Yuggya

The Yuggya are the original inhabitants of Yuggoth, and survivors of the primordial Yuggoth Event.

Biology
"I am foul and monstrous to you, am I not? Nay, do not answer; I know. But you would seem as strange to me, could I see you. There are many worlds besides this earth, and life takes many shapes. I am neither god nor demon, but flesh and blood like yourself, though the substance differ in part, and the form be cast in a different mold."

--Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"

The exact nature of the Yuggya’s physiology before their ascent isn’t known, but it was likely very similar to the forms they manifest in when they take physical shape now. Even before the ascent, they would have been extremely durable--as most complex life that evolves outside of Yig's aegis tends to be--and they can currently survive at nearly any pressure or temperature capable of harboring some kind of terrestrial life. Another defining characteristic that sets them apart from terrestrial life is quadrilateral symmetry. The fore of a Yuggya bears a powerful trunk terminating in a beak with four prehensile, radula-covered tongues. The base of the trunk is flanked by four fresnel lens eyes set in the shoulders of their first set of flippers—wing-like limbs originally used for swimming, but now used to crawl. The Yuggya bear another quadrilateral set of flippers farther down their bodies, just before the base of their lacertine tail.

When corporeal, the Yuggya are variatherms and omnivores which are capable of chemosynthesis when necessary. They can eat almost anything and are capable of shifting their diet from oxidizing to reducing, as need be--natively, they rely on reduction reactions. Their biochemistry is mostly dry, relying on gas-phase reactions to produce energy and transmitting signals and energy electrically. Chemical vapor deposition, with the shape of the deposited material controlled by charge concentration and magnetic fields on the surface, is the primary means by which damaged or worn tissue is replaced; surface wounds are repaired by electromagnetic isolation of the damaged area (with vasoconstriction as needed) and slow growth from within, swelling out the damaged portion with an inner mass of repair tissues that rearrange themselves into the needed structure upon reaching the correct dimensions. The Yuggya's biochemistry is largely metallic, generally with low or null oxidation states. Overall, their density is high, and Yuggya are not able to swim on Earth--not that this bothers them, as they have no need to breathe. They avoid water in general, however, because their current bodies are susceptible to rust.

Most of the time, however, the Yuggya are not physical. The Yuggoth Event was triggered by siphoning power off of Hastur; since the Yuggya were only able to hold small scraps for themselves, they weren’t able to significantly change the nature of the stolen unreality without burning all of it off with the effort. As such, their ascension imitated Hastur’s. The Yuggya’s native "form" is now that of disembodied subjective realities—minds without forms. Indeed, this fact means the Yuggya are so fragile, they can only exist on a place like Earth: the global transform overlap effected by Nug and Yeb and the shelter of Yig's aegis both make it possible for them to remain stable enough to seek out dyspraxia sinks to sustain themselves. Without both of these things, the Yuggya would not be able to continue believing themselves into existence.

To manifest a body, the Yuggya generally require two things: a dyspraxia sink and biomass. In the days of the Haiei’ei civilization, at least, these two things were the same. As the dubious occultist and archaeologist “Colonel” Urquart has stated in his writings, these beings (which he erroneously referred to as “the Lloigor”) used to punish certain members of the ei’ei by blighting them with tumorous growths, which would grow tentacles or other appendages. What he failed to learn, however, was that these alien teratomae were actually nascent Yuggya bodies. When a Yuggya desired to take body, they would acquire a suitable host and start gradually converting the person’s biomass to a chemical and physical composition suited to Yuggya habitation. This process had the added benefit of being drawn out and excruciating, meaning the host also took the brunt of the unluck earned through such thaumaturgic expression. Even a modern human’s body would scarcely have enough biomass to match an adult Yuggya, let alone an ei’ei—and so the Yuggya would emerge rather small, and have to continue fueling their metabolic growth through predation.

Psychology
"He went on to explain that [they], although infinitely more powerful than men, were also aware that optimism would be absurd in this Universe. Their minds were a unity, not compartmentalized like ours. There was no distinction in them between conscious, subconscious, and superconscious mind. So they saw things clearly all the time, without the possibility of averting the mind from the truth or forgetting."

