FORMLESS SPAWN OF TSATHOGGUA (1931)

Chaosium's version of the Formless Spawn
SOURCE: "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, November 1931)
DESCRIPTION:"When
we approached and peered over the brim, we saw that the bowl was filled with a
sort of viscous and semi-liquescent substance, quite opaque and of a sooty color.
It was from this that the odor came—an odor which, though unsurpassably foul,
was nevertheless not an odor of putrefaction, but resembled rather the smell of
some vile and unclean creature of the marshes. The odor was almost beyond endurance,
and we were about to turn away when we perceived a slight ebullition of the surface,
as if the sooty liquid were being agitated from within by some submerged animal
or other entity. This ebullition increased rapidly, the center swelled as if with
the action of some powerful yeast, and we watched in utter horror, while an uncouth
amorphous head with dull and bulging eyes arose gradually on an ever-lengthening
neck, and stared us in the face with primordial malignity. Then two arms—if one
could call them arms—likewise arose inch by inch, and we saw that the thing was
not, as we had thought, a creature immersed in the liquid, but that the liquid
itself had put forth this hideous neck and head, and was now forming these damnable
arms, that groped toward us with tentacle-like appendages in lieu of claws or
hands!
" ("The Tale
of Satampra Zeiros" by Clark Ashton Smith)
NOTES: The formless spawn of Tsathoggua inhabit the bowl held by the "idol" of Tsathoggua. These shapeless masses can dissolved and consume flesh.
HISTORY: Both Tsathoggua and his formless spawn made it into the Call of Cthulhu game by Sandy Petersen.