Hideous Trophies

There appeared certain odd stories of things found floating in some of the swollen rivers

– The Whisperer in Darkness

Some of the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos are composed of ultraterrene matter, or hail from dimensions or angles beyond the ones we know, or cannot die in any way we can comprehend. Others, though, can be destroyed or at least inconveniencedby physical force. Strange things were swept down by the floods from the forested hills beyond Brattleboro, or washed up on the beaches of Massachusetts after the destruction of Devil’s Reef – or were found dead on the floor of the library at Miskatonic.

A maddening of alien horrors march across the pages of Hideous Creaturesbut what might they leave behind if destroyed? What remains… remain? What might the investigators find mounted on the wall of the famous big game hunter who killed himself with his own elephant gun? What relic might they steal from the Thibetan monastery? What tattered robe of hide does the cult priest wear when he capers and howls prayers to the Old Ones?

If the investigators do find a trophy or other preserved remnant of a Mythos creature, examining it might yield vital clues. It’s better to learn, for example, that hunting horrors are rejuvenated by electricity by subjecting a small piece of hunting horror tissue to an electrical current, rather than desperately using the last charge of your stolen Yithian lightning gun on the monster as it pursues you…

 

A Feejee Mermaid: The creature was of substance similar to ours – it dies when you shoot it, and the body doesn’t vanish or sublime or turn to slime. The creature might be mistaken for an especially grotesque example of fanciful taxidermy, a chimera made by sewing together bits of different animals; the wings of some Patagonian bat, the head of a malformed goat, crocodile teeth…

Likely candidates: Bat-Thing (obviously some sort of bat), Byakhee (a pterosaur, clearly), Serpent Folk (a genuine Feejee Mermaid)

The Bones Might Be Human: There are physical abnormalities, of course. Take the care of John Merrick, the famous elephant man of London! Or those suffering from certain extreme skin conditions, worse than leprosy. These remains are bizarre, yes, likely mangled post-mortem by some accident, butthey’re clearly human. Maybe some animal bones mixed in, but they’re human. What else could they be?

Likely candidates: Deep Ones, Ghouls, Medusa, Rat-Thing (the bones of children, I fear, mixed with the rats who ate the remains), Raktijiva (the head’s been destroyed, obviously), Spawn of Yog-Sothoth (Human Son), Tcho-Tcho (the poor stunted creature!), Wendigo (some sort of primitive throwback or degenerate, I’ll wager) Y’m-Bhi (my god! It’s a mass grave!)

A Patch of Hide: Keeping the entire carcass is impossible, unless you happen to own a convenient aircraft hangar or refrigerated warehouse. The investigators might find a small patch of leather carved from a vast huge, a single impossibly huge claw, or a pickled eyeball the size of a man’s head.

Likely candidates: Bhole (impossibly tough worm-leather), Dark Young (clearly some sort of wooden sculpture), Hunting Horror (a rare breed of elephant or hippo, perhaps)

 It All Evaporated: The remains decay almost instantly into foul-smelling liquids or noxious gases, leaving nothing behind. With extensive experimentation, a knowledgable chemist might hit on the right conditions and mix of chemicals needed to preserve the remains.

Likely Candidates: Flying Polyp (explodes into cloud of cancerous cells), Gaseous Wraiths (deflates under pressure), Mi-Go (alien matter dissolves), Moon-Beasts (dissolve into star-jelly; contact with decaying remains is agonisingly painful), Vampirish Vapour (rapid deliquescence into rot and slime)

Mysterious Stains – and Echoes: The creature’s remain vanish, but they don’t just dissolve into slime or sublime into mist. Something of the entity remains in the place where it died. Not a haunting, exactly, but a stain upon the land. An unhealing scar, a place that echoes the horror over and over.

Likely Candidates: Black Winged One (hauntings, sick building syndrome), Colour Out Of Space (blasted heath), Great Race of Yith (remains drawn back through time-gate; temporal distortions persist), Hounds of Tindalos, Lloigor (dreams and nightmares), Night-Gaunts (hideous tittering from no discernible source) Ultraviolet Devourer (‘thin place’ where higher dimensions can be seen) 

That Is Not Dead…: Some creatures do not die so easily. The Elder Things dug up by the Miskatonic Expedition revived after millennia buried in the ice caves; shoggoths are virtually indestructible. These ‘remains’ might revive under the right conditions.

Likely Candidates: Elder Things (preternatural resilience), Hounds of Tindalos (what is an ending to an entity who moves through time?), Shoggoth (every shoggoth cell is a shoggoth), Star Vampire (still exists in a dimension we can’t perceive, can be called up by blood), Worm-Cultist (every worm recalls the totality…)


Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos is a collection of thirty-one of Lovecraft’s most celebrated – and most cryptic, some of which have never taken stat form in an RPG – creatures, written up with full stats, clues, mythic echoes, adventure seeds, and in-world documents for Trail of Cthulhu. Purchase Hideous Creatures in print at the Pelgrane Shop.

 

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