—Colin Wilson, "The Return of the Lloigor"

To mortal species, interactions with the Yuggya often leave the impression that they are a True Intelligence—much like more potent lloigornos or the Shoggoth. This is innaccurate, however. The Yuggya are barely apart from mortality, and still function very much as a mimetic intelligence like most mortal races. Rather, they use their partially atemporal nature to feign consummate rationality. True Intelligences don’t fall for the charade, of course, but it is extremely convincing to pseudointelligences such as human beings.

Perhaps the most fundamental, important aspect of Yuggya psychology is one that they gained through their failed apotheosis: pessimism. The Yuggya’s experience made it clear to them that the lure of apotheosis is no more than a trap meant to bring ruin to civilizations: at best, it grants omnipotence to a small few, while the rest are doomed to a terrible fate. This insight led to them weaving pessimism into their core instinctive drives as they modified their own psyches and bodies, as a way to prevent any of them from pursuing the folly of godhood again and threatening the remainder of their kind.

This pessimism has a secondary effect, which makes it an effective bulwark against future apotheosis. Because the Yuggya are subjective realities, this means that their perception slightly bends reality to meet their assumptions and expectations. The more unreality they exert, the more potent this effect becomes. As a result of this, any attempts to snap up more power will lead to the offender inadvertantly warping reality against their goals more and more. To vie for power is to bring ruin, for a Yuggya.

History
It is believed the Yuggya are the first sapient species to evolve in our solar system—or at least the first one to develop a technologically advanced civilization. Their history before their failed apotheosis is vague, and what little is known can’t be arranged into a trustworthy chronology. It is known that at some point they crafted the Shining Trapezohedron and that they also fell under the sway of the Crawling Chaos; which of these came first is anyone’s guess. In any event, Nyarlathotep inevitably turned their fresnel eyes toward apotheosis, and they reared crystalline green pyramids on the barren surface of Yuggoth toward that end. The Yuggoth Event produced a handful of true Lloigor, including Tsathoggua, Cxaxakluth, and Ghisguth, and a host of more potent lloigornos such as Ghatanothoa and Rhan-Tegoth. The Yuggya, too fragile to keep surviving on Yuggoth (even without its new, monstrous inhabitants) fled to Earth around 360 Million Years Ago.

The Yuggya initially arrived on Earth during the Elder Things' misconcieved war against Great Cthulhu. Initially, they collected around Ghatanothoa, Rhan-Tegoth, and Chaugnar Faugn as the triplets insinuated Themselves into R'lyeh. They've spent much of their time in the region surrounding R'lyeh since then, though they have involved themselves in other regions of the Earth quite a bit as well. Noteworthy events the Yuggya contributed to over geological time include having a hand in the Shoggoth's self-awareness in the hopes of crafting a vast unluck sink--this ultimately succeeded (if not in the way the Yuggya intended) as the Shoggoth rebelled and waged a violent war against the Elder Things. Besides this notable occurence, much of the Yuggya's history was spent parasitizing the naturally-ocurring misfortunes of other sophonts, such as the exodus of the Serpent Folk during the Chicxulub Impact or the countless internecine wars of the Great Race.

Most of what is known of the Yuggya's history relates to the maritime civilization of Haiei'ei, which they had no small part in fostering. This civilization has its earliest roots roughly 700,000 years ago, when the Y'nathoggua attempted to invade that region of the Pacific. These parasitic beings sought the newly-arrived homonids of the region as hosts, much as the Yuggya had already begun using them, and so the Yuggya violently drove them out of the area, eventually coralling them onto Australia. Once this war was over, they began tentatively uplifting the hominids, teaching them about cosmology, tool use, and other subjects--a thing they begrudgingly did alongside the newly created Deep Ones. During the existence of Haiei'ei several other noteworthy events came to pass, some the Yuggya participated in and some they were merely bystanders for--Vorvadoss wreaking a terrible doom upon Ghooric invaders, T'yog's failed attempt to lay Ghatanothoa low, the ascendency of Ghatanothoa's cult--and, of course, the Ouranocaust which inevitebly destroyed Haiei'ei as Ythogtha flamed to divine life.

Since the fall of Haiei'ei, the Yuggya have largely stayed in the shadows, as has been their wont for most of their cursed existence. In modern times, they've spent their time decorporealized, sifting through human communities across the planet in search of loci of misfortune. Austerity, war, disease, genocide, natural disasters--anywhere there is a great concentration of human suffering with which they can bleed off their own dyspraxia.

