# Cthulhu Through the Ages *Created:* 2026-10-18, *Modified:* 2026-10-18 ![[Cthulhu Through the Ages (cover).jpg|600]] **Cthulhu Through the Ages** is **[[Call of Cthulhu]]**'s way of admitting the Mythos has been around longer than the 1920s — a single-era anthology that packages several of Chaosium's historical settings into one book, so you can run the same stubborn investigators' game in the shadow of Rome, the cold of the Dark Ages, or on a windswept Icelandic shore. Written by **Mike Mason, Pedro Ziviani, John French, and Chad Bower**, it treats the Mythos as the one constant and the century merely as costume. ## Setting Rather than one era, **Cthulhu Through the Ages** gathers three of Chaosium's historical re-tunings of **Call of Cthulhu** under one cover: - **Cthulhu Invictus** — "horror roleplaying in the time of the Roman Empire": legionaries on a freshly invaded coast, Egyptian merchants on a sea crawling with things that reach up from below, and a republic-into-empire full of cults that predate Christianity. - **Cthulhu Dark Ages** — the medieval age, shield-wall horror where faith and superstition are the lightest armor a sane person has against what crouches in the dark. - **Mythic Iceland** — saga-land, where the old gods and the long winters bleed into one: mythic North Atlantic horror with a saga's blood in it. The book's premise is that in *any* era there will be a few steadfast, foolhardy investigators ready to confound the cults of the Mythos — the setting is a costume, the doom is constant. ## Mechanics **Cthulhu Through the Ages** doesn't build a new engine — it re-dresses the **Call of Cthulhu** 7th edition core for each era. - **Era-appropriate character creation** — each setting tweaks chargen to its time. The most visible example: **Cthulhu Invictus** swaps Credit Rating for **Status**, a Roman measure of standing that works on reputation rather than money. - **The "Swords and Arrows" chapter** — the shared combat rules for the pre-modern eras (Invictus, Dark Ages, Mythic Iceland), the melee-and-armor core you need when the tech level is steel not lead. - **Per-era investigator sheets** — dedicated character sheets for each setting (also available as interactive PDFs from Chaosium), so a Roman or a Viking isn't fighting a 1920s form. Each era gets just enough rules and flavor to stand alone; the Keeper is expected to fine-tune from there. ## Editions - **1st Edition (2014)** — the era anthology by **Mike Mason, Pedro Ziviani, John French, and Chad Bower**. *In the library.* ## References - [Cthulhu Through the Ages — DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/165127/Cthulhu-Through-the-Ages)