Cthughiim (Mythos Future)

Cthughiim
No. Enc.: 1d4
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (innate ability to soar through empty space) 
Armor Class: 1 (mostly energy)
Hit Dice: 12
Attack(s): 1 (Hard Radiation)
Damage: 6d6
Save: L12
Morale: n/a


Mutations: Energy Ray (Hard Radiation), Control Light Waves, Psionic Flight (interstellar), Plane Shift, Precognition, Reflective epidermis (Immune to lasers and most other light-based energy weapons), Vampiric Field.


Energetic Body: Cthughiim are made up primarily of electromagnetic fields and hard radiation, their former fleshy selves have been utterly consumed and destroyed over the course of their sanity-shattering transmigration to this new form.

---

Blazing, mocking and caught-up within a holocaust of ecstasy these formerly human beings are brutal, insane and murderous beyond belief. The Cthughiim are mysterious, energetic entities who soar through the vast gulfs of space seeking victims to burn and destroy in their staggeringly inestimable rages. Terrifying beings, the Cthughiim flame and flash through space like rogue stars on a rampage. These beings have lain waste to numerous worlds and have no compunction in destroying any who dare to attempt to summon or bind them--most protective measures are completely ineffectual at blocking the massive outpouring of hard radiation that continually streams off of these beings. They truly are like unto grim mockeries of the stars themselves and they are not something to trifle with by any means.


When attacking, the Cthughiim go all out, hold nothing in reserve, and then take off for the depths of space laughing and mocking their victims in a way that is more felt than actually heard, often stirring these victims into a horrific, but often impotent rage of their own. These things are intense. They are literally burning themselves out as they rage against the dying of the light, screaming their wild frenzies across the illimitable void until at last, finally, they are consumed, used-up and fade away into a final, horrible oblivion.


There are rumors that there might be those among the Cthughiim who wield even greater mental mutations, psychic powers, or even spell-casting abilities.

Mythos Source: The Cthughiim were inspired by certain aspects of the classic short story Beyond the Wall of Sleep by H. P. Lovecraft, first published in 1919 and inspired at least in part by something HPL read in a newspaper. The nova mentioned in this tale is believed to be GK Persei which was first noticed by astronomers in 1901. The passage: "... But most of all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order to reach it...he would soar through abysses of emptiness 'burning' every obstacle that stood in his way..." is our primary point of departure in developing this entity. 


Also there are the famous lines from The Call of Cthulhu (1926) "The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."

Mutant Future Core Rules are available for free from Goblinoid Games.

You can also buy the revised edition in Softcover or Hardcover directly from Goblinoid Games.

You might also consider looking at Realms of Crawling Chaos while you're there...

You might also take a look at Mythos Future...

Brain-Case Contents (Random Table/Cthulhoid Games)

"You see there are four different sorts of beings presented in those cylinders up there. Three humans, six fungoid beings who can’t navigate space corporeally, two beings from Neptune (God! if you could see the body this type has on its own planet!), and the rest entities from the central caverns of an especially interesting dark star beyond the galaxy."

H.P. Lovecraft,

The Whisperer In Darkness

Whose Brain Is In the Brain-Case? (D30)

