Hideous Creatures: Ghouls

“These figures were seldom completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degree.” Charnel predators, or changeling denizens of Dream? Follow their tunnels from the sands of Arabia to the catacombs of Paris — or just stay in Boston for some fine New England cuisine!

Rubbery, loathsome humanoids with semi-hooved feet, pointed ears, and claws, ghouls dwell in graveyard warrens, subway tunnels, and the like beneath many human cities. Their greenish or grayish skin is matted with grave earth or flecked with leprous lesions and leathery dead spots. They smell horrible, like open graves and rot and wet dogs. They move in a low, hunched posture, almost semi-bipedal; they climb, leap, and lope at prodigious speed. Their eyes are red or yellow, and glow in pitch blackness or when hungrily attentive on something or someone. Ghouls can see into both infrared and ultraviolet; in utter darkness, they can find a foe by smell or sound.

Hideous Creatures: Ghouls includes:

• Two unique scenario seeds, Pour Another Ghoul One, and Have Your Quake And Eat It Too
• Keeper clues for every Trail of Cthulhu Investigative ability
• Five mythic echoes from across the world
• Thirty-one ghoul variations
• Rules for become a ghoul (Oh God! Why! Why?!)
• And new powers, like Consume Memories and Greater Ghoul, with GUMSHOE statistics.

In this series, Kenneth Hite looks at the creatures, species, and monsters of the Cthulhu Mythos from every non-Euclidean angle. Alternate versions and new explanations provide the same jolt of mythic bisociation that the gods and titans receive in the TRAIL OF CTHULHU corebook. Hite traces these foul things through their legendary history, and provides further clues for any Investigator to follow. Horrific scenario seeds burst and bloom, story spines protrude and deform, in a blasphemous garden any Keeper can harvest.

Praise for Hideous Creatures:

“a brief injection of Hite-ian awesome … they’re just about the right length to digest in a single sitting, and full of amazing ideas that will make anyone’s game into a flavourful occult gumbo.” – High Trust, High Drama Blog

“I consider this series a wake-up call to the lacklustre, to remind them tales of the Mythos, using whatever system, should instill uneasiness, upset and fear. Grasp the potential of the unearthly and inhuman…” – Paul Baldowski

Hideous Creatures: Ghouls is the seventh installment of Ken Writes About Stuff Volume 1.