Restorers of Pnakotus

An alien being for Trail of Cthulhu

In the impossibly ancient past, mental energy beings known as the Yithians held dominion over the world, occupying the bodies of cone-shaped non-humanoids native to the earth. To manage their authoritarian regime, they engineered a number of sapient servitor species. Many eventually rebelled against their creators, but one remained staunchly loyal—the Naklkith-Kua, or Restorers of That Which Has Succumbed to Entropy. The fixers and mechanics of the Pnakotic Empire, they repaired machines and organisms with equal singlemindedness.

Their masters came to depend on them so thoroughly that by the time of the second Flying Polyp emergence 65 million years ago, they had forgotten how to build and fix dozens of the complex technological devices they created for themselves in the flourishing of their civilization. When it became apparent that they would have to send their minds aeons forward in time to possess the coleopterans of the far future, they laid plans that would allow them to revive their ever-loyal, surpassingly useful Naklith-Kua. They commanded their creations to construct vaults in the deepest and most remote crevasses of the earth. These would contain not only the genetic materials to create a new Naklith-Kua breeding colony, but mechanisms to initiate their revival.

Months ago an archaeological acquaintance of the investigators discovered such a vault. While exploring this thoroughly anomalous ancient complex, Sonia Wetherell and her colleagues were sprayed by an acidic mist. Since then each in turn has engaged in erratic behavior before finally disappearing for good. Now Sonia, who was standing furthest back from the spraying device, has been having bad dreams she hopes her friends can explain.

The other members of the Wetherell Expedition have, via a process of parasitic genetic replication, transformed into Naklith-Kua. They now fan across New England searching for Yithians to obey. As they scour the region they encounter various machines and animals that appear to have radically deviated from the acceptable schematics they knew in the waning Cretaceous era. Careful to avoid detection from the hostile fauna they have discovered, they set upon people, animals, vehicles, and devices, carrying them off to burrows and hideaways. There they slice and dice them into horrific hybrid automatons. They might take apart a cow, a tractor, a coyote and a farmhand to make a barely functional psychic communications beacon to locate Yithians. Or reconfigure a mountain lion, a lawn mower, a motor bike and some snakes into an attack sentinel.

The revived Naklith-Kua do not look quite like the originals, impurified as they are by human DNA. Their awful, pink, pulsing forms have oversized, skull-like heads with unseeing eye sockets, atop worm-like bodies bristling with freshly installed mechanical instruments. When they need to sense distant events, layers of tissue detach from their bodies to float into the air as psychic sensor arrays. The Restorers are particularly vulnerable while in this state, and only detach sensors in what they regard as secure conditions, or when desperate.

Physically the Naklith-Kua pose a threat only to the helpless subjects on their vivisection tables. That’s why they build monstrous cyber-hybrids to guard them with lashing chains and whirring, rusted blades.

Game Statistics (Cyber-Hybrid)

Abilities: Athletics 8, Health 20, Scuffling or Shooting or Weapons 18

Hit Threshold: 3

Alertness Modifier: +1

Stealth Modifier: -1

Weapon: +2 (prehensile chain or gun or blade)

Armor: +2 vs any (metallic armor)

Stability Loss: +2

Stability Loss for seeing Naklith-Kua without their cyber-hybrids present is +1.

Trail of Cthulhu is an award-winning 1930s horror roleplaying game by Kenneth Hite, produced under license from Chaosium. Whether you’re playing in two-fisted Pulp mode or sanity-shredding Purist mode, its GUMSHOE system enables taut, thrilling investigative adventures where the challenge is in interpreting clues, not finding them. Purchase Trail of Cthulhu and its many supplements and adventures in the Pelgrane Shop.