Shub-Niggurath

Overview

In the Necronomicon and in whispers among rural enclaves that the census does not reach, one name returns again and again: Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. She, or it, for gender among such beings is a courtesy, is fertility turned to horror, the proliferation of life that ought never to have been, the dark answer to every prayer for abundance.

Where the woods grow thick and the moon is hidden, there her cults gather. They leave the towns behind. They breed. They offer what the goat demands.

Description

The Black Goat itself is rarely described by survivors; those who see it clearly do not return to write reports. More often the archive documents its offspring, the Dark Young, towering pillar-like things with writhing trunks and hoofed, rubbery feet, exuding a foetid green ichor that burns where it falls. They walk the forest at night. They leave hoofprints too large for any deer.

In stone and wood, cultists carve a symbol: a goat's head within an inverted triangle, sometimes adorned with horns that curve into impossible geometry. The smell of the rites, moss, blood, and something sweetly animal, can be detected by trained dogs a mile from a consecrated grove.

Historical Record

References span continents. The Hyperborean archives mention sacrifices beneath black cedars. Medieval witch-trials, when read with the correct key, describe sabbaths that were not Satan's but older. In 1928, the Dunwich horror bore Shub-Niggurath's influence in its bloodline; in 1935, the discovery of a pre-human idol on Ponape linked the entity to civilizations that died before Atlantis rose.

The thousand young are not metaphor. The archive believes they are literal, and that many have yet to hatch.

Archive Notes

Rural field teams should treat unexplained livestock disappearances and forest clearings ringed with stones as possible cult activity. Do not enter a grove where all birdsong has ceased. The formula 'Iä! Shub-Niggurath!' is not to be pronounced aloud during interviews; several recorders have reported auditory hallucinations lasting weeks.