YOCHLOL

 

YOCHLOL

A yochlol must materialize to do physical damage. The form taken can be an amorphous column with 8 pseudopods, the form of a giant spider, or that of a beautiful human or elf. In humanoid form, a yochlol can use its psionic abilities as if it were a 6th-level fighter. In spider form, it conforms in all but armor class and psionics to the specifications of a giant spider. In its natural amorphous form, it can use psionics or attack with its 8 pseudopods, 1 blow from which does 5-8 points of damage, as the strength of a yochlol is effectively equal to 18/50.
Gary Gygax, Monster Manual II

The Yochlol appears to be another random slime monster that are common in D&D but I think there's something more to this. It seems like a faux-shoggoth and it's true that TSR ran into copyright trouble with Lovecraft's monsters: 

"For the first 1980 printing, TSR obtained permission from Arkham House, which claimed to hold the copyrights on a number of works by H. P. Lovecraft, for inclusion of characters from the Cthulhu Mythos. However, Arkham House had already licensed the Cthulhu property to the game company Chaosium.  When Chaosium threatened legal action, the first printing was halted and the two companies agreed on a compromise: TSR could continue to use the material but must provide a credit to Chaosium to do so. TSR added the credit for the second printing of the book." 

Erol Otus' Shoggoth illustration from Deities & Demigods and
Jim Holloway's original yochlol illustration from Monster Manual II

The Mythos section was deleted altogether because TSR felt that it shouldn't be making such direct reference to it's competitors in one of it's own books. It seems likely this is why we get so many formless blobs that aren't shoggoths (gibbering mouthers, lemures, gelatinous cubes)....and the yochlol. But this creature seemed more specific in that it can transform from a gas to a beautiful female dark elf to, it's true form, a pillar of slime with tentacles and a massive eye. A few years ago, Scott Nicolay and I covered Thorp McClusky's weird story The Crawling Horror for our series Stories From the Borderland. In that, a monstrous blob takes the form of the things in comes in contact with; a woman, a rat and a dog. 


Illustrations of The Crawling Horror by Virgil Finlay and an uncredited artist.

I chose to illustrate the yochlol in this shape because of the line "
In its natural amorphous form." I also didn't want to stray too far from the wild phallic nature of Holloway's original drawing!

Also Andrew Reichart pointed out the first appearance of the yochlol was in the 1980 module Queen Of the Demonweb Pits with an illustration by Jim Rolsof.