“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.
When a victim walks over this camouflaged cover these Things in the Pit quickly retract this “cover” back into their bodies, causing prey to fall into their body lined pits. Victims of this attack can make a Dodge check to leap away from the center of the pit and avoid falling into it.
Typically, these are at least a dozen feet deep and more than eight feet in diameter, so that a single victim cannot climb out on their own.
Before a victim can recover from the shock, the creature creates four ten-foot-long tendrils. Some are tipped with clawed hands, others stabbing spikes, sharp boney blades, backward curving hooks, fanged mouths, or rows of rasping beak tippled suckers. These tendrils attack anyone within the pit and those within 5 feet of the pit’s edge. Its aim is to quickly kill anyone it has trapped or those who’ve escaped the trap before they can flee out of range.
It acts quickly, vanishing deep into the earth once such attacks have occurred, because they are vulnerable at this time. Unlike other shoggoths, Things in the Pit can no longer regenerate as quickly as others of their kind, healing only 1 HP every eight hours. Once they begin digesting a victim, the number of tendrils they can create is reduced by 1 per 25 SIZ points of its victim. This means the creature is less able to defend itself. Also, it is extremely slow moving and unable to give chase to fleeing victims or harm anyone more than 5 feet away from the edges of its pit. It is typically content to kill one or two victims and then vanish, not needing to feed for six months per 25 SIZ points ingested.
Some of the more intelligent of Things in the Pit (30%) learn to improve their hunting. Some create attractive items over the surface of their pits, like books, backs of coins, or even human-like forms lying unconscious. Among these are the oldest and wisest of their kind, who have learned to add sound to their traps, such as a child crying, someone calling for help, or a mysterious tapping in the dark.
THE THING IN THE pit, ambush shoggoth
char.
STR
CON
SIZ
DEX
INT
POW
roll
12D6 × 5
(6D6+10) × 5
10D6 × 5
1D6 × 5
(2D6+8) × 5
3D6 × 5
average
210
155
175
15-20
75
50-55
Average Hit Points: 33
Average Damage Bonus: +4D6
Average Build: 5
Average Magic Points: 13
Move: 3 crawling / 6 burrowing
Combat
Attacks per round: 4* (tendrils tipped with various deadly appendages)
Fighting (deadly tendrils) 50% (25/10), damage 1D3+DB
These creatures cannot dodge.
Skills
Listen 75%, Stealth 80%
Armor: none; halve damage caused by fire and electrical attacks; mundane weapons (incl. bullets) deal only 1 point of damage per hit; regenerate 1 HP every 8 hours (death at zero hit points).
Spells: none.
Sanity Loss: 1/1D10 Sanity points to encounter a Thing in the Pit.
