Cthulhu Exposed! - Halloween special

There has been much speculation on the meaning of a cryptic -- and very expensive -- Halloween treat:


[image: gyazo.com]

Full list of redeemable items can be found here: https://wiki.torn.com/wiki/Trick_or_Treat

General consensus is that Cthulhu in Torn refers to a fictional character that first appeared in an H.P. Lovecraft short story, "Call of Cthulhu", published in 1928.

Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu as Khlûl′-hloo, and said, "the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly...
Long after Lovecraft's death, Chaosium, publishers of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, influenced modern pronunciation with the statement, "we say it kuh-THOOL-hu", even while noting that Lovecraft said it differently.^[9] Others use the pronunciation Katulu or Kutulu or /k??tu?lu?/^[10]

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu

In "The Call of Cthulhu", H. P. Lovecraft describes a statue of Cthulhu as: "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind."^[11]

[image: upload.wikimedia.org]



WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH HALLOWEEN?

As a Halloween special, a player can exchange 9,999 treats to "Summon Cthulhu". Many players have speculated this means a NPC will be released to wreak havoc in Torn. Countless players have used advanced search on "Cthulhu" to no avail -- no such NPC exists.

Sadly, advanced search does not allow you to search by role, so locating NPCs is not a simple task.

Fortunately, the API can help here by searching a reasonable range of numbers for new NPCs. Here are the results.

This is ALL NPCs with an id number less than 1000 and some of the NPCs with an ID over 1000.

Role	NumID	playername	rank	level
NPC	10	Scrooge	Highly competent Tank	0
NPC	17	Easter Bunny	Eggcentric Albumentalist	0
NPC	1870951	Chedburntest100	Absolute beginner Intimidator	1
NPC	4	Duke	Supergood Loanshark	0
NPC	21	Tiny	Brick Wall	0
NPC	15	Leslie	Frequent Hair-Sniffer	0
NPC	20	Fernando	Sensual Assassin	0
NPC	19	Jimmy	Apathetic Extortionist	0
NPC	9	Anonymous	Nameless Intermediary	0
NPC	7	Amanda	Questionable Biochemist	0
NPC	23	23	c' ah lw'nafh'drn	0
NPC	987136	Futile	Highly competent Deserter	40
NPC	50	The_Hamster	Master Slayer	34
NPC	987135	Arduous	Above average Deserter	27
NPC	578156	Samuel	Above average Deserter	26
NPC	987131	Callous	Average Deserter	23
NPC	103	Superior	Reasonable Deserter	20
NPC	987130	Chimeric	Average Deserter	17
NPC	102	Prime	Novice Deserter	15
NPC	987129	Delusive	Below average Deserter	12
NPC	101	Neato	Below average Deserter	10
NPC	177348	Jefferson	Below average Deserter	10
NPC	946952	TCSE	Rookie Deserter	10
NPC	177342	George	Rookie Deserter	5
NPC	100	Congenial	Novice Deserter	5
NPC	8	Photographer	Rookie Intimidator	5
NPC	1500001	Test Dummy #1	Absolute beginner Punchbag	1
NPC	1500002	Test Dummy #2	Absolute beginner Deserter	1
NPC	1500003	Test Dummy #3	Absolute beginner Deserter	1

I omitted player maximum life from this view because there's a related question in the newspaper's word search and is totally not the reason I was searching the API for NPCs on a Saturday morning. Load image: sick However, the list is sorted by maximum life, highest to lowest.

The NPC that leapt out to me is #23, name = 23, role = c' ah lw'nafh'drn.

The literal translation (in R'helian from the Cthulhu story) is "is us a dream" which doesn't make much sense. But the developers don't have much space for a name, so I searched longer phrases. The closest match was:

Cahf ah nafl mglw'nafh hh' ahor syha'h ah'legeth, ng llll or'azath syha'hnahh n'ghftephai n'gha ahornah ah'mglw'nafh

which translates to: That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.

Sure sounds like an undead, Halloween-type quote to me.

Here is the profile for our mystery monster:

[image: gyazo.com]

And here is the spy report on his stats --

[image: gyazo.com]

Looks like Ched isn't giving any sneak previews on this NPC.

So I attacked #23. Here is the attack log. Neither of us made any hits or did any damage -- it was a stalemate.

https://www.torn.com/loader.php?sid=attackLog&ID=c669e153403347af2ff90ff4ae72f05a

I am at 2B stats total, slightly heavier on def / dex.

10K treats in exchange for a boss fight seems like a LOT, I sure hope this guy drops some unique items when you win. And it may be some time before someone is willing to spend that much to see what happens. But when it does, it looks like Torn is ready.

EDIT: Someone pointed out the unique attack methods of #23. Here is a sample from the attack log

(Spoiler Alert!)

[image: gyazo.com]

It was actually entertaining to read. Who currently owns the most treats tho?Who is the closest to 9999 and how long would it take to get there approx ?

When I was looking through the player id’s recently I didn’t see this one. Is there a way to figure out how long they have existed?

PS: those are some interesting attacks 23 uses

Very cool deep dive. But are you sure

“c' ah lw'nafh'drn”

isn’t Welsh? It sounds like something a Welshman would say.

Fun read!!!

Forum needs this ty

I always thought it means we get DB if we unlock it with reason:
A db'ed faction lose respects = begins the end of time
And everything just seems bleak while db is being dropped. All flights are canceled and npc shops are closed.

Wonder what would happen if we group attacked this mysterious 23

I should get there in 2025 without Cats in Hell

From the log: "Gore" "Roar" "Swipe" etc.

seems like some sort of monster attacking. very interesting indeed

SPOILER ALERT!!!

also: h. p. lovecraft was a racist piece of shit, the cthulhu mythos is nifty but modern authors have done much better work with it!

so by all means have fun putting on your own production of the king in yellow, but don't forget to mentally flip off lovecraft and mock him for being such a turd :)

Yeah, wow. That quiz got me good a few times.

he was born in the 1890s, pretty sure everyone was racist back then. Shit even JK Rowling has said controversial shit, it doesn't detract from their works.

All hail Cthulhu!!!!

Its not Welsh. But say it aloud wrongly at a time when the stars are in a particular alignment and you might end up with a visit from an enraged Shoggoth.