Titus Crow

Titus Crow is a British occultist with a desire to rid the universe of the Great Old Ones. He and his best friend Henri-Laurent de Marigny are the main characters of the Lovecraftian-style fantasy stories by Brian Lumley. Crow owns several magical artifacts, including the Clock of Dreams.

## Biography

Titus Crow was born January 2, 1916, on the outskirts of London. Little is known of his early life. Much of Titus' youth was spent traveling along with his father, a respected archeologist who worked with the Oriental Institute, on his many trips to the Middle and Far East. In 1934, Titus Crow decided to attend the University of Edinburgh and study archeology to obtain a formal degree.

It was during the spring of 1935 that an event occurred that would dictate the rest of Crow's life - the purchase of a rare copy of the Cthaat Aquadingen. While parts of the book were written in plain Latin, other parts were written in a code and only alluded to by the normal text. Crow attempted to break the code and wrote a paper for a professor on the use of numerology in the construction of sixteenth century manuals of magic that would one day find its way into the hands of the British Government.

For several years, Titus Crow would live as a pauper in Edinburgh. He became best friends with a chemistry student named Taylor Ainsworth. Together Crow and Ainsworth would analyze and reconstruct formulas and chemical compounds mentioned in the texts that Crow was studying, a hobby that almost turned into disaster in the winter of 1937 when both Crow and Ainsworth almost burned down the Old College building. During the spring of '37, Crow came down with a serious illness which caused him to be bedridden. Unfortunately for Titus, his father was about to conduct an expedition to the site of Megiddo in Palestine and he was unable to join him. It would be the last time that Titus Crow would see his father alive.

In 1938, a young boy of 14, who was sent from USA to London, would once again change Crow's life. That boy was Henri-Laurent de Marigny, the only son of the great New Orleans mystic Étienne-Laurent de Marigny. Crow and de Marigny became friends.

The next year, 1939, saw the start of the World War II and Crow's decision to not complete his studies. It was during this self-imposed exile from academia that Titus Crow was approached by the War Department and asked if he would be willing to consider working for their code-breaking division. Apparently, an old professor of Crow's had had enough forethought to keep Crow's paper on codes and then pass it along to a friend in British Intelligence when the war broke out. Titus Crow jumped at the chance and that December he formally joined the War Department as a consultant to the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchly Park.

Events in Germany were conspiring to make Crow's knowledge of the occult an essential part of the war. Josef Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany, had commissioned in November of that year a Swiss astrologer named Karl Ernst Krafft to decipher the verse quatrains of Nostradamus in such a way to indicate the success of Nazi aggression upon Europe. Soon after this, a Romanian official living in London wrote to Krafft, an old friend, asking him if his decipherment of the quatrains was reflective of his own beliefs. When Krafft wrote back saying that they were and that he was working for the Nazi hierarchy, the Romanian quickly passed this information to the War Department. By August of 1940, it became obvious that the Nazis were as interested in the occult for their war effort as they were about guns and gasoline. British Intelligence found that the Nazis had set up in 1935 an organization devoted to tracking down magical and occult tomes under the name of Special Unit H (Sonderkommando H) and were heavily involved in archeological digs under the department known as Ahnenerbe. A call quickly went out by the War Department for their own experts in occultism and archeology. As might be expected, Crow fit the requirements wonderfully. A group of occultists were brought together under the auspice of Ludwig von Wohl, a Hungarian astrologer who had written several religious books and knew some of the Nazi astrologers and occultists personally. For the rest of the war, Crow worked with the Cryptography and the Occult sections of the War Department.

Once the war finished, Crow found himself without work. Penniless and depressed, Crow eventually took on a job with a man in Surrey named Julian Carstairs and known as "The Modern Magus." Carstairs had developed a reputation during the First World War as an advocate for using magical rituals against the enemies of Britain. Throughout January 1946, Crow spent time with Carstairs until his employer disappeared on February 1st. After a police investigation, the Julian Carstairs estate was divided up according to his will. Interestingly, though Carstairs predictably bequeathed his land and magical items and books to his coven, he had given almost his entire financial holdings to Crow.

