#shoggoth

by Francesco de Stena

So. I knew Fat Face through reputation because it was the story that inspired Shoggoth Lords from the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG, shoggoths that can control their cellular makeup to look like humans. And the twist in Fat Face is that shoggoths have been hiding amongst humans in Los Angeles, and at the end of the story one of them eats the protagonist.

The tone of the story is grit. It’s grime. It’s sleaze and sexual violence and drug abuse on top of cosmic horror. It wants to be taken seriously so bad.

But here’s the thing about the shoggoths: they have a business.

They have two businesses they run out of an office building in downtown Los Angeles. A shoggoth is a primordial blob of eyes and mouths and flesh and hunger, and the idea of one of them at the LA Office of Finance registering an LLC is already. Great. Perfect. No notes.

The business is a front — and again, that’s great, a shoggoth went, “I want to do some nefarious deeds and not get caught by humans; I know, I’ll register a fake business that’ll be a front, and no human will ever suspect” — because the actual interior of this office is a room of pools of water made from black and ancient Antarctic rocks so that shoggoths can relax in their original blobby forms and eat stray animals that they’ve caught.

So it’s basically just. A place for shoggoths to unwind after a long day of pretending to be human. It’s portrayed as cosmic horror, but it’s shoggoth Cheers. Sometimes you wanna go where nobody knows your shape.

Here’s the kicker. The front of the business is a hydrotherapy clinic and stray pet rescue.

When they decided to make a front for their secret lair in an LA office building where they hang out in pools of water and eat stray animals — the front they prominently display and advertise — they decided to go with a hydrotherapy clinic and stray pet rescue.

That is Goosebumps shit. The rest of the story reads like a tone poem about the sleaze and violence of Los Angeles, and the main twist of the story reads like R.L. Stine.

But that’s not even the detail I can’t stop thinking about. Because the story reveals that this business — which again, is a front made by alien blobs to eat stray animals like an ALF-themed buffet and hang out in jacuzzi tubs of Antarctic rocks in an LA office — has a flyer.

You follow an arcane formula you pulled out of an ancient tome (or the collected essence of all human knowledge, with the aid of a scrying device) to perform a ritual that creates a squirming, amorphous mass of life. You feed it, you give it a little water, and it bubbles and burbles and grows and shrinks and changes shapes. Occasionally it tries to escape, or outgrows its container, and you have to brutally cut its tentacles off.

But then you mix the tentacles with your other ingredients, bake them and eat the results.

old ones

I’m going to level with you guys. I love the Elder Things. I love them so much. They are hands down one of my favorite alien races. They’re a real demonstration of how far you can take speculative biology and non-anthropomorphism in sci-fi. Someday, I hope to see more people producing Elder Things art, headcanons, and OCs.

But of course, it’s hard to feel qualified to depict sapient creatures so nonhuman, and perhaps that scares people off. That’s why I’m going to introduce some ideas for emotes and body language that you could incorporate into your stories; hopefully it can help us all relate to these beasties a little bit better.

Greeting

The most effusive form of greeting is extending one or more wings to wave at your target. Doing this less energetically can also constitute something like a salute. Either way, it tends to draw attention

Briefly turning all five eyestalks on someone is a good way to acknowledge that they have your attention

Hooking the crynoid arms together is a reflex retained from ocean dwelling, originally to stick with one another in strong currents like sea otters. It expresses both trust and the immediate intention to spend time with one another

Brushing the head cilia against one another is an intimate form of greeting that can mean something like a kiss, a hug, or a butt grab depending how it’s done. The etiquette varies between land and water (water dwellers are generally more dependent on physical touch in communication)

Eyestalk Manners

Having five unconnected eyes allows for the easy division of attention, but how you display your attention will obviously have social ramifications. As a rule of tentacle:

All five eyes means something has your undivided attention and can even constitute staring

Four eyes is slightly less intensive

Three eyes means you have the majority of your attention trained on something. In conversation, you generally point three eyes at the speaker and keep two on your environment

Two eyes means something is interesting but you are distracted from it

One eye is the edge of your attention. If you keep only one eye on someone in conversation, you’ll be accused of ignoring them

Arching one's eyestalk to look down on someone is condescending, the equivalent of a smirk

Happiness

Elder things at ease tend to uncurl. Their tentacles may hang loose and their wings may fold just slightly out of their ridges

They may also emit a low whistle from their vocal organs, signaling contentment. This is done subconsciously

Signifiers around happiness are less dramatically obvious than in human cultures, and Elder Things are likely to just inform each other outright that they are feeling well

Fear

We know from the murals in AtMoM that Elder Things recoil when afraid

Presumably they raise their eyestalks and tentacles and physically draw back

A scared Elder Thing may also begin extending its wings in preparation to fly away, or begin shuffling its foot stalks

Some may curl into a sort of fetal position by folding all of their extremities to their body

Anger/Aggression

Elder Thing culture doesn’t tend to make as much of a distinction between fear and anger except that with anger you feel confident enough to act

But being aggressive for personal gain is considered distinct and uses much of the same body language

An Elder Thing conveying “I will hurt you” makes itself big

It partially unfolds its wings, lifts its eyestalks, and extends the crinoid arms

It may emit a threatening whistle, and its mouths may open

When their mouths open, the threat isn’t to bite you like for a mammal. Rather, in the same way or anger expressions come from primate threat displays, an Elder Thing’s posturing comes from the actions of a sea creature preparing to overpower and eat a smaller creature

Sadness

Sad Elder Things are droopy

And they pull in on themselves

Elder Things aren’t prone to wallowing in pity like humans are, but they certainly know disappointment

And discouragement can make states of torpor highly appealing

Fugue

Elder Things have certain emotions not really translatable to the human psyche in as ready a way

One of the more prominent is something adjacent to dissociation

Elder Things are good at spending long periods of time doing something rote, where a mammal would struggle with boredom

It helps them focus on things like space travel or meditation and is probably related to their somewhat vegetative nature

This state is characterized by methodical, relaxed movements and dilation of the pupils

Sleepy

Elder Things sleep and otherwise go into torpor by tucking in all their extremities and folding the eyestalks against the neck

When they feel lethargic from exhaustion or extreme cold, they will begin to move towards this state, curling in on themselves

Their eyes close when sleeping, so their cilia perk up to keep them somewhat alert

Telepathy

Elder Things are advanced in the psionic arts, and may be able to send weak empathic signals that way, especially if they specialize in Shoggoth handling

This is not a primary mode of communication, however

Sending more coherent ideas requires technique and dedication far less convenient than simply talking

Shoggoths

While the Shoggoths take some of their expression and most of their speech from their creators, their body language is entirely different