Hunting Horror

Overview

Nyarlathotep has many messengers. The hunting horrors are among the least subtle: great black shapes, elongated and half-ribbon, half-serpent, that ride the wind between worlds and descend upon scholars, witches, and dreamers who have touched truths reserved for the Outer Gods. They are not the Byakhee, though both serve masters of the mythos; they are not nightgaunts, though both snatch from the air. They are the Crawling Chaos's hounds, and their chase ends only when the prey is dead or mad or delivered to whatever court Nyarlathotep currently favours.

The archive assigns hunting horror activity to every case in which a researcher disappeared after studying non-Euclidean mathematics, after contact with the Witch House legacy, or after public denial of powers that answered the denial.

Description

Witnesses describe a living strip of night, rubbery, banded with membranes that may be wings or may be something worse, howling with a voice that is partly wind and partly human scream. The head, if it can be called a head, is a knot of tentacles or feelers that taste the air for fear. They move faster than aircraft of the 1930s and may traverse the thin boundary above the atmosphere, for Gilman's final moments saw shapes that belonged to no zoology of Earth.

They do not land often. When they do, they leave scorch marks and a smell of ozone and old blood. They can squeeze through angles in space when the mathematics allows, making them cousins in method, if not in origin, to the hounds of Tindalos, though the archive warns against collapsing distinct threats into one comfortable category.

Historical Record

Walter Gilman of Miskatonic, lodging in the Witch House on Arkham's High Street, saw the hunting horrors in waking and sleeping alike as his studies of interstellar travel and of Keziah Mason's legacy deepened. The house is demolished now; the equations remain. Other students have followed Gilman into obsession, and the sky above the University has been reported black and writhing on nights of certain alignments.

Nyarlathotep's cults invoke the horrors deliberately in some rites, calling them to winnow the faithful from the unworthy. The archive has recovered African and Asian accounts of 'sky serpents' that predate modern mythos collation, suggesting the horrors are older than Gilman's tragedy and younger than the stars.

Archive Notes

Personnel studying non-Euclidean mathematics must work in grounded rooms with rounded vaulting and must not study alone after midnight. Witch House materials remain sealed. If a black ribbon is seen against the moon, cease all outdoor movement and extinguish lights; the horrors are drawn to witness fear. Cross-reference with Nyarlathotep and Haunter files. Survival is possible but has never been documented without loss of sanity or of years.