Who Is Nyarlathotep?

Nyarlathotep is the Outer God that walks among people. Where the others on file are conditions of the universe more than persons, this one is described in the accounts as acting directly and personally, in countless human and inhuman guises, to manipulate, torment or simply unsettle whoever it meets. The dossier calls it the soul and messenger of the Outer Gods, and notes the distinction that matters most for filing: it is the only member of that pantheon whose motives read as something like malice, rather than indifference.

It is also entered on file as the Crawling Chaos, the Black Pharaoh and the Faceless God. Correspondents who write in asking whether Nyarlathotep is a Great Old One should see the Dispatch on the two tiers; it is an Outer God, and the difference is one of kind.

Where it appears

• Nyarlathotep (written 1920). A showman out of Egypt tours the towns with demonstrations that draw whole crowds, and the account of what he leaves behind ends in the dark. The city it is set in is filed UNLOCATABLE, since the witness never names it.
• The Dreams in the Witch House (1932). It is the Black Man to whom Keziah Mason's coven answered, and before whom Walter Gilman is brought in his dreams at the Witch House in Arkham.
• The Haunter of the Dark (1935). The thing woken in the steeple room of the derelict church on Federal Hill, Providence, is filed under this dossier.
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. It meets Randolph Carter at the end of his journey, in the place he had crossed the Dreamlands to find, and is the reason the journey ends as it does.

Why it matters to the filing

The other Outer Gods can be described and avoided. Nyarlathotep arrives. Its dossier is cross-referenced to eight localities, from Ulthar to the Vale of Pnath to the far side of the Moon, and to a church in Providence that the Archive stamps VERIFIED.