VOONITH

VOONITH

"And all through the night a voonith howled distantly from the shore of some hidden pool, but Carter felt no fear of that amphibious terror, since he had been told with certainty that not one of them dares even approach the slope of Ngranek."

H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath
Today we have an obscure monster from a very well known Lovecraft story. Dream-Quest has some of HPLs best monsters in it. Dholes, gugs, ghast, shantaks, moon-beasts! But this guy, the voonith, is literally only mentioned once. No physical description is given except that it's amphibious, it howls and is capable of locomotion.



I kept my original design, somewhere in between a leech and a salamander, and again just tightened the drawing and color.

I've had a long fascination with leeches for a very long time. I've actually encountered them a few times as well. While canoeing in the Pine Barrens a quarter inch leech latched onto the back of my knee. Not a big deal. However, when I was in Thailand I had at least 5-7 one inch leeches latch onto me in one day. We were in Khao Sok National Park during  the end of the rainy season and the hiking trails looked like they were out of focus. There were so many leeches on the trails, waving their sucker-ends in the air, that the edges of the path looked blurry!  

This clip is me trying to burn, then flick one of the leeches off my friend's leg. You can see a big of blood on his ankle where we had just removed one. Despite all this, I really don't have a phobia of them, just a fascination. Ticks, I definitely have a phobia of ticks. Maybe because they actually burrow into your body, whereas leeches just give you an intense hickey.