Culture and Habitat
"The eerie mixed light revealed to me the strange engravings or ridgy pictures everywhere covering the tunnels' walls. They had a strong suggestion of the marine to them and also of the monstrous, yet they were strangely generalized, as if they were the mathematical diagrams of oceans and their denizens and of whole universes of alien life."

—Fritz Leiber, "The Terror from the Depths"

[Sam should probably handle this one.]

Technology and Magic
Even as extremely minor lloigornos, the Yuggya still have some potent innate thaumic capabilities. Like any lloigornos, their experience of time is not strictly linear--some Yuggya are more potent than others, with the weakest experiencing the span of several seconds simultaneously, while the most potent span several minutes. As a species, however, this ability is somewhat more powerful and accounts for how they've survived all this time despite their innate misfortune. Should a cataclysm occur which threatens the Yuggya as a whole, any who directly observe it can reach into the earliest moment they still have agency to warn their nearby peers, who then reach into the earliest moments they can to pass the message along, with the sequence continuing back like a chronological game of telephone--until finally it reaches a point early enough that it gives the Yuggya time to avert the disaster or flee from it.

The Yuggya additionally have the innate capacity to create Ghooric overlap, allowing them to perceive and even interact with other transforms of reality at will. It also permits them to consciously modify their own biology to a degree, as well as shift into partial intangibility--though this exposes them to the physical threats of whatever layer they shift their bodies into. Without this power, of course, their bodiless minds would be cut off from the real world--trapped in eternal, silent prisons. In modern times, they rarely use this ability to affect an overlap with the minds of sleeping humans to torture them in their dreams as a way to bleed unluck; often, the Yuggya performing this act will suppress memory of the dream in the victim. In addition to their abilities, the Yuggya have also produced a number of noteworthy artifacts:

The Pyramids: One ancient piece of Yuggya artifice that still resides on Yuggoth are the primeval pyramids shunned by the N'gah-Kthun. Smooth, three-sided, and crystalline, these silent dolmens are a greenish hue and reflect stars not in Yuggoth's sky. Black stars. Exactly how they were created and used isn't known, but what they are is apparent enough that Yuggoth's current inhabitants refuse to stray near them. They are anchors and prisons. Somehow, they Yuggya were able to contaminate these pyramids with Hastur in a controlled way that trapped fragments of the World Virus within them--the pyramids were the primary conduit the Yuggya used to batten on to Hastur's power and siphon it away like bloated ticks draining a host of blood. The fact that seemingly identical pyramids may be found on Shaggai has led to some speculating that the Yuggya colonized that world in the distant past.

The Shining Trapezohedron: The Shining Trapezohedron is perhaps the most potent Yuggya artifact to find its way to Earth--though it arrived with the N'gah-Kthun, rather than the Yuggya. This strangely angled black gem is set in a gold box originally crafted by the Elder Things, and has passed through the hands of the Serpent Folk and the ancient Calabash Peoples' communities in Madagascar. The Trapezohedron seems to be one of the first experiments in siphoning power from Hastur the Yuggya engaged in. A good deal of unreality was condensed into this artifact to conjure and anchor a piece of Nyarlathotep's mind. Now, when an observing mind looks upon the Trapezohedron, it draws the attention of the Crawling Chaos, and acts as a point from which the Haunter of the Dark avatar can easily manifest. Of course, the Trapezohedron is neither a prison nor a necessary component for Nyarlathotep's summoning; the Crawling Chaos can choose to be or not be anywhere It pleases. Rather, it is a tool which handles most of the power needed for the Crawling Chaos to do these things on Its behalf, making the gem a path of least resistance for It. However, the unreality drawn from Hastur was not completely reworked into a new form, resulting in Nyarlathotep's avatar experiencing similar subjective effects to the King in Yellow: particularly the inversion of color, light, and dark.

The Ixaxar: The Ixaxar (or Black Stone) is a very old Yuggothi artifact, likely predating the Yuggya's failed ascent a good deal. During their exodus to Earth, this small stone artifact was left on Yuggoth, where the N'gah-Kthun inevitably recovered it. Oddly enough, it eventually came to Earth on its own, carried in their chitinous nippers. The Ixaxar bears roughly sixty characters in the Yuggya dialect of Aklo which, properly deciphered, provides a formula for contacting Iod the Shining Hunter.