1. The brain contained inside this case is in fact a hyperfolded trapezohedron that serves as the locus for a type of meta-temporal consciousness that does not recognize your silly monkey-babble as anything even remotely approaching language. It only communicates by way of high-order mathematics. The interface unit is damaged. Maybe it can be repaired. If you're lucky, you might get to ask it 1d4 questions before the unit fries once and for all.
2. A singularly Terrible Old Man by nature reserved, an ancient sea-captain who has witnessed scores of things much beyond anything he knew or could describe from the far-off days of his unremembered youth. Once he had the spell-casting capabilities of a 12th level magic-user, now he barely remembers how to cast Summon Spectral Servitors.
3. The sole survivor of an undocumented, clandestine expedition to a poorly documented location in Antarctica from which disturbing reports had been received through mysterious sources. This mission was part of Operation High Jump under the command of Admiral Byrd. This poor sap still thinks it's 1947...
4. A Philosophic Mold infests the interior of this brain-case. It is deep in contemplation and does not wish to be disturbed.
5. This is the slightly atrophied brain of a somber child who spent most of their time pondering over curious tomes and outre manuscripts that they discovered in their families' manse. The poor child desperately wants to go for a walk through the green woods of their ancestral estates and will break down into telepathically projected sobs after 1d4 minutes of being awakened.
6. A dolphin's brain. It likes to tell dirty jokes and download porn, but hasn't had access to the outside for close to three hundred years.
7. Over six hundred years old and as spiteful and vengeance-obsessed as any droog out on a Saturday night, Charles spent a great deal of time imprisoned within his ancestral crypts before being 'liberated' by the descendant of one of his former rivals. The descendant sold Charles's brain to the Mi-Go for approximately the price of a chicken, just to add insult to injury. He can only remain coherent if he makes a Save during each interaction--he is REALLY easy to set-off. Charles is a 14th level magic-user and has a great deal of expertise in alchemy, including the knowledge of how to create an elixir that can prolong life...at the cost of one's sanity and possibly soul.
8. A tremendously compressed mass of fungal-based synaptic tissues fills this brain-case near to bursting. The incredible pressures exerted upon it for over several thousands of years have rendered the frenetically writhing fungi-brain nearly insensate. Mishandling this brain-case has a base 40% chance to cause the seals to rupture, spraying a concentrated cloud of fungal matter and spores across a 60' radius. It is not at all unlike Yellow Mold...
9. This brain-case contains a wretched excuse for a brain extracted from a deranged cave-man abducted from a prototype-colony whose records have all been lost. This psychopath was used to drive/command a war-machine. That's about all they're really good for, unless you can somehow re-educate them.
10. This red-sealed canister contains the surgically remediated criminal cerebral cortex of a fungal being whose species attempted to oppose and resist their integration into the Mi-Go collective. This being is telepathic, and hell-bent on taking revenge upon the Mi-Go...even if it means allying itself with mammals or worse.
11. Cold, hard, black and almost beetle-like in its armored shell, this Tcho-Tchoid brain patiently sleeps. 
12. This brain shows signs of having been exposed to intense heat, but was recovered and fitted with fungal synaptic plugs and bundles enabling it to remain somewhat functional. Unfortunately, the mind of this person remains severely damaged and they seem to be suffering from the delusion that they might in fact be descended from some sort of human-ape cross-breeding effort on the part of one of their close ancestors.There is no evidence to support this theory, but likewise, until someone tests the genetics (assuming a clean non-fungally-contaminated sample can be taken), there is also no way to refute the claim either. The curiosity-value of this brain might make it a good candidate for possible auctioning off at a star-port.
