The OctoberNomicon Is Opening Once Again

October approaches, and something is scratching at the margins of the manuscript.

For more than twenty years, Shoggoth.net’s OctoberNomicon has spent the Halloween season filling the world with things that ought not exist: monsters drawn from folklore and urban legend, forgotten horrors recovered from weird fiction, original creatures dragged screaming from the imaginations of our contributors, and stories documenting what happened when somebody encountered them.

Now we need your help to open it again.

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Murdertoys

A pack of murdertoys advancing at night: a doll with a knife, a hook-studded teddy bear, and more bears behind them with glowing eyes.

The toys have been in the box longer than the child has been in the house.

Throughout history, toys have brought merriment and joy to children of all ages. Dolls and teddy bears are widespread across cultures, varying in size and materials, from simple scraps of cloth bound by twine and crudely painted faces to elaborate, articulated figures of plastic, porcelain, and soft fur.

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The Scent

OctoberNomicon logo

An applied field guide to contamination after Tindalosian contact

Mercer never saw the thing again.

He changed trains seven times. He paid cash, threw away his clothes, shaved his head, and would only sleep in rooms whose corners he could smother with pillows. He stopped using his own name and he never went home. Three weeks later a landlady in Prague found him folded into an angle far too small to hold a man.

Everyone assumed the Hound had followed him. But the trail worth studying did not end with Mercer at all. It ended with his sister, back home, who still had the letter he had written to explain why he ran.

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Father Julius Mills

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A helping hand with a sinister agenda…

This man, of average height and appearance, has a face that easily blends into a crowd. This is intentional, as he likes to work unnoticed. In the past he has been an army chaplain (retired with the rank of captain), a medical doctor, and a Catholic priest specializing in the rites of exorcism. He works as a lone mythos investigator, using his wide array of skills, knowledge, expertise, and combat training to battle the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos and defend humanity from its evil and corruption. He often waits and watches people or places he suspects to be tainted by the Cthulhu Mythos, and then moves against it when the time is right.

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The Tindalosian Observation Problem

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A speculative physical model of angular time, observation, and the Hounds of Tindalos

There is an old, uncharitable way of reading “The Hounds of Tindalos”: a man drugs himself, peers somewhere he shouldn’t, attracts a predator, and gets eaten for his trouble. It reads the story as a cautionary tale about curiosity. I have never found it satisfying, because it leaves every interesting question on the table. Why plaster? Why corners? Why does being seen matter to a thing that can move through time?

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Endlichwerden

SPECIAL OCTOBERNOMICON PREVIEW
“Time is the fire in which we burn.”
~ Delmore Schwartz
SPECIAL OCTOBERNOMICON PREVIEW

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I’m Back, Bitches!

“And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete.
I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.
“
—Narrator, Fight Club

I’m back. Where’ve I been? Doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t believe me even if I told ya the truth and, honestly, I’m not sure I would. Okay, that’s not fair: I wouldn’t believe me. I wouldn’t trust myself to know what’s real and what I’m twisting to not be “the bad guy” or…I dunno, some kind of fuck up? And even if I stuck to the truth, whose truth am I sticking to? I mean, they say there’s at least two sides to every story but I think it’s more like a kaleidoscope, shifting in real time and changing right before your eyes as an outside hand acts upon it. Everyone who looks through it is going to see things a bit differently.

I will say that I’ve missed Shoggoth Net. It’s kinda like the old Lovecraft Circle but without the racism. People writing in with entries for OctoberNomicon or Shoggoths in September. One year, February was all about vampires. Money wasn’t a thing. People were doing it for…I don’t really know. Just for the sake of writing and being part of the community or something. All I know is we’d put a call out for submissions and, bit-by-bit, we’d fill up an entire month with new community content.

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Osterhase

In the spring of 1532 in the kingdom of Hesse, near the modern town of Dieburg, there was a bright light like the rising of the sun at midnight. Several villagers, men and strong lads, went out to search the area. They found only a scorched area next to an ancient standing stone deep in the forest. Unknown to the others, little Lampert Sebald an unusually brave lad of 9, followed his father into the woods with the others. Later he would swear that he had seen a 6 foot tall off white rabbit hopping out the forest. The next morning the children of the village started finding hundreds of iridescent eggs all over town. These eggs were sweet and delicious when cooked. Three nights later there was another midnight sun. The priest compared it to mana from heaven and declared it an Easter miracle. All was well until one week later when the unfound eggs hatched, at first they looked like a strange blend of rabbit and toad. Cuddly, warm, and fuzzy. Only the children could see them, so when they grew to fist sized and started eating the chickens, cats, and small game. The adults thought of foxes, dismissing children’s notions of killer rabbits. When they grew to cat sized and started attacking in swarms killing the cows, horses, and adults in unseen clouds of disappearing hemispherical chunks of flesh and spurting blood the adults were terrified. Finally, the adults believed the children about their Easter Rabbits. After a couple deaths and many attacks Lambert Sebald led the children in finding and killing the “rabbits”.

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Envenom 

Cost: 6 Magic points, 1 POW, 1D6 Sanity Points

Casting Time: 1 round.

This spell causes the victim’s tongue to temporarily elongate, fork, and drip a thick, sticky black poison. The poison is not strong enough to enter a target’s bloodstream through skin contact. However, when entering the bloodstream is quickly takes effect (all damage delivered on the following round). Typically, the practitioner casts this spell and then licks a bladed weapon, coating it with venom, before making a melee attack. The poison neutralizes quickly, growing weaker over time before becoming inert. After being cast the poison is effective for just six rounds, reducing its potency over time (round 1 and 2 – Severe, 1D10 / Round 3 and 4 – Moderate, 1D6 / Round 5 and 6 – 1D3). As with all poisons the victim is allowed a CON check, with an extreme success reducing the damage by 50%. The effects of the poison are necrotic, causing he flesh around the wound site to painfully swell, before blackening and dying. Only enough venom is produced to coat a single weapon, and due to the physical demands on the caster it can only be cast once per day. After casting the caster’s tongue returns to normal, but they become very hungry and thirsty, as their body struggles to recover from the demands the enchantment placed upon it. 

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Molt

Cost: 10 Magic points, 2 POW, 1D10 Sanity Points

Casting Time: 1 round.

This powerful healing spell takes two full days to perform. On the first day the caster performs the ritual, during which they must devour a quantity of meat equal to 25% of their size. For example, a SIZ 12 caster would have to eat a 4 SIZ worth of protein, or roughly 1/4th of their body weight. The meat must come from a single animal that was alive less than 24 hours before casting. The caster then falls into a torpor, sleeping deeply for about 24 hours. During this time their skin darkens, becomes leathery, and swells a bit, until they become encased inside of a leathery sack of their own hide. During this time all damage done to their bodies is restored, including magical damage resistant to natural healing, and the regeneration of lost body parts (restored eyes, regrown severed limbs, etc.). Any scars or tattoos the caster had before this spell was cast are now absent, along with any hair dyes or painted nails. While this is happening the caster is completely helpless, unable to move while their bodies regenerate. This ritual is typically one of last resort, performed when a cultist is horribly wounded or permanently disfigured. The spell is so taxing on their physical bodies it can only be performed once per six months. 

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