How to Bind an Elder Creature

A lead-in to UT#267: Underwar

Originally posted on Tales of the Parodyverse.

Characters in this story are owned either by myself, or other posters on
the Board.

Bogdan Vlastivock, the Necromancer General, was almost in his element. To raise a true monster, he felt, you needed [a] a brooding gothic castle, tomb or other sanctum; [b] a servile henchman to do the hack work, provide adulation and listen to the exposition; and finally, [c] the monster in question.

For a brief moment he mourned the loss of his lighthouse. Cramped conditions, shadows and windswept rocks had gone a long way towards giving him the appropriate sanctum-cred. Now he was reduced to using a large, airy warehouse near the wharves. It just wasn't quite the same.

He had, of course, long forgone the henchman. At the levels he worked at, the slightest slip of the incantation could cause disaster. Instead, his niece was kindly acting as the audience.

Then there was the monster itself. He was convinced that he would be able to dine out (so to speak) on this feat for years. The creature-to-be was laid on a slab, encircled by an ornate circle that looked rather like a design from the Key of Solomon translated in Alko by a drunken illiterate gibbering maniac who was also channelling Borellus. It was an ancient, decayed corpse, wrapped in the rotted remains of a linen robe. Next to it was the remains of a gnarled staff, itself almost gone in its decay.

Two-and-a-half out of three wasn't bad, he supposed.

Urthula Underess sighed. There were parties to go to, dances to... dance and hell to raise in the undead clubbing scene, and she was stuck listening to her uncle raving about his latest project. She couldn't even sneak out whilst he was in mid-rant because she had been sealed inside a circle of binding. He was not about to lose his audience.

The Necromancer General started his chant.

"Y'ai 'ng'ngath K'Martu h'ee - l'geb f'ai 'throdog uaaah!"

Nothing happened.

"Shouldn't that be l'gub?" asked Urthula acidly. "And why do you need to create a zombie in the first place, especially from a corpse that old? All they asked you to do was bind the Shoggoth."

"Ah, my dear. Your wild lifestyle has desensitised you to the minutiae of laying plots. The Shoggoth is old, wise and tricksy, and it would be terribly foolish to expose myself to such a creature. As that fool of a mage always says, 'Don't be there when it happens!'"

He fussed around the circle, redrawing small sections of it in a seemingly random manner.

"Y'ai 'ng'ngath Shrub-Niggurath, h'ee - l'geb f'ai 'throdog uaaah!"

Nothing happened.

"l'gub!" reiterated Urthula. Watching her uncle at work was boring at best, without listening to him mess up the chants as well.

"Excuse me? Who is the Necromancer General here? This isn't your average creeping cadaver that any old fool can knock up. This is a true revolution in necromantic magics, a zombie with the full memories and abilities of its past life, bound in service to me."

He paused in his rant to make a few more delicate adjustments to the circle.

"This will rank as an achievement greater than the Doom Gerbil! Y'ai 'ng'ngath Tsa'thug'gua, h'ee - l'geb f'ai 'throdog uaaah!"

Nothing happened.

"l'gub! And it was a hamster." said Urthula petulantly. "My hamster. I liked that hamster."

The corpse twitched.

"You see," Vlastivock said to his niece, "All that remains is to create the Elder Symbol on her staff, and she is ready to face the Shoggoth. An attack from a foe it will be unable to fight. And a foe that I already know is coming here."

Urthula froze, a rather guilty look on her face.

"Yes, my dear. I know you have a geas not to pass on my secrets to another soul. Did you think that I wouldn't be aware of the loopholes in the geas? All the better to lure in my victim."

He paused for a moment. "Oh yes, through the power that binds your soul to your unliving flesh, I command you, daughter of darkness, that you shall reveal my secrets to no other creature. That should put an end to your chattering."

In the winding tunnels and gothic caverns under Gothametropolis, a ghoul was pacing. The Abyssal Greye was under a lot of pressure these days, what with the coming Underwar.

But it was not the Underwar that was worrying him at present. No - although it was a problem, it was a problem for the future. His current problem - or problems - were much more immediate.

"For heavens sake, sit down, young man." snapped a crotchety female voice. "How can I concentrate on my knitting with you marching about the library?"

This was one of the problems. His (or rather, their) Aunt Lavinia was in the Library, knitting.

It had seemed such a good idea at first. The Ghouls Under Gothametropolis had the power to assimilate knowledge by devouring the brains of dead humans. Actually, most ghouls had that ability, but Greye and his companions had, from the start, concentrated on scholars.

As a result, their little conclave had been blessed with a level of consciousness far greater than, for example, the Abyssal Luminosis and the Ghouls Under Chernobyl, who could only be termed "bright" in a very limited sense. And the less said about Ghouls of St Petersburg the better.

But then a small problem had cropped up. Female scholars.

The Ghouls had devoted may hours of discussion to the subject, and came to the conclusion that mixing male and female components in their gestalt was probably asking for trouble. Since female scholars were so rare, a single ghoul would be enough to house them.

Hence Aunt Lavinia.

The female ghoul could be best described as a desiccated Hagatha Darkness. When she walked, the Scholar-Ghouls found themselves tensing as the sound of creaking whalebone passed by. If she spoke to one of them, the unfortunate Ghouls would be standing rigid, with its hands behind its back, as if being addressed by a headmistress. In Aunt Lavinia's case, it was several headmistresses.