13. This brain-case contains a fine grayish and granular salt-like powder. The prisoner finally remembered how to reduce someone to their essential saltes.
14. The brain inside this case is that of an unknown and forgotten Greek philosopher from around the 2nd Century B.C. The interface module is only partly able to translate their continual mumbling. They are always referring to a strange green meadow no one else has ever seen or heard of before.
15. This cannister contains a potent dreamer whose brain is now semi-translucent and no longer entirely real or material. A strange light seems to shimmer through the gellid mass, as though it were somehow being lit from within. They remain unresponsive, caught-up in their great dreaming.
16. A collection of interpenetrating cubes of some strange metallic substance veined with tiny hair-like threads of silvery material that throb slightly. This thing was an explorer of strange new worlds until it ran afoul of the Mi-Go who were engaging in stripping away the upper atmosphere of the gas giant this being had only just discovered and claimed for their people.
17. The lumpy, oyster-like mass inside this canister emits a bizarre, idiotic piping or whistling noise. If they are allowed to continue for more than 5 minutes at a stretch, treat it as a form of Summon Monster spell.
18. There is a small monolith ensconced within this brain-case. It is slick, glossy and featureless.
19. A cat's brain plugged into a series of harsh-looking electrodes. It is hungry, but has no mouth with which to eat.
20. The undead brain of a ghoul wizard who is patiently biding his time.
21. This brain-case holds the flabby brain of a Deep One, but unless one possesses some sort of special means to identify it as such, it appears pretty much like any other slightly degenerate humanoid brain-matter.
22. A calm, cool and collected individual has found himself in something of a predicament vis a vis his brain has been extracted and placed within a machine that keeps it alive and apparently is intended to make use of it for some purpose that remains unexplained so far. He would very much like to return to his ship but has serious reservations about the ability of the medical staff onboard to be able to do much to help him reintegrate with his former body. This being is eminently reasonable and quite logical. Perhaps some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement might be arranged?
23. The occupant of this cylinder is disoriented and communicates with a thick hill-folk accent. They complain of a hot needle sticking into their brain and are remarkably unhelpful to anyone attempting to help them or to release them.
24. This brain seems to be that of a strangely modified pig. It is very intelligent, but not at all troubled with human concepts of morality or much of anything else. It is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and is very skilled in the manipulation and command of various surrogate constructs.
25. A naughty Mi-Go has had their brain safely tucked away into this canister so it would no longer pollute the gene-pool with its deviant genes and alien, almost atavistic ways.
26. The brain of an ape has been plugged into this cylinder. It claims to have been a general. No one believes it.
27. Throbbing and squirming even as you watch, this brain is clearly something more than just a lump of thinking matter. A clear greenish fluid surrounds it and it is not alive according to any sensor or spell. If released, this reanimated brain will do everything it can to acquire a fresh body and to resume its ground-breaking work in medical science.
28. This canister was damaged, the seals are broken and the fluid has leaked out, leaving behind a dessicated brain that might be recoverable as a sort of mummified thing.
29. This cylinder houses the damaged brain of a K'n-man; healing this brain will allow them to use their psychic abilities to regenerate a new body or to attempt to dominate one of the weaker-willed members of whatever group attempts to release or communicate with her. This being has serious ambitions that remain completely undimmed by their captivity and even though their world has undoubtedly been destroyed (there were at least a dozen of the hollow orb arks sent out from Vhoorl containing K'n-men...).
30. A Polypous Mass. Unfortunately it is a sample from the core brain-stem of a Polypous Invasion Mass...

