Archive for Creatures

“Stop or I’ll shoot! Don’t take one step closer!” I called out, leveling my revolver, but it had no effect. As the shambling form came closer it started moving faster, raising its arms and making a choking, chortling noise. When it stepped into the moonlight I could see that it was, it had been, Truman Nalfree, the missing scientist we’d traced here. He had to have been dead for a week maybe, judging by the level of decomposition. I fired three times, hitting twice, both through the torso, but it seemed to have no effect. It was almost on top of me so I took a deep breath, aimed for the head and fired. The creature’s skull exploded, but with much more forces than expected, showering me and my companions in gore. That’s when things got really horrifying….

(with thanks to Charlotte Askew for additional input)

Alternate names: Saviour Serum, Elder Bile, Micro-Shoggoths, Nano-Shoggoths  

In appearance this small lifeform is an iridescent liquid with a reddy-brownish-purple tinge, often found in a quantity of certainly no more than a small spoon’s worth, or perhaps if someone were so minded, enough to fill a syringe. It is a miniature, in some examples even microscopic, example of the genetic engineering of the alien race known as the Elder Things and for those few sorry souls who bear the burden of knowing about such things, it would be classified as a tiny sibling to the abhorrent Shoggoth.

“We’ll go this way, you take that passage,” he said, “we’ll cover more ground this way.  I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary.”
“You sure?” Helen replied. “Splitting up seems like a bad idea. Like, a really bad idea.”
But Hank snorted and rolled his eyes as he and Beth took the right turn, while we took the left.
We’d gone maybe 50 yards down the passageway when we heard the screams, the desperate calls for help and anguished shrieks of pain. We turned and ran back towards them as fast as we could. By the time we got to the intersection, everything was quiet other than our desperate calls and the pounding of our hearts.
We started walking slowly, cautiously and quietly now.  Soon, our flashlights caught the sight of Hank’s hat and one of Beth’s shoes lying in the middle of the tunnel. I moved to get closer but Helen gasped and grabbed me, pulling me backward.
“Back away…slowly…I saw something…inin the floor…” she said, shaking with fear.
“What?” I asked, as I backed away, smart enough to obey my partner even if I didn’t understand. “What did you see?”
“An eye!”  

These shoggoths have specialized in a specialized form of hunting, using their bodies to form traps and waiting for prey to wander into them. They commonly dig a deep hole or pit in an underground place humans frequent, like a mine, a lonely forest trail, or in half-forgotten catacombs. They then occupy the pit, shaping their forms into hollow bowl-like shapes lining the pit, and create a well-camouflaged cover for the pit with their bodies.

“Imagine it, a nation of conscience that can mould itself to any task. A being of such awareness and ability it could literally move mountains, it could make mountains and it can break them down with as much ease as you or I could breathe. I am talking of something so beyond what we believe is possible it would shame us into realising how insignificant and small we are. I am talking of something created by higher beings, something that had aspirations far greater than ours thrust upon it and over eons and eons it adapted, it changed, and it evolved. It saw that others enjoy the fruits of its labour, each entity itself a whole race of slaves seeing the masters unfairly use its burdens. And from that outrage, it formed something far more dangerous than the ability to forge matter, they formed will.
     “I have no idea how it must feel, to be aware on a subatomic level that you are one day a hapless drone only to become fully aware of the cosmos and your place within it. It must have been a painful process; one I would dearly love to understand. I firmly believe that such a hive, a host, a nation unto      itself must have the ability somewhere to record or at least preserve its experiences or at the very least show us just how clumsy we are compared to the designs of higher beings. With just a fragment…we could unravel the limits the of human potential, we could shape our surroundings, ourselves, and possibility—our reality to what-ever we could imagine, not as humans, but as higher beings!” 

Dr Shetland, given in a speech at a fund-raising event