Archive for Creatures

It’s hard to get good help… a spectral still-room maid for Call of Cthulhu

This mysterious woman appears dressed in a black long-sleeved dress with white cuffs and collar, a white linen apron, and a small grey cap. She is pale, with freckles and curly red hair, and speaks with a thick Irish accent. She can be encountered in any one of a dozen stately homes across Manhattan and Brooklyn, or a half-dozen Gilded Age mansions on the north coast of Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. She is often pushing a cart laden with a full tea service for six, a classic still-room maid. Shortly before she appears, the temperature drops 20 degrees as the scent of Darjeeling tea, cucumber sandwiches, and shortbread cookies fills the air.

The Narrowing, a terminal predator and Cthulhu Eternal entity

For thirty days the Hounds behaved like animals fleeing something. Nobody could photograph the thing chasing them, because it was not a thing in a place. It was a pressure that removed transitions instead of occupying space, and you could only see it in the actions that could no longer happen and the instruments that could no longer disagree.

A wet, bloodshot eye stared back at Jiro from the crack above his bed. Terror seized him as somehow a face squeezed through the tiny crack. Matted, greasy long hair framed the pale white face. Two large eyes and a wide grin filled with hundreds of narrow, sharp teeth dominated the otherwise featureless face. The creature clacked its teeth and giggled as it continued unfurling from the crack. Long, spindly arms and legs unfolded from a thin torso, ribs and hips protruding. It was naked, and Jiro could see an appendage, small and pathetic, dangling between its legs. The creature settled on the bed and crawled up Jiro’s frozen form. It put its face near his, still giggling.

An extinction dossier and Cthulhu Eternal entity

Each finding the hearing accepted removed one more reason the species had to be dead. The type specimen, assembled in 1904 from three animals, began breathing before the lunch recess. It had inherited all three sets of injuries and both of the incompatible jaws the record could not agree on.

Failed attempts at immortality

These creatures were once human, but are now trapped between the tides of life and death. They all began their journey to this state while questing for eternal youth, beauty, or immortality. Some began as wizards or alchemists, delving through arcane formulae and blasphemous tomes. Others were scientists, conducting illegal research into genetics, recombinant DNA, and forced mutation through reprogrammed viruses. Some were famous, wealthy, and vain individuals, willing to pay any price to cheat nature and the passage of time. Ultimately, their efforts were only partially successful.

A developmental-contamination dossier for Cthulhu Eternal

Celandine split the material across five laboratories so that no one team could reconstruct the organism. On the sixth day, one lab answered a question a second lab had not finished asking. By morning every laboratory had grown a different organ, and the organs were working together to leave.

Branch-injury report MH-27, with Cthulhu Eternal statistics

The team was sure the procedure had picked the one Hound capable of beating it. The strain gauges told a worse story. The projected animal had simply tried to reach the record that tied it to the room, and the containment shell happened to be in the way. The shell was not defeating the Hound. The shell was teaching it how to breach.

Forensic reconstruction dossier AM-26, with Cthulhu Eternal statistics

During surgery, every artery beyond the reach of direct light divided into pale planes and ran off into a volume with no stable anatomy. The planes rearranged themselves each time the endoscope changed angle. Quill stayed awake under the anesthetic and asked, quite reasonably, why they were teaching her how to be human.

Observer-horizon megafauna dossier HS-25, with Cthulhu Eternal statistics

They relayed Daniel’s coin-flip to his wife through six people, an optical cable, and a handwritten note carried down the central corridor. Every path came back with the same bit: zero. Daniel had chosen one. Whatever was moving through the noise behind his voice followed the exact line between the signals she could still receive and the ones that would never reach her again.

Two lights in the woods north of Arkham, moving side by side, as though holding hands.

Bargained he with Fowler strong, A witch of furious mood, That she should take these children young, And slaye them in a wood.

The Children In The Wood, folk song, Arkham variant

Sometimes called the Gagnon Lights or Jack Lights, these entities are flashing fiery spirits usually seen in May in the woods north of Arkham.