In the Cthulhu Mythos, Zoth-Ommog, the Dweller In The Deep, is a Great Old One, the third son of Cthulhu. He was the creation of Lin Carter and was imprisoned by the Elder Gods beneath the seabed near Ponape and R'lyeh. He was introduced in the story Zoth-Ommog (originally titled The Horror in the Gallery but changed just before publication. The original title was restored by editor Robert M. Price for the Lin Carter Chaosium collection The Xothic Legend Cycle). Like his siblings Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha and Cthylla, Xoth-Ommog was born on a planet orbiting the green double star Xoth (hence the title of Xothic Legend Cycle). Zoth-Ommog has a cone-shaped body, a razor-fanged reptilian head like that of a tyrannosaurus rex, four broad, flat starfish like arms with suckers under them and a head of tentacles. How he swims or walks on the bottom of the ocean is unknown, but it is possible that he has a slug-like foot under his body like that of the Great Race of Yith. Like his father he possesses the ability to affect a person's dreams and eventual sanity, but the person must be in fairly close proximity to one of his statues for him to do so. One such statue of Zoth-Ommog was once recovered from the sea-floor of Ponape and bought by Professor Harold Hadley Copeland , a brilliant but eccentric archaeologist who was researching the Xothic Legend Cycle. (It was Professor Copeland who had named the myth cycle of Cthulhu's sons the Xothic Legend Cycle.) It was brought to the Sanbourne Institute of Pacific Antiquities for display following Professor Copeland's death in a psychiatric hospital. This statue possessed sentient intelligence (much like the Dark Lord Sauron's One Ring in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings) and had driven the museum's Curator of Manuscripts Collections, Dr. Henry Stephenson Blaine insane. It was eventually destroyed by Dr. Blaine's young aide , Arthur Wilcox Hodgkins, who flung an Elder Sign star stone at it. The resulting explosion killed a Deep One who had broken into the institute and murdered the night-watchman , Emiliano Gonzalez; the Deep One was disguised as a sailor and had originally broken in to steal the statue, which was rumored to be cursed and was dubbed the Ponape Figurine by the press. Hodgkins himself was charged with the murder of Gonzalez as the Deep One had dissolved into a pool of slime and evaporated away after a few hours, leaving absolutely no trace behind except for some badly charred sailor's clothing. He was judged to be completely insane and sentenced to be commited to involuntary psychiatric incarceration at the Dunhill Institute (where his mentor and close friend Dr. Blaine was also incarcerated) permanently. Naturally Hodgkins was dubbed the "last victim" of the "Curse of the Ponape Figurine" for this. Like his older brother Ythogtha, Xoth-Ommog is also served by the planarian-like yuggya (or yuggs ) and their lord, Ubb , The Father of Worms. Information of Xoth-Ommog can be found in the R'lyeh Text and the Ponape Scripture .

References

• The Horror In The Gallery Lin Carter The Xothic Legend Cycle Robert M. Price (ed) Chaosium