Derleth also attempted to connect the deities of the Mythos to the four elements ("air", "earth", "fire", and "water"), creating new beings representative of certain elements in order to legitimize his system of classification. Derleth created "Cthugha" as a sort of fire elemental when a fan, Francis Towner Laney, complained that he had neglected to include the element in his schema. Laney, the editor of "The Acolyte", had categorized the Mythos in an essay that first appeared in the Winter 1942 issue of the magazine.