Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey.
It's time for yet another entry into our series on the Cthulhu Mythos, this time looking at
the brother of Cthulhu, Kthanid.
This leader of the Elder Gods is one of the few peaceful creatures in the Mythos, said
to be as good as his brother is evil.
But what if this great benevolent beast was not just a creation of fiction, but actually
existed in real life?
Let's explore.
If you want more What If videos, check out our “Biggest What Ifs” playlist on the
channel.
Now get ready, it’s time to ask the question: What if Kthanid was Real?
While Kthanid does have a place in the Cthulhu mythos, he was not actually a creation of
HP Lovecraft himself.
He was invented by Brian Lumley, an English writer of horror fiction.
He wrote about Kthanid in his novel The Transition of Titus Crow.
In this story, Titus Crow is killed but slowly brought back to life by a robot, who recreates
his cell by cell as a cyborg.
Crow is later called upon by Kthanid and became the Great being’s champion in the battle
against the Great Old Ones.
Kthanid looks exactly like his brother Cthulhu in just about every way.
The same vaguely anthropoid outline, the same octopus head, the same mass of tentacles,
the same claws and narrow wings protruding from behind.
The only physical difference between them is that while Cthulhu looks fully evil, Kthanid
has golden eyes that radiate peace.
To be fair, he still looks absolutely terrifying, but… those eyes though…
In terms of abilities, Kthanid is absurdly powerful, just like his brother.
Whether through magic or, as Titus Crow speculated, through amazing technology, his powers are
vast and seemingly endless.
Certain abilities have been described, however.
For one, he’s capable of Great Thought.
I don’t mean the kind of great thought you need to have in order to understand Rick and
Morty; this refers to Kthanid’s ability to project his consciousness anywhere in the
cosmos, and to communicate with beings across the universe.
He also has the power of prescience; with the help of his viewing monitor, he’s able
to predict how any action might affect the future, giving him a limited kind of omniscience.
Awesome, now we have a handle on Kthanid, so how much would his existence affect us?
Well, for the most part, it wouldn’t.
Since the other Great Old Ones and Elder Gods wouldn’t exist, he likely would have no
reason to come in contact with us here on Earth, and would simply allow events to unfold
naturally.
However, it seems that Kthanid cares a great deal about the universe, and wants to keep
it safe, as well as free.
This seems to be one reason for his battle against the Great Old Ones.
This means that even if the Great Old Ones didn’t exist, there’s a chance that Kthanid
would still involve himself in the affairs of the universe.
In most cases, Kthanid wouldn’t need help.
With his prescience, he could predict when a civilization would attempt to take over
and put a stop to them before they gained power.
It’s even possible that he could use his great thought to show them the error in their
ways without violence.
However, just because Kthanid is incredibly powerful, that doesn’t mean he’s omnipotent.
In the Titus Crow series, Kthanid sent Crow to Earth’s Dreamland, since Kthanid himself
was unable to go there.
In this way, there could be limits to Kthanid’s power, and he might need to depend on others
to help him to defeat the invaders.
Perhaps they had avoided his detection or had somehow prevented him from becoming directly
involved.
It’s even possible that they possessed certain flaws that could be exploited only by a human.
Now, it is, of course, very likely that even if he did exist, and even if a civilization
attempted to take over the universe, we would never hear about this.
The universe is large and old, and it’s highly unlikely that humanity would be capable
of dealing with such a threat.
However, since this would be a bit of a boring video if I just said “nothing would happen”;
let’s have a look at how things might go if we were involved in Kthanid’s battle
with the universal threat.
If this was the case, and humanity got involved, it’s likely that we would need a bunch of
help.
If a civilization had the technology to threaten the safety of the universe, our technology
would look absolutely primitive next to theirs.
For this reason, Kthanid would likely need to empower us to help us win.
This could either be by granting humanity special powers or else providing us with technology
that could rival that of the invaders.
And if you’re picturing the Power Rangers right now…
I like your style.
Ideally, we would win the war, and earn the favor of Kthanid.
In this case, it’s possible, even likely, that humanity would begin to worship him as
a God.
Which makes sense, because, well, he is.
Based on the literature, it’s unclear whether or not Kthanid desires followers, but if we
had helped him to save the universe, there’s a pretty good chance he’d have our backs.
And having a real, powerful God on our side, who was willing to help us directly, would
be pretty useful.
He could launch our technology thousands of years into the future, allowing humanity to
suddenly travel through the stars.
We could make use of technologies we couldn’t even imagine, with infinite resources, and
everlasting life.
The possibilities are so vast that I couldn’t possibly list them all here, but it would
be a pretty great time to be a human.
And now we return to our question: What if Kthanid was Real?
Well, there’s a very good chance that nothing would change.
Kthanid seems perfectly content to allow the universe to unfold naturally, as long as nothing
threatens the balance.
However, if something threatened the safety and freedom of the universe, there’s a chance
that Kthanid would step in.
And in the unlikely case that he was unable to solve the problem, there’s an even smaller
chance that he would ask us to help him out like he did Titus Crow.
And if we helped him save the universe, it could usher in the greatest era of prosperity
humanity has ever known, with the help of big daddy Kthanid.
Thank you for watching Life’s Biggest Questions, I hope this was interesting and informative,
and maybe even inspired you to look into it further on your own.
If you liked this video, please thumbs up and subscribe to the channel down below.
While you’re down there, let me know if you would volunteer to be one of Kthanid’s
Power Rangers.
Until next time, I’m Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey with Life’s Biggest Questions, wishing you
the best of luck, on your quest for answers.