YEKUBIAN

 

YEKUBIAN

"It was a gigantic, pale-grey worm or centipede, as large around as a man and twice as long, with a disc-like, apparently eyeless, cilia-fringed head bearing a purple central orifice. It glided on its rear pairs of legs, with its fore part raised vertically—the legs, or at least two pairs of them, serving as arms. Along its spinal ridge was a curious purple comb, and a fan-shaped tail of some grey membrane ended its grotesque bulk. There was a ring of flexible red spikes around its neck, and from the twistings of these came clicking, twanging sounds in measured, deliberate rhythms."

Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merrit, C.L. Moore, The Challenge From Beyond

VALUSIAN SERPENT PERSON

VALUSIAN SERPENT PERSON

"There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come, and one from an outer moon of Jupiter six million years in the past. Of earthly minds there were some from the winged, star-headed, half-vegetable race of palaeogean Antarctica; one from the reptile people of fabled Valusia; three from the furry pre-human Hyperborean worshippers of Tsathoggua; one from the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos; two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out Of Time

"It was treasured and placed in its curious box by the crinoid things of Antarctica, salvaged from their ruins by the serpent-men of Valusia, and peered at aeons later in Lemuria by the first human beings."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Haunter Of the Dark

"I can compare the sound to nothing more aptly than to the roar of some dread monster of the vanished saurian age, when primal horrors roamed the earth, and Valusia’s serpent-men laid the foundation-stones of evil magic."

H.P. Lovecraft & William Lumley, The Diary Of Alonzo Typer

"For as he watched, Tu's face became strangely dim and unreal; the features mingled and merged in a seemingly impossible manner, Then, like a fading mask of fog, the face suddenly vanished and in its stead gaped and leered a monstrous serpent's head!"

Robert E. Howard, The Shadow Kingdom

CREATURE OF THE MONOLITH

CREATURE OF THE MONOLITH

"I opened my mouth to scream my horror and loathing, but only a dry  rattle sounded; a huge monstrous toad-like thing squatted on the top of the monolith!"

"I saw its bloated, repulsive and unstable outline against the moonlight, and set in what would have been the face of a natural creature, its huge, blinking eyes which reflected all the lust, abysmal  greed,  obscene  cruelty  and  monstrous  evil  that  has  stalked the sons of men since their ancestors mowed blind and hairless  in  the  tree-tops.  In  those  grisly  eyes  were  mirrored  all   the  unholy  things  and  vile  secrets  that  sleep  in  the  cities under the sea, and that skulk from the light of day in the blackness of primordial caverns. And so that ghastly thing that the unhallowed ritual of cruelty and sadism and blood had evoked from  the  silence  of  the  hills,  leered  and  blinked  down  on  its  bestial  worshippers,  who  groveled  in  abhorrent  abasement  before it."

"Now  the  beast-masked  priest  lifted  the  bound  and  weakly  writhing girl in his brutish hands and held her up toward that horror on the monolith. And as that monstrosity sucked in its breath,  lustfully  and  slobberingly,  something  snapped  in  my  brain and I fell into a merciful faint."

Robert E. Howard, The Black Stone

GROTH-GOLKA

GROTH-GOLKA

"The thing that pursued the fleeing girl was neither man nor beast. In form it was like a bird, but such a bird as the rest of the world had not seen for many an age. Some twelve feet high it towered, and its evil head with the wicked red eyes and cruel curved beak was as big as a horse's head. The long arched neck was thicker than a man's thigh and the huge taloned feet could have gripped the fleeing woman as an eagle grips a sparrow."

"This much Turlogh saw in one glance as he sprang between the monster and its prey who sank down with a cry on the beach. It loomed above him like a mountain of death and the evil beak darted down, denting the shield he raised and staggering him with the impact. At the same instant he struck, but the keen ax sank harmlessly into a cushioning 

mass of spiky feathers."

"The mighty blade sheared through one of the tree-like legs below the knee, and with an abhorrent screech, the monster sank on its side, flapping its short heavy wings wildly. Turlogh drove the back-spike of his ax between the glaring red eyes and the gigantic bird kicked convulsively and lay still."

"And we shall see if the god Gol-goroth shall stand against the sword that cut Groth-golka's leg from under him. Now hew the head from this carcass that the people may know you have overcome the bird-god."

Robert E. Howard, The Gods of Bal-Sagoth

"I stared at the weird, stylized profile figure of a monstrous thing like a hideous bird with weird staring eyes and gaping beak filled with fangs. There was a stark ugliness to the depiction that was quite unsettling.

"I looked up at him, a mute question in my eyes.
'Groth-golka,' he breathed."

