All posts by Oscar Rios

These strange, grotesque creatures were once human women, priestesses of The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. Each was a matriarch of a cult or temple whose children and grandchildren also served the Outer Goddess. In their twilight years such priestesses are granted special favor to live on and serve their goddess as a Sacred Ewe of the Black Goat. It is considered the highest honor, granted to only the most devout and deserving servants. Such creatures are effectively immortal, although not invulnerable as they can be slain through violence or misadventure. 

These creatures start out as human. They are chosen before their birth for the honor of becoming a guardian of a site sacred to the Outer Goddess Shub-Niggurath. Their mothers are ritually sacrificed to the Shub-Niggurath at the time of their birth. The babies are then raised by the cult they will one day serve. These chosen children receive mental, physical and spiritual training, as well as being fed special diets, in preparation for their future role. Once they reach adulthood they are given a ritual drink, triggering extremely painful physical alterations, forever changing them at the cellular level. This agonizing process takes a full day and night after which they are granted special powers and protections by the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. They are now a Shepherd or Shepherdess of The Black Goat. 

Much like the greater variety of this creature, Lesser Shepherds / Shepherdess’ of The Black Goat begin life as a normal human. They too had mother’s die during childbirth, but never as part of a formal ritual to Shub-Nigguruath. During their childhoods they receive none of the special diet or training of Greater Shepherd or Shepherdess’. None of these creatures had any connection to a cult of the Black Goat with a Thousand Young. They are created when an unlucky individual whose mother died in childbirth eats or drinks something made from the black milk of a Sacred Ewe of Shub-Nigguruath. This is close enough to the criteria for creating a Greater Shepherd or Shepherdess that it triggers a similar transformation, albeit one resulting in a less powerful version of the intended creation.

No one goes anywhere near the old wrecked oil tanker, Neptune Venture, in the mud flats. Not during the day or especially at night, whether your deep blooded or shallow, like me. The only people who ever go there are members of the Bishop family, and they only do that once a week. They only stay long enough to drop off a box of food and supplies. Even then they have a dog with them, and someone keeping watch with a shotgun. Kids used to dare one another to go touch the Neptune Venture after dark, that is until two of them went missing trying to do it, and the kids who put them up to it were disciplined by the Esoteric Order of Dagon. There are rumors of a hulking creature that comes out of the wreck at night, to fish, dig clams, and sometime burn a trash pile.  I’m not going to be the one to find out for sure. So, good luck with that…

Our guide led us into the old smugglers tunnels under Innsmouth, holding a lantern ahead of us, leading our company into darkness. We were desperate to rescue our companions, who’d been captured when we fled two days earlier. She said her name was Mary-Catherine, and explained that she lived as an exile in the marshes outside of town, because she had never fully made “the change”.  We weren’t sure what she meant, but she had that “Innsmouth Look” worse than anyone we’d seen yet, appearing to be some sort of unholy combination of a human woman, a frog, and a snapping turtle.
Ugly or not, we had limited options, and had put our faith in her, after hearing of the cruelty she’d suffered at the hands of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, whom had banished her and forbad her from entering the town.  Her steps were fast and sure, our team had trouble keeping up with her. Once we were strung out a bit in the twisting labyrinth of tunnels her lantern went out and we were all plunged into darkness. I grabbed for my electric flashing, but it was gone! We heard out guide giggling manically just before the mayhem began.
Of the four of us who followed that creature called Mary-Catherine into dark, I was the only one to survive.

When the mists roll in over the dark ocean waves,
The wrongfully deceased rise from watery graves.
They hunt for those who caused their death,
Until their quarry breaths their last breath.

-Old Captain Rosario, Kingsport, 1863

These strange and powerful creatures start out as humans, but are chosen in utero begins to become something more. Their mothers are always devoted high priestesses of the Goddess Hydra, blessed by the Deep Mother with a divine boon. In the weeks leading up to the delivery of their daughters (Blessed of Hydra are always female) the priestess is visited in her dreams by the Goddess Hydra, and told their child shall be a Blessed of Hydra.  

These mysterious creatures are the tragic end product of most Eldritch Symbiont rituals. They are formed when the dark entity allowed into a sorcerer’s body eventual takes full control over their physical form. At this point none of the host’s former intellect or humanity remains, leaving behind only the Eldritch Usurper, which now possessed the one thing it most desired, a physical form upon this reality. 

 “The only business of the historian is to relate things exactly as they are: this he can never do as long as he is afraid”

― Lucian of Samosata, Lucian’s True History

These strange creatures arise from the dark desires of sorcerers to enhance their powers.  Through a complicated ritual, passed down through the ages from the Arch-Wizards of Stygia and Atlantis, a sorcerer may offer their living bodies as a home to one of the countless living, yet formless entities lurking at the edges of our reality. The malevolent beings are desperate to obtain physical form, as it is the only way to enter our plane of existence.