Enemies

The Crawling Canopy is often mistaken at first for landscape, a fallen thicket, a clutch of roots dragged loose by flood or wind. Only when it stirs does its true nature reveal itself, lifting itself upon many limbs and advancing with the haste of beasts. It is kin to the Formless Spawn, yet more deliberate, filled with malevolent intent. Those seized by it are not torn apart. Instead, the creature collapses its horrid mass upon them, seeping a dark ichor drawn from its depths into flesh and soil alike. This substance marks the victim, drawing the notice and hostility of other beings as blood draws flies. We believe that the Crawling Canopy aims not to kill, but to isolate, to ensure that the lone remain alone, until the wilderness finishes what it began.

The Deep Ones are amphibious beings of a most ancient stock, haunting the places where the sea encroaches upon the lands of men. In form they are roughly humanoid, with slick, scaled hides and staring eyes ill-suited to daylight. Their movements are awkward but relentless, driven by a strength out of all proportion to their shape. The forbidden chronicles speak of them as a race older than mankind, bound to the deep places of the world, their cities raised where the light of the sun has never shone. They are said to revere powers that dwell in the abyss, and to answer ancient summons carried by tide and current. When encountered near the shore, they show little hesitation or curiosity, but attack with fell wrath, as though the presence of surface-dwellers were an affront to all they hold sacred.

The Faceless One has no true shape. At rest, it is a hideous sight: an amorphous mass of pale, worm-like bodies, endlessly knotting and unknotting themselves as though rehearsing other forms. Through methods unknown, it can arrange this mass into a perfect if soulless imitation of a human being, reproducing even small, familiar gestures with unsettling accuracy. The Faceless One does not attack its prey immediately. It may walk among an expedition, observing, learning, infiltrating. Our guides say the Faceless One is not meant to overpower groups, but to dissolve the trust within them, setting man against man until it is the suspicion itself that dooms them. When it finally decides to strike, it reveals itself, shrugging off its borrowed form and attacking with sudden fury. Those who remain too long in the forest risk being swarmed by these creatures. In such encounters, escape is the only hope.

Flesh Shambler

Otherworldly Horrors

The Flesh Shambler is a crude thing, a mass of muscle and appetite given form by a cruel maker. Though vast in bulk, it slips between adjacent dimensions with ease, allowing it to emerge impossibly close, stepping from behind a tree that was empty a moment before, or unfolding from a space that should be capable of containing it. Its body reshapes itself as it moves, having no true plan shaped by Nature or God. Failed shapes are quickly discarded for ones better suited to pursuit. The Flesh Shambler is territorial, and will strike with blunt, overwhelming force, crushing and tearing with whatever cursed anatomy it currently possesses.

The Formless Spawn is recorded in the manuscripts with evident reluctance, for it resists all attempts at proper description. It is not a creature in the common sense, but an unholy accumulation of substance. Flesh without plan, life without order, a profane chaos rolling and reshaping itself as though the forest had learned to move in a single, abhorrent will. No sign of reason or malice has been observed in it, yet neither does it sleep or decay. Weapons and flame pass through it with little consequence. Scholars of the occult believe such beings to be failures of diabolist rituals, matter animated without the guiding principle of mind.

Haunter of the Dark

Otherworldly Horrors

“A bat-like entity lurks in the shadows”

Hound of Tindalos

Otherworldly Horrors

If certain scholars are to be believed, the Hound of Tindalos is not native to the world of men, but intrudes upon it through those angles and intersections which defy the comforting laws of proper geometry. Its coming is said to resemble a pressure upon the mind rather than a sound upon the air, as if space itself had grown restless. Though it assumes the rough shape of a four-legged beast, its true form can never be perceived. It is said that the Hound is drawn to objects long removed from their proper time and place: treasures unearthed, relics disturbed, or wealth taken in defiance of history. When it reveals itself, it does not abide for long. The creature seizes what has been displaced and withdraws at once, retreating along angles that cannot be followed.

Mi-Go

Otherworldly Horrors

Though most speak of them as demons, there are scholars who claim the Mi-Go are in truth beings not native to this world. They are most often described as having a fungal nature, yet also bearing membranous wings, crustaceous limbs, and a pliant, half-organic form ill-suited to any earthly taxonomy. They are adept at manifesting where no path should allow, appearing suddenly as if drawn through unseen dimensions. When they hunt, the Mi-Go do so with chilling deliberation. They favor isolation and approach from behind, fastening themselves upon their victims and whispering their sinister will. Through psychic means, they may bend thought and intention alike. Those so taken are compelled to act against their own desires. The older texts speak of the Mi-Go as harvesters of knowledge rather than flesh, and the philosophers claim that to the Mi-Go, mankind is neither enemy nor equal, but a resource, briefly animated matter from which thought may be extracted and repurposed.

Like bark bent into human form, the legends name it Ulth-Sha’korr, “Walker Between Roots” and warn that it appears only after the forest has been addressed improperly: a tree cut without offering, a stone overturned that should have remained dreaming. Other, darker legends say its purpose is mere cruelty. Some believe it is the deliberate construct of some arcane science of the underworld, ancient tree-matter braided with living organs, its intelligence entering and withdrawing from the body in intervals governed by unknown principles. When it emerges, a single explorer is seized and removed, deposited far away and utterly alone. The Prowler cannot be killed. When damaged sufficiently, it stiffens, calcifies, and resumes the posture of an ordinary tree. There it waits, until the forest is again disturbed and the lesson must be repeated — or until there is another opportunity to toy with mortals.

“A giant creature has been spotted crawling through the forest”

“Those who dwell in the underworld have begun to emerge”

Our guides tell us that the TueTue is a sorcerer transformed into a bird, its nocturnal cry an omen of sickness, misfortune, or death, but it is hard to be certain that the creature we have seen is truly the being of their myths. Only one thing is certain: the creature’s scream echoes through the forest, stirring our foes. For this reason, the TueTue must be avoided rather than confronted. If you draw the TueTue’s attention, a demoniac mist will surround you. The only way to dispel it is to kill the creature.

The Y'm-bhi appear to be not a people, but a class of being, mortals reshaped by ancient methods far beyond our understanding. Many are former explorers, our comrades and countrymen, their bodies reclaimed after death and reassembled into obedient forms. Flesh is stitched and repurposed, sometimes capriciously, producing laborers and guards that are human only in form. What remains of the soul or the mind is but a fragment: a sliver of human speech, a brief hesitation when ordered to strike. These moments pass quickly. If only they could find eternal rest, rather than this mockery of eternal life, made crueler still by the memory of having once been human!