I need to see it. need to see her. the enter. the spire-city. the dark place. it’s open now. must go. will go. tonight. Tonight. Now.”
Cthalha Lore Scroll 1
“Fragment from the tattered pages of the Bathybic Librum: …of this world, which was in the eldest days all a sea. The deep waters embraced the earth and brushed the heavens, untainted by the grotesque, the rigid, the unyielding protrusions of the land. All was liquid, shifting, dark, and deep. Until it fell from between the stars. It wounded the waters, its waves racing thrice across the globe. And it shattered the earth beneath, delivering upward vast swathes of ocean floor. And these became the first islands, and continents, to mar the pristine body of the sea.”
Cthalha Lore Scroll 2
“Then did the unearthly effluence of that fallen mass infuse the waters for leagues around. And the grotesque things that swim and crawl in the depths grew more loathsome still. They turned upon one another, and other sea life, driven by a new malevolent mien and a burgeoning intelligence. And they fought, and slew, not for territory or for food, but to prove their devotion to the things that lurked still in the flooded crater, the things from the stars, which the newly reborn abominations sensed but never had seen, and which they came swiftly to worship.”
Cthalha Lore Scroll 3
“…came the rise of beasts that walked on two legs instead of four, and thought themselves greater than other beasts. And the youngest of these was man. And humankind, so vulnerable, dwelt in terror of the deep. All save a few. Some few men and women found a fascination in the rolling of the tide and the blinding darkness beneath the aqueous skin of the sea. These were called by their cowardly brethren mad, but had been touched by the dreams and portents sent by the terrible slumbering consciousness of the one who waits below.”
Cthalha Lore Scroll 4
“And some were drowned in abyssal depths, and some taken by the ichthyic abominations who dwelt below and were nevermore seen, and some returned inland, their thoughts twisting like eels and their dreams overflowing, but always without answers. Until one came, her name nevermore to be spoken, who would become the greatest of the Deep Sirens. Never did she brave the abyss, but sat herself in the sediment at its edge. The abominations recognized that she had been called, and left her be. And for years, she studied and she waited and she dreamt at the edge of the sea.”
Cthalha Lore Scroll 5
“In study of the tides and the shifting of the sea-driven sands, did she read the secrets of the world and the waters, the creatures birthed below and the alien intelligences from above. In listening to the gurgle and the hiss of the Deep Sirens and their host did she come to understand the barest inkling of their utterances and the cold hatreds that drove them. And only when the patterns had rewritten her thoughts, until her own words had metamorphosed into those burbling sonances, did grim Cthalha, dweller in the crater, send to the Siren her own dreams.”
Cthalha Lore Scroll 6
None since have understood the incomprehensible mind of the Queen of Ciphers as did the first Deep Siren, but many are they, driven by curiosity or madness or an impossible awareness, who try. They are always three, trines of Deep Sirens stretching back to the beginning. Seekers of secrets, linked by esoteric writings and forbidden knowledge, their thoughts and dreams changed by such enigmas until they share with their brethren notions and understandings unspoken. And all serve Cthalha, and venerate her, that she might grant them the deepest comprehension of all things before the inexorable end.
Cthalha Lore Scroll 7
But the Queen of Ciphers cares little for such a transient thing as man. For Cthalha is of the sea, be it one of green waters or of the colorless void, and as they, she is endless. She waits, and cares not for the passing of time. What rose shall fall; the sea was first, and the sea will be last. One day, the tides and the stars shall move as one. Then Cthalha will rise, and the sea will rise, and all that was land, and voice, and life, and thought, shall once more be hers alone.
Gallery[]
cthalha concept art
Trivia[]
- Emma Johansen is granddaughter of Gustaf Johansen from H.P. Lovecraft's novella "The Call of Cthulhu".
- Giant watchful eyes in the Ruins of Sarnath are Cthalha's own middle right eye instead of her remaining five. One can see this by looking at the mask-like statue of Cthalha’s face in the map Awoken and Ruins of Sarnath.
- Cthalha's eyes in her official artwork are black, but in game the watchful eyes have a yellowish sclera and red iris.
- According to the in-game lore, it's known that she wants all continents and islands in the Dreamlands be completely flooded as punishment for the disrespect of her teachings.
- Her colors in the rune book and weapons shader are emerald and azure.
References[]
https://churchofquake.com/wiki/cthalha/ https://churchofquake.com/wiki/npcs/ https://churchofquake.com/wiki/ruins-of-sarnath-lore/