
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.