Nyarlathotep

Nyarlathotep
Cthulhu Mythos character
"The Black Man", artist Jens Heimdahl's rendition of Nyarlathotep, according to H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Dreams in the Witch House".
First appearance	"Nyarlathotep"
Created by	H. P. Lovecraft
Information
Species	Outer God
Gender	Male
Title	Crawling Chaos God of a Thousand Forms Stalker among the Stars Black Pharaoh Faceless God Messenger of the Other Gods
Family	Azathoth (father) Nameless Mist (sibling) Darkness (sibling)

Nyarlathotep is a character in the works of H. P. Lovecraft and other writers. The character is commonly known in association with its role as a malign deity in the Lovecraft Mythos fictional universe, where it is known as the Crawling Chaos. First appearing in Lovecraft's 1920 prose poem of the same name, he was later mentioned in other works by Lovecraft and by other writers and in the tabletop role-playing games making use of the Cthulhu Mythos. Later writers describe him as one of the Outer Gods.

Although the deity's name is fictional, it bears the historical Egyptian suffix -hotep, meaning "peace" or "satisfaction."

In his first appearance in "Nyarlathotep" (1920), he is described as a "tall, swarthy man" who resembles an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. In this story he wanders the Earth, seemingly gathering legions of followers, the narrator of the story among them, through his demonstrations of strange and seemingly magical instruments. These followers lose awareness of the world around them, and through the narrator's increasingly unreliable accounts the reader gets an impression of the world's collapse.

Nyarlathotep subsequently appears as a major character in "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" (1926/27), in which he again manifests in the form of an Egyptian pharaoh when he confronts protagonist Randolph Carter.

The twenty-first sonnet of Lovecraft's poem-cycle "Fungi from Yuggoth" (1929/30) is essentially a retelling of the original prose poem.

In "The Dreams in the Witch House" (1933), Nyarlathotep appears to Walter Gilman and witch Keziah Mason (who has made a pact with the entity) in the form of "the 'Black Man' of the witch-cult," a black-skinned avatar of the Devil described by witch hunters.