SOURCE: "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, November 1931)

DESCRIPTION:"I had never seen an image of Tsathoggua before, but I recognized him without difficulty from the descriptions I had heard. He was very squat and pot-bellied, his head was more like that of a monstrous toad than a deity, and his whole body was covered with an imitation of short fur, giving somehow a vague suggestion of both the bat and the sloth. His sleepy lids were half-lowered over his globular eyes; and the tip of a queer tongue issued from his fat mouth. In truth, he was not a comely or personable sort of god, and I did not wonder at the cessation of his worship, which could only have appealed to very brutal and aboriginal men at any time.  Tirouv Ompallios and I began to swear simultaneously by the names of more urbane and civilized deities, when we saw that not even the commonest of semi-precious gems was visible anywhere, either upon or within any feature or member of this execrable image. With a niggardliness beyond parallel, even the eyes had been carven from the same dull stone as the rest of the abominable thing, and mouth, nose, ears and all other orifices were unadorned. We could only wonder at the avarice or poverty of the beings who had wrought this unique bestiality." ("The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" by Clark Ashton Smith)

NOTES: The thieves are of course mistaken and Tsathoggua isn't a carving but real and alive. The story takes place in the ancient days of Hyperborea when mankind lived in a world at the north pole. Commoria and the other cities of Hyperborea were covered by ice. There is no reason to assume Tsathoggua isn't still alive today.

HISTORY: Tsathoggua appears in only one story but was brought into the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft in his story "Whisperer in Darkness". Lin Carter wrote a sequel to this story called "The Scroll of Morloc" (1973).

RAFT's figurine of Tsathoggua
 

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