Source: H. P. Lovecraft's classic short story from 1930, The Whisperer in Darkness is the obvious well-spring of dark inspiration for this particular table, but it owes as much to the odd group-collaboration 'The Challenge From Beyond.' One could easily expand upon this table by taking a look at 'The Horror at Red Hook,' which features quite a procession of horrors to draw upon, and possibly even Lovecraft's 'Through the Gates of the Silver Key,' and any number of his other tales...and then you could start looking at Clark Ashton Smith, etc. and really pile-on the disembodied brains. This table is dedicated to Albert R., creator of Terminal Space, who brought up the matter of what might be in some of those other Brain Cases when we were outlining our 'The Great Brain Case Escape' Adventure.

Black Seas of Infinity (Encounter Table/Terminal Space)

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

H.P. Lovecraft

Mythos-Style Interstellar Encounters

1. Mi-Go flotilla enroute to a mining colony world with the intent to restore order and productivity. (-4 on reaction roll. The Mi-go are looking for a few good, tractable slaves to add to the about to be depleted population of their soon to be pacified colonies.)
2. Polyp-Ship tumbling out of control. The central AI-ganglia have been laser-pithed by a Tcho-Tchoid raiding party that have quickly extracted certain undisclosed items before departing the now ruined polyp vessel in almost unseemly haste. (30% chance of a doomsday device counting down on the bridge of the ship.)
3. Moon Beasts coasting along beneath the surface of a frozen trans-solar moonlet. They are caught-up in their massively multiplayer dreams and won't immediately notice intruders or visitors, so long as they are discrete and non-damaging. Interfering in the games will cause squads of shiny metal constructs to mobilize in defense of the moonlet. They may also have more than one large-scale Oneiric Lens Array located within one or more of the squat gray domes that are just barely covered by the gritty ochre-streaked ice of the outer crust.
4. Roll once on the Space Ship Sized Monsters Table.
5. A flock of Primordials on a trajectory for some near-by solar system where they probably have incredibly ancient ruins lying around the place, unless the Shoggoths or other forces have erased them or co-opted the site(s) for their own ends. (20% chance to extrapolate the flocks previous location. That system might be worth taking a look at, especially since the Primordials have left it for now.)
6. Mega-Shoggoth in force-sphere accelerating to transluminal speed. (base 10% to catch its attention as it passes by.)
7. (1d4) Yaddithian Light Envelopes. They make no attempt to communicate. Who is inside?
8. Vegetusian Saucer only recently released from a protracted period of unplanned burial underneath deep ice on some frozen back-water planet. They are lost. Their systems are crashing and they may crash again, if they're lucky enough to survive that long.
9. Roll twice on the Ship Sized Monsters Table. The two entities are most likely caught-up in mutual hostilities.
10. (1d4) Fungal Battlecruisers (TS p. 49) float forlorn and mangled, surrounded by a massive cloud of outgassing atmosphere and spores. The core cerebropods are defunct or too severely damaged to control any of the sub-systems. (5D20) Brain Cases are scattered in the immediate vicinity, as are hundreds of the cell-scrambled corpses of Mi-go infantry and marines. (Mi-go will arrive to investigate the situation within 1d4 hours).
11. Black comet surrounded by a thick haze of green ice, dust and other particulates. Sunk deep into the core of this icy mass is a hidden colony of Yarakian-descended abhuman degenerates who worship the Gray Flame drive-core of a Thyophian Saucer that has been slowly corrupting their bloodlines for over a thousand years of interplanetary isolation.
12. Nomad Ship (TS p. 48) carrying a poorly secured triad of 'talking monoliths' recovered from an Abbithian Tesseract-ship. (Monoliths take over the Nomad's internal systems within 2d4 hours.)
13. Serpent People sleeper-ship. Mostly intact.
14. Drifting wreckage of a Pnakotian vessel with a faulty Zin drive that is still wildly unpredictable and unstable. (30% per hour of either a Ghast 'Black Suit' encounter, or a Dreamstate Overbleed.)
15. An ancient hollow-asteroid Nug-Torch Drive colonization ship of the Vhoorli-aligned K'n enroute to a far-distant destination with an army of Lomarian, Voormi, and Gyaa Yoth'n troops in criogenic suspension. The decadent faction won out over their rivals more than a thousand years ago only to have the outer hull of the command-section rupture due to sabotage. No one is left to control the ship, nor to awaken the sleepers.
16. Cthughiim Flameship roaring along through deep space, leaving a caustic, cinder-strewn trail of smoke in its wake. (50% chance they attack upon detecting another ship).
17. Coral-bound domes just from the lumpy mass of a clumsily-reshaped clump of solar-mirror-welded asteroidal debris blown-out to form a lop-sided bubble-shell and filled with sea water. This is a Deep One ship, and a very old one. (20% chance of a slow leak and potentially disastrous ice formations around the drive systems. They may require assistance or rescue...)
18. A vast, writhing mass of pseudopods and shimmering bubbles that houses a non-Euclidian mega-arcology made-up of thousands of disparate closed-ecologies, some of which are recognizable. (40% chance per hour of someone aboard this living cloud of a macro-ship attempting to make contact.)
19. A Broken World driven out of its orbit and cast adrift through interstellar space.
20. Military Transport (TS, p. 47) from one of the petty empires operating off of one of the few remaining human-dominated worlds along the rim.

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Cthonosphere T-shirt

Cthonosphere T-Shirt by hereticwerks

Here's a sample of the kind of stuff we've been working on lately.

The Cthonosphere will eventually play an important role in the on-going series Chernobyl Sunrise over at Mythos Future.

Lovecraftian Character Traits I (Random Table/Cthulhoid Games)

Lovecraftian Character Traits I (D30)

1. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life. (Multiply starting money by 10.)
2. Temperamentally unfitted for formal studies or social recreations. (Shift 1 point from Wisdom and/or 1 point Charisma to Intelligence.)
3. Former inmate of an asylum, sanitarium, or rest home. (All reaction rolls at -2, but you're not sure why...)
4. Spent youth and early adolescence wallowing in ancient and little known books. (Gain Obscure/Esoteric Trivia as a bonus skill.)
5. Ancestral home was destroyed by a fire started during a midnight storm. (-1 on all Saves versus electrical/fire damage.)
6. Related, distantly, to a great family of a distant land who have such a notorious, sinister reputation that you dare not reveal the connection openly. (Chaotic entities have a +1 reaction to your presence.)
7. You hear voices. They belong to somebody. Or something. But you're afraid to find out.
8. The invisible friend of your childhood is real. Every personal hit point you permanently sacrifice to them brings them one step closer to becoming more tangible and able to affect things in the material world. (Every six hit points given over to this entity allows it to roll for one more Attribute beginning with Intelligence. It must successfully acquire Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma and Dexterity before it can begin on Constitution and Strength. Once it gains the sixth attribute, it manifests as a 6HD Chaotic creature independent of the character who fed it. There is a base 25% chance that this is a Horla.)
9. Roamed the fields and groves of the local region growing up. (30% chance to know a few things about sites of interest within 60 miles of home.)
10. Monomaniac. You are driven to accomplish one very important, very private task. Everything you do is related to this task, but you cannot, must not discuss it with any other soul for they will not understand and worse, they might attempt to dissuade, distract or deter you from this nigh unto sacred personal quest.
11. Grew up with an attic full of old books. (Know and can cast 1d4 spells, no matter class/race restrictions.)
12. As a baby, you were found inside a crypt, peacefully sleeping within a crumbling casket. No one talked about this very much while you were growing up as the family that adopted you spent a good deal of money to keep things quiet.
13. Sly, stealthy slanders have surrounded you all your life. (All hirelings and hench-folk have a -2 penalty to loyalty no matter what you do. And they tend to gossip behind your back.)
14. Insomniac given to reading disturbing passages from moldering tomes out loud accompanied by sly comments and witticisms, often to the chagrin and horror of their neighbors or servants.
15. You detest single-syllable words and prefer to express yourself with more colorful and mellifluous terms that more fully encompass and better express your thoughts.
16. Cold-blooded; you might as well have been born a reptile. In fact, roll a D20; a result of 20 means that you have some sort of reptilian taint in your bloodline.
17. Abstemious, you eat very little and do not drink...wine. (Can subsist on half rations at no penalty.)
18. You often recall curious passages and strange quotations from books only you've ever heard of or read in a dream. (10% chance of learning a new spell every two weeks.)
19. Strange obsession. You gain a +2 bonus to one skill, Save, or attack and -2 on all other skills, one other Save, or any attack with a different weapon.
20. Sickly childhood; drop one point from CON and apply it to INT or WIS or CHAR instead.
21. You have a map that purports to lead to your ancestral home, but it is scrawled half-illegibly on a wadded-up piece of badly made parchment made from an Unseen Beast and covered in a script from some language you cannot identify. There is blood on the map. Maybe it's not a good thing to talk about in front of strangers.
22. Your starting money is doubled, only it's in the form of barnacle-encrusted gold coins that your mother claims were recovered from a shipwreck by your uncle before his unfortunate encounter with a shark.
23. You are a dreamer. Each night you must make a Save or find yourself caught-up in an adventure exploring some region of the dreamscape. Sometimes you learn interesting things, other times you might run afoul of nasty things. Some of those things might follow you back to your body...
24. Beloved of your ancestors, you need to make a Save whenever you fall below 6 hit points or your body will be taken over by the displaced mind of one of your predecessors. You can fight to get your body back, but without a good exorcism or some such, it's going to get crowded in there...
25. You grew up sleeping in a coffin. It's a little weird, but otherwise doesn't really give you any powers, just a slightly creepy personal revelation that carries a -4 penalty to reaction rolls once it does get revealed.
26. When you concentrate while standing or sitting very, very still, you can see into resonant levels of reality, however for every ten minutes you spend observing the splendors and wonders of this otherwise invisible world around us all, you must make a Save or be noticed by something native to this strata of existence. See the Resonant Encounters Table.
27. One of your ancestors used to have a familiar. Congratulations, it now wants to serve you, just like in the old days. See Alternative Familiars Table.
28. You can perform the Voorish Sign up to three times in a given day, but you have no idea why or how.
29. When you remain within a cooler area you regain hit points at double the usual amount. However you take double damage from fire/heat attacks, and heal at half normal rate in hot environments.
30. You are unsure of the reality of the past events in your life, even though you keep a journal or diary. You also have the sneaking suspicion that your entries change when you aren't looking.