Shoggoths

[HPL Mountains (online text)]: Intelligent, protoplasmic masses that were created by the crinoid Old Ones (1) to serve as their slaves. These beings could mould their tissues into all sorts of temporary organs under hypnotic influence, to perform a variety of heavy work. Their expansions could be made to lift prodigious weights, including the stones that formed the vast cities of the Old Ones. The shoggoths were the primary beast of burden for the Old Ones in their underwater cities, though other creatures were used on land.

The Things that Should Not Be

The shoggoths are composed of a viscous black, iridescent jelly, like an agglutination of bubbles. They average about fifteen feet in diameter when a sphere. However, their shape and volume constantly shift, as they form temporary organs, including those of sight, hearing, and speech. Shoggoths reproduce by fission. The shoggoth that Dyer and Danforth saw was faintly self-luminous, with myriads of glowing green eyes forming and unforming as it moved.

Shoggoths have an apalling odour that is different from, and worse than, the smell of the Old Ones.

Rebel Scum

While working as slaves of the Old Ones, the shoggoths gradually developed a semi-stable brain and an occasionally stubborn volition. The shoggoths became particularly intractable around the middle of the Permian period. Then the Old Ones fought a war of resubjugation, and were able to subdue the shoggoths through the use of weapons of molecular disturbance. Though the shoggoths showed an ability to live out of the water during the rebellion, the Old Ones returned them to living only underwater, since they were considered more difficult to manage on land.

During the rebellion, when the shoggoths killed Old Ones, they would tear off the heads and leave the dead bodies coated with glistening, reflectively iridescent black slime.

In their final, decadent phase, the Old Ones used shoggoths to build their new city in the underground sea beneath Antarctica. By this stage, the shoggoths grew to enormous size and singular intelligence, and could take and execute orders with marvelous quickness. They conversed with the Old Ones by mimicking their voices: a sort of musical piping over a wide range. They came to work more from spoken commands than hypnotic suggestions as in earlier times.

Dyer and Danforth encountered a shoggoth that made the sound "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" in musical piping tones. The two scientists inferred that this sound was the imitated voice of the shoggoths' bygone masters, the Old Ones. Danforth hinted that Poe had secret sources when he wrote of the call "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! " in his novel Arthur Gordon Pym.

Eventually the shoggoths could even mimic the Old Ones' writing with dots of slime.

The Shoggoths Triumph

After the Antarctic became colder, the Old Ones adapted some of the shoggoths to land life, to perform needed work in their Antarctic land city.

It is likely that the shoggoths finally killed all the Old Ones in the subterranean water city. At any rate, shoggoths now frequent the passages leading from the Antarctic land city down to the underwater city. The shoggoths have replaced some of the Old One's bas-reliefs with carvings of their own, which are decorative and conventional in nature, composed of a series of crude spirals and angles.

Those Old Ones who were accidentally wakened by the Miskatonic University Antarctic Expedition, were later slain by shoggoths when the Old Ones attempted to make their way to the city in the underground sea.

Shoggoths Abroad

Abdul Alhazred was apparently ignorant of the history of the shoggoths on this planet. Though Alhazred wrote of shoggoths in the Necronomicon, he did not hint that they ever existed on earth, except in the dreams of those who had chewed a certain alkaloidal herb. [HPL Mountains (online text)]

The shoggoths have survived to modern times in other locations, aside from Antarctica. Thus, Zadok Allen hinted that the Deep Ones had brought, or were planning to bring, shoggoths to Innsmouth. If already present, the shoggoths are apparently in the houses north of the river between Water and Main Streets. The Shadow Over Innsmouth narrator saw a shoggoth in his dreams of the Deep Ones, and woke up in a frenzy of screaming. [HPL Innsmouth (online text) ]. Based on these references, the shoggoths appear to be allied with the Deep Ones.

Edward Pickman Derby visited the pit of the shoggoths, while he was possessed by Asenath Waite, only to awake there in terror when his own consciousness returned to his body. The pit is located down the six thousand steps, somewhere near Chesuncook, Maine. Later, Derby raved about the pit of the shoggoths when he felt Waite struggling to take over his brain again. [HPL Doorstep (online text)] Note that Waite was originally from Innsmouth.

Beneath the dreamlands, shoggoths frequent a foul lake in nether pits that are visited by the night-gaunts. This is somewhere near the peaks of Thok in the Great Abyss. The shoggoths at that lake are said to be puffed and in doubtful sleep. [HPL Fungi (online text) XX]

When the Old Ones (3) of K'n-yan explored the black abyss of N'kai, they found amorphous lumps of viscous black slime that took temporary shapes for various purposes. Though these beings were not referred to by name, their description certainly resembles shoggoths. These particular beings oozed along stone channels and worshipped onyx and basalt images of Tsathoggua. [HPL Mound (online text)]

Somewhere in Essex County, Massachusetts, Willie Osborne heard a buzzing voice in the forest saying E uh shub nigger ath ngaa ryla neb shoggoth. Cap Pritchett and Willie collided with a shoggoth that ate Pritchett and the wagon horse. Willie saw two people sacrificed to a shoggoth at an altar in the woods. The shoggoth was a "black, ropy, slimy jelly tree-thing." It made droning sounds and grew larger as it feasted. Willie believed there was a whole world under the hills where the shoggoths hide and wait to come out for sacrifices. [RB Notebook (online text)]

The shoggoths cannot harm anyone who carries a star-stone [AWD Curwen, Lurker, Sky].

Shoggoths can be summoned wherever men say the forbidden words [AWD Lurker, Whippoorwills].

Laban Shrewsbury told Nayland Colum of the shoggoths [AWD Keeper].

Georg Reuter Fischer heard voices that mentioned the proto-shoggoths. Albert Wilmarth referred to Danforth as "shoggoth-stampeded" [FL Terror2].

In a vision, Gordon Whitney saw the shoggoths, whose existence was so fervently dened in the Necronomicon [RFS Warder].

Aka: Them Ones.

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