Story Spoilers: Nyarlathotep?

[Lightice]

No, I don't think that this story had anything to do with Lovecraft's stories. The Machine is not an independent entity, at all, but a broken piece of Mandus's own soul insane with the horrors of the 20th century and given god-like power through endless blood sacrifices. This game is all about the dark depths that humans are capable of succumbing on their own, and adding in some malevolent outside power to the mix would badly dilute that message.

And let me add that it seriously bugs me how poorly represented Nyarlathotep is by basically every writer other than Lovecraft. People keep presenting him as some apocalypse-level troll who screws wityh humanity for the hell of it, when in Lovecraft's own writings he is consistently a guardian on the treshold between mundane and supernatural, requiring sacrifices from those who attempt to cross that line and pursuing relentlessly those who don't pay the price.