Hideous Creatures - A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos
Lovecraft created his various "shadowy congeners" because the stories of vampires¸ werewolves¸ and even ghosts had become too familiar and too formulaic to evoke true horror. Almost a century after he wrote¸ his own monstrous races have likewise begun to seem like comfortable story furniture rather than unnerving signals that the world is horrible and wrong.
In Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos¸ we present a comprehensive look at Lovecraft's hideous creatures¸ from as many angles as we can. Our goal is contradiction¸ surprise¸ and most especially the uncanny: the recognition of something familiar as something weird. As in the "Gods and Titans" section of the Trail of Cthulhu core book¸ this book deliberately contradicts itself¸ blurring boundaries and erasing certainties in the name of the uncanny. In your campaign¸ these variant truths might be misunderstandings¸ legends¸ heresies¸ or deliberate lies spread by the creatures to lull their foes into a false sense of familiarity.
Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos is the Trail of Cthulhu bestiary written by Mythos giant Kenneth Hite and fellow experts Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan¸ Becky Annison¸ Helen Gould and Ruth Tillman¸ in the tradition of the award-winning Book of Unremitting Horror and the 13th Age Bestiary. Useable for any mythos or occult RPG¸ creatures are not just antagonists to fight or flee from; they are entire adventures by themselves¸ leaving physical traces¸ occult clues and madness in their eldritch wake.
Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos features seven all-new creatures:Bholes * Colour Out of Space * Elder Things
Flying Polyps * Moon Beasts * Night-gaunts * Spawn of Yog-Sothoth
Plus full write-ups of nine Foul Congeries¸ opening the books on Lovecraftian monsters that have never taken stat-block form before in any game!Bat-Things * Black Winged Ones * Gaseous Wraiths
Medusas * Raktajihva * Ultraviolet Devourer
Vampirish Vapour * Worm-Cultist * Y'm-bhi
And new art and in-world documents for each of the fifteen original Hideous Creatures:Byakhee * Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath * Deep Ones
Ghouls * Great Race of Yith * Hounds of Tindalos
Hunting Horrors * Lloigor * Mi-Go
Rat-Things * Serpent Folk * Shoggoths
Star Vampires * Tcho-Tchos * Wendigo