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. 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
| Stock #: PELGT47 | Author: Kenneth Hite, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Becky Annison, Helen Gould, Ruth Tillman |
| Artists: Gislaine Avila, Ethan Black, Gennifer Bone, Mark Bulahao, Wagner Chrissante, Tyler Clark, Kennedy C. Garza, Dean Engelhardt, Jorge Fernández Sanz, Quintin Gleim, Heather Landry, Jeff Porter, Georgia Roan, Anna Rogers, Ian Schofield, Patricia Smith, Kellianne Stakenas, Kyle Strahm, Piya Wannachaiwong. | Pages: 368 page hardback |
Have only discovered that this is in development now. What an exciting prospect!
[…] else that has excited us is Pelgrane Press’ imminent release of Hideous Creatures, a massive 352-page hardback book which revises and greatly expands Mythos creature writeups by Ken […]
When’s is this expected to release?
It’s available to pre-order now and you’ll get the current PDF immediately when you pre-order. The book will be going to the printer shortly and we’ll keep you updated via See Page XX.
[…] printing and now on pre-order, Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos. Only 31 monsters, from Derleth and others as well as from Lovecraft, so it’s definitely not […]
Maybe a stupid question: does the beastiary include the lovecraftian deities (Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu and everyone else)? If so, is it restricted to the lovecraftian mythos or does it include other authors as August Derleth? I recently started reading Lovecraft’s complete fiction and was buzzing about the idea of a full beastiary!
The creatures included are listed in the second half of this post: http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/hideous-creatures-a-trail-of-cthulhu-bestiary/
[…] of Cthulhuhas been released. Kind of. Hideous Creatures… is officially on pre-order at Pelgrane’s web site, but an article comment reveals that you’ll receive the PDF as soon as you place the […]