With his newfound wealth and his newfound opportunity to pursue his archeological and occult interests, Crow spent the next decade exploring the world and acquiring dozens of rare texts and artifacts. During the 1950s, Crow gradually built a reputation of being an expert upon grimoires. It was also during this time that Crow began to correspond with various individuals such as Wingate Peaslee in Arkham, Massachusetts and Wilhelm Reich in Rangely, Maine.

In 1953, Titus Crow purchased from an auction house a strange clock called de Marigny's Clock. According to the auctioneer, the clock was owned by Étienne-Laurent de Marigny. It was a strange device that resembled a grandfather clock except for its haunting coffin shape, its four hands and how it ticks out of rhyme. Crow would spend the remainder of his life researching and trying to understand the clock.

During the 60s, Crow and de Marigny found themselves involved in various adventures. From an encounter with an individual claiming to be Count Dracula to the breaking of a code nearly two thousand years old, the years continued to bring them face to face with various supernatural occurrences and dangers. By 1968, Crow found himself considered by many to be an expert in the fields of the occult, amateur archaeology, paleontology, cryptography, antiques and in particular studies of the works of art by individuals such as Aubrey Beardsley, Chandler Davies, Hieronymous Bosch and especially Richard Pickman. It was also during this time that Crow and de Marigny joined with the Wilmarth Foundation of Miskatonic University under the leadership of Professor Wingate Peaslee. The summer of 1968 saw Titus Crow as head of the British branch of the Wilmarth Foundation.

"The Burrowers Beneath" follows Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent de Marigny as they uncover a plot by the Chthonians and their masters against the people of Great Britain. The book ends with the Great Old One known as Ithaqua attacking Crow with his elemental minions, leaving Crow believed dead.

In "The Transition of Titus Crow" it is shown that rather than be killed in the attack by Ithaqua and his minions, Crow managed to escape by unlocking the code of the Clock of Dreams. He spends some time lost in space and pursued by both Hounds of Tindalos and Ithaqua, before crashing his ship onto a planet inhabited by a lone robot. Suffering horrendous injuries, the robot reconstructs Crow's body and mind using mechanical components and memories stored in the Clock, before departing to once again search for a way home. Eventually guided to Elysia by the Tiania, he spends a time there, meeting and gaining the trust of head of the Elder Gods Kthanid, falling in love with Tiania, and discovering much about the Cthulhu Cycle Deities which wish him dead. Eventually, Crow is alerted by Kthanid to a strange silence in the Dreamlands, and he and Tiania leave Elysia on a mission to discover the cause.

In "The Clock of Dreams" Crow and Tiania travel to the Dreamlands in order to discover why so many of the allies of the Elder Gods there have suddenly gone quiet. After investigating the situation, the two discover a plot by the entity known as the Fly-the-Light (who turned out to be an avatar of Nyarlathotep) to seize the Dylath-Leen, with the aid of the Men of Leng. After a series of events involving the capture of both Crow and Tiania, Henri-Laurent de Marigny travels to the Dreamlands and effects a rescue, after which the trio were able to destroy the rubies used by the Fly-the-Light to control its inhabitants, and thereby saved the Dreamlands.

## Behind the scenes

In an interview with Lumley, Robert M. Price suggests various possible models for Crow, including Miro Hetzel, Jack Vance's futuristic detective, Doctor Who, Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, August Derleth's Dr. Laban Shrewsbury, William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki and Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin. Lumley doesn't acknowledge any of these as conscious inspirations, saying that Crow's space-time machine (which derives from Lovecraft's "Through the Gates of the Silver Key") long predates Who; that he's never read Peake's Gormenghast and that the similarity of names is coincidental; and that he "was never too keen on" Derleth's Shrewsbury. He does admit, however, to having "always had a soft spot" for Bram Stoker's Abraham Van Helsing.