"The moon was hidden by black, flapping shapes that circled and swooped like enormous fishing-birds, darting down to the altars to pluck and tear at the wriggling bodies bound there...and one of the huge, queerly deformed-looking bird-things emerged into the moonlight, and I stared with unbelieving horror at its hulking, horribly quasi-avian form, clothed with scales not feathers...one glimpse of the repulsive thing with its one leg and glaring Cyclopean eye and hideous, hooked, fang-lined beak-"
Lin Carter, The Fishers From the Outside

"It resembles a tremendous bird with one foot and one eye, and dwells under the mountain Antarktos, somewhere near the South Pole."
Daniel Harms, The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

*There are some contradictory descriptions of Groth-Golka. Specifically, how many eyes and legs it has. I think this was originally a confusion with Howard's quote about the man that "cut the leg from under him". It appears that in Howard's story Groth-Golka had two legs and Turlogh cut off ONE of them. Lin Carter also added to the confusion by describing the servitors of Groth-Golka (the Fishers From the Outside) as being one legged. While it does seem that Howard intending Groth-Golka to have two legs, I think one leg looks way stranger and more alien, so I kept that aspect.

QUEEN TARAMIS AND SALOME THE WITCH by KRISTIN SCHOLZ

QUEEN TARAMIS AND SALOME THE WITCH
'You never had a sister?' came the sweet, poisonously mocking voice. 'Never a twin sister whose flesh was as soft as yours to caress or hurt?'

'Why, once I had a sister,' answered Taramis, still convinced that she was in the grip of some sort of nightmare. 'But she died.'

"The beautiful face in the disk was convulsed with the aspect of a fury; so hellish became its expression that Taramis, cowering back, half expected to see snaky locks writhe hissing about the ivory brow."

'Aye!' Salome's laughter was dagger-edged with hate. 'The curse of the kings of Khauran! They tell how the first queen of our line had traffic with a fiend of darkness and bore him a daughter who lives in foul legendry to this day. And thereafter in each century a girl baby was born into the Askhaurian dynasty, with a scarlet half-moon between her breasts, that signified her destiny.

Taramis was still beautiful, in spite of her rags and the imprisonment and abuse of seven weary months. She did not reply to her sister's taunts, but bent her head as one grown accustomed to mockery."

'I knew it!' It was a fierce, vibrant whisper, scarcely audible. 'She lives! Oh, Krallides, your martyrdom was not in vain! They have her locked in that dungeon! Oh, Ishtar, if you love true men, aid me now!'"

Robert E. Howard, A Witch Shall Be Born

Illustration by Kristin Scholz

CONAN by CHRISTOPHER BURDETT

CONAN THE CIMMERIAN
"Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."

Robert E. Howard, The Phoenix On the Sword

"Knots and bunches of muscle started out of the massive arms, and Conan beat his head forward and spat savagely at Constantius's face."

"Naked but for a loin-cloth, the man was almost a giant in stature, and his muscles stood out in thick corded ridges on limbs and body, which the sun had long ago burned brown. The perspiration of agony beaded his face and his mighty breast, but from under the tangled black mane that fell over his low, broad forehead, his blue eyes blazed with an unquenched fire."

Robert E. Howard, A Witch Shall Be Born

Illustration by Christopher Burdett

GOD OF YAKUB

GOD OF YAKUB

"A strange structure rose in the middle of the rainbow-hued floor, tier on tier, each of a separate, vivid color. The ultimate tier was a purple cone, from the apex of which a blue smoky mist drifted upward to a sphere that poised in mid-air—a sphere that shone like translucent ivory."

      "This, the deep-grooved memories of Tothe told Campbell, was the god of Yekub, though why the people of Yekub feared and worshipped it had been forgotten a million years. A worm-priest stood between him and the altar which no hand of flesh had ever touched."

H.P. Lovecraft, C.L. Moore, A. Merritt,
Robert E.Howard, & Frank Belknap Long, The Challenge From Beyond

YAKUBIAN

YAKUBIAN

"It was a gigantic, pale-grey worm or centipede, as large around as a man and twice as long, with a disc-like, apparently eyeless, cilia-fringed head bearing a purple central orifice. It glided on its rear pairs of legs, with its fore part raised vertically—the legs, or at least two pairs of them, serving as arms. Along its spinal ridge was a curious purple comb, and a fan-shaped tail of some grey membrane ended its grotesque bulk. There was a ring of flexible red spikes around its neck, and from the twistings of these came clicking, twanging sounds in measured, deliberate rhythms."
Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merrit, C.L. Moore,
The Challenge From Beyond

VALUSIAN SERPENT PERSON

VALUSIAN SERPENT PERSON

"There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come, and one from an outer moon of Jupiter six million years in the past. Of earthly minds there were some from the winged, star-headed, half-vegetable race of palaeogean Antarctica; one from the reptile people of fabled Valusia; three from the furry pre-human Hyperborean worshippers of Tsathoggua; one from the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos; two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out Of Time

"It was treasured and placed in its curious box by the crinoid things of Antarctica, salvaged from their ruins by the serpent-men of Valusia, and peered at aeons later in Lemuria by the first human beings."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Haunter Of the Dark

"I can compare the sound to nothing more aptly than to the roar of some dread monster of the vanished saurian age, when primal horrors roamed the earth, and Valusia’s serpent-men laid the foundation-stones of evil magic."
H.P. Lovecraft & William Lumley, The Diary Of Alonzo Typer

"For as he watched, Tu's face became strangely dim and unreal; the features mingled and merged in a seemingly impossible manner, Then, like a fading mask of fog, the face suddenly vanished and in its stead gaped and leered a monstrous serpent's head!"
Robert E. Howard, The Shadow Kingdom