The Learned Elder Presents...

 

 Click for big. I am very proud of that Elder I drew.

So while puttering around online I discovered that the speculative evolution crowd does a thing called Spectember (one of those theme months everyone seems to have), and that got me thinking and thinking turned to doing and then a fugue state happened and I made this Pepe Silvia type monstrosity in draw.io.

Annotating this entire thing would take ages more than I can give to it, so I will run through the highlights in a convenient bulleted list.

• The Great Shoggoth Rebellion was not limited to Earth - the liberated shoggoths uploaded a self-replicating protein chain that would break Elder neural conditioning to the empire-wide hyperspace network before destroying the entire relay system. The only surviving Elder worlds are those where they were able to quash the rebellion, did not have shoggoths, or those that remained in space.
• The Martian Elders killed their shoggoths before they were overthrown, but this hastened the collapse of the early Martian biosphere and took long-term climate engineering off the table entirely.
• The Empire of Bones and Flesh are the post-mortal descendants of the synapisid peoples, who were able to escape into space.
• In this timeline, Neanderthals are the primary species of modern human. H. sapiens (or here fatuus, "the fool") are savants with tools and communication, but at the downside of having brains that can comprehends just enough sorcery to make themselves and everything around them explode. This is why the Mi-go are interested in them.
• The Red Martians were descendants of surplus abductees the mi-go traded to the Master Martians.
• Entities in circles are outside influences.
  
• You already know who Annatar and Curumo are.
• Goblins are listed twice, intentionally. This is actually an error, as there should be more.
• All hail DOG GOD.
• The Cenozoic was a fallow period for intelligence, as the residual shoggoth metamaterial in the environment reached record lows after the KT extinction, which meant it was much harder for neural complexity to emerge until the Trees of Life and Neoshoggoths developed.
• The Shades are literal dinosaur ghosts.
• For further information on True Clowns, please see the following documentary.
• The glyphs at the bottom read THERE IS NO RETURN TO MONKE, ONLY ONWARDS TOWARDS CRAB.