The Elder Things

Also on file as: The Old Ones (Lovecraft's own term for them, as translated by the expedition)

Barrel-bodied, star-headed colonizers who reached Earth before complex life did, raised cities across the planet, and engineered the Shoggoths as tools long before either species had reason to regret it. The expedition's own dissection revives several specimens thought safely fossilized — a mistake two of its members do not survive.