She had a strict no-nonsense approach to unlife. Greye rather liked her, even if the perpetual knitting was something of a distraction.

Aunt Lavinia sat in the most comfortable chair, knitting needles clattering away.

"Baby booties?", asked Greye, noticing what she was knitting.

"Yes, dear." she replied. "That nice young Underess girl asked me to knit a pair for her. Something about Visionatus Improbablus and a Christening present." She paused for a moment. "Isn't he already dead? Shouldn't be having children at his time of death!"

"No, Aunt Lavinia." he sighed. "She was talking about Visionary of the Lair Legion, who isn't dead yet - although it seems this is not from want of trying."

"She's a nice girl, but she really needs to settle down." declared Aunt Lavinia. "Now, what is your problem?"

Greye shifted uncomfortably. "One of your graves has been desecrated." he finally admitted. "By the Necromancer General."

The warehouse was shrouded in shadow. Dotted around the room were containment circles, each holding a creature that would make life distinctly unpleasant and brief for any intruder that happened to accidentally release them by tripping any one of the mystic alarms about the place.

The Manga Shoggoth slipped into the warehouse. It ignored the dozen or so mystic defences, and they in turn ignored it, on the grounds that triggering to announce the presence of a Shoggoth would really ruin their day.

In the middle of the warehouse, a female ghoul sat within a containment circle, playing patience by the light of an ancient candelabra.

Black Jack on Even Blacker Queen? suggested the Shoggoth.

"That wasn't funny the first time you said it." said Urthula, somewhat sulkily. "I have nothing to say to you. I think you had better leave."

I see. Your geas has been changed again. Do you require any help in finding the new loopholes?

"No. I need you to leave. Now." she reiterated.

The Shoggoth hesitated. Why? Is there a problem?

"Not at all, Elder Creature." came a voice from the shadows. "My niece is merely annoyed at having to be the bait for my trap." The Necromancer General slowly walked into the candlelight.

And what do you intend to do, brief undead creature?

"Not me. Her." said the Necromancer General, indicating the figure in the shadows. "Come, my creation. Bind your old master."

The robed figure shuffled forward, an Elder Symbol gleaming on the end of its staff. The Shoggoth felt the unusual sensation of deja-vu.

Bridgit, you are dead, the Manga Shoggoth gurgled as his former high priestess bound him with the searing elder sign. How could you turn against me like this?

As the bindings surrounded the Elder Creature, Bogdan Vlastivock turned to face his niece, allowing himself a short, sinister laugh.

"You see, my dear? A little planning, and even so powerful a creature as the Shoggoth can be easily trapped."

Urthula held her peace. The geas forced her to be silent about her uncle's secrets. She reckoned that this included telling her uncle what was going on behind him.

The Shoggoth slowly oozed through the eldrich bindings. The undead form of his old High Priestess ignored the escaping protomatter, leaving it free to engulf the staff and destroy the elder sign.

An elder symbol must be carefully crafted to match the creature you are trying to seal, noted the Shoggoth. And we are not exactly the creature we once were. It didn't add that the mundane matter that had contaminated it had given it a small amount of leverage against the binding power of the symbol, nor did it reveal that its escape had been very painful (in as far as the Shoggoth felt pain). There was not point in giving away trade secrets.

"But... But the incantations I used gave your old Priestess access to her decayed brain." stammered the Necromancer General, trying to find a line of retreat. "She should have full recall of her memories and abilities. She should have been able to adapt the bindings as you escaped them..."

Ah, yes. Her brain, sighed the Shoggoth as it flowed forwards. Now there is a small problem with that...

As it flowed across the warehouse, the Shoggoth dissolved the circles that held the various guardian beasts. None of them were particularly happy at being bound in the first place. Now they had an opportunity to register a complaint with the Necromancer General.

As Elizabethan drama would put it, exit hastily stage left, pursued by a bear. And lion, griffin, boggart, child of Shrub-Niggurath, spawn of Theveros the Undying and a disreputable ginger cat that happened to be passing.

In the library, Aunt Lavinia stopped knitting. Greye tensed. There was only one member of the gestalt that formed Aunt Lavinia that was incapable of knitting. After all, knitting was very much after her time.

"Don't you have better things to worry about, Greye?" she asked. "It's not as if I need my body any more."

"But, Most Holy Br..."

"Greye. I retired, died, had a fine burial and came to rest here. As you said to the one called Hallie, we are loaned these slabs of meat for a short season. I don't need my old body for anything else."

The knitting needles resumed their clatter as Aunt Lavinia's most ancient component faded back into the gestalt.

"Now, what are you planning to do about this Underwar the boys are talking about?"

Footnotes:

Connoisseurs of H.P. Lovecraft will notice that Bogdan Vlastivock is indeed getting his chants wrong. The chant used by Vlastivock (except for the variation of the Elder Deity being invoked) is correct as chanted, but is in fact the one used to raise a creature from its salts. It may be that Urthula's insistence on l'gub is correct.

The Doom Hamster (or Gerbil) appeared briefly appeared in Heart of Darkness: The Conclusion!!!, and met a sad end at the paws of Lisa's Cat in Heart of Darkness Epilogue #4: Bad News About the Doom Hamster.

The Shoggoth previously encountered Bridgit of the Briganties binding him at 8.24am in #193: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Hellraisers: The Worst Five Minutes in one of the Hooded Hood's defensive retcons.