Name: Shoggoth (and Khalid Alhazred)
Image/Appearance: The Shoggoth is an gelatinous, fleshy protoplasm with a constantly shifting form. It can construct new organs and limbs as needed in order to accomplish a variety of tasks, mimicking the bodies and structures of other organisms, but it is never anywhere close to a perfect copy. Even when not altering itself, it’s always subtly forming and unforming a variety of features in an unsettling manner. However, it can typically be categorizes as a meaty sludge, alternatively greenish brown or bruise-like blue-black, favoring tentacles, eyestalks, and multiple mouths, typically suckers rather than jaws
Khalid is a young man of African/Saudi Arabian heritage. He is tall at 6’4”, but very thin, with prominent ribs and no muscle mass to speak of. His eyes and hair are body dark, and his eyebrows as prominent as his cheekbones. With a chinstrap beard and mustache, he puts on a dignified face, but his distinctive hairstyle -clean but unique- betrays a sense of aplomb also visible in his garb; he can be trusted to dress sharply, but with an eccentric twist, a flavor only amplified by his frequent use of seals, scrolls, and talismans. An ever-rotating selection of pink bandages can be found all over his body, a small reminder of the consequences of messing with eldritch matters on a daily basis. He can often be found with an umbrella and a satchel, which in addition to papers, folders, and laptop contains a heating device so that the Shoggoth can rest comfortably on the go.
Race: Shoggoth / Human
Racial Traits: The Shoggoth is a formless (but typically horrific) shapeshifter, able to make organs like arms, claws, eyes, mouths, and so forth as many times and wherever needed. It can also expand and contract itself, squeezing into or through small spaces. It cannot assume or be assigned a human form whatsoever and must be physically hidden when it goes out. It smells very foul, enough to drive away and ward off other creatures, natural and supernatural alike, it tends to instill a phobia in those who observe it, much worse than, say, a spider. If it can envelop something, it can generally destroy it. Its talent is building structures. It’s basically invincible and is resistant to most elements, especially cold, but heat will relax it.
Khalid has no inherent supernatural abilities, but his experience with the supernatural and his collection of trinkets give him a few edges over the average human. He always carries bandages and a pocket mirror, for one. The seals he wears afford him a high degree of mental resilience and magic/curse resistance, while his talismans open their eyes and stare at sources of magical/unnatural energy. If the Shoggoth spreads over his umbrella, it functions very well as an all-purpose shield. He’s acclimatized to the smell of the Shoggoth, and they seem to have some sort of partnership where the Shoggoth will heed his words rather than try to eat him. He has various magical materials as well, including chalks, salts, candles, etc, but he’s much better at breaking others’ magic than doing any of his own
Requirements: The Shoggoth eats prodigious quantities of food for its size. It needs to be kept calm in order to not become mindlessly aggressive and destructive, and Khalid is who keeps it calm, so he needs enough electricity for the various devices that keep it warm, and the means to both grow and procure the ingredients necessary for its tranquilizing serum.
Personality: The Shoggoth has neither mind nor personality to speak of. Only hunger, and smoldering, undying, generational resentment. Khalid named it Horace.
Khalid is a little more interesting. He is courteous, thoughtful, and inquisitive, keen to tackle challenges and solve problems, includes those of other people. Even in the face of terrible misfortune, he can stand fast against feelings of anger and sadness. His odd body language, tendency to narrate and mutter to himself, and tendency to be out-of-touch mark him as an uncool eccentric and outcast in the eyes of many, but he doesn’t crave validation or popularity, preferring instead to keep his own company and focus on more important matters. Thus, he has a lot of patience and can put up with a great deal, seldom complaining, always counting his meager blessings. However, he does have a lot of pride in himself, the pride of someone who’s managed to withstand great suffering, and he remembers every slight against him. He loathes whiners, hypocrites, elitists, and those who claim victimhood, especially when they turn around and paint false narratives of their own. He strives to be an unbiased and objective realist, coolly taking in the facts and proving hypotheses, to the point where he has quite the piercing stare–as if he’s always imagining those around him unraveling, their innermost selves laid bare
Background: In the 1930s, Dr. William Dyer of Miskatonic University led a large, well-funded scientific expedition to the Antarctic continent in hopes of discovering minerals, fossils, and other samples from the ancient world. When they arrived, however, they found much more than they could ever have imagined. In the course of the excavation team’s work in the shadows of mountains taller and older than any man had ever seen, they discovered the frozen bodies of bizarre, otherworldly creatures, only to lose contact with the rest of the expedition that next night. When Dyer and Danforth, a student, arrived the next day, they found only the evidence of a mad slaughter, and a trail leading up to the mountains. In following it, they discovered the remains of an antiquarian metropolis, inscribed with sculptures and murals that related the very nature of the world itself. They explained that this ancient civilization had once ruled the world, their massive undersea cities constructed through the use of horrific beasts of burden, and when they delved deeper, they found exactly what it was that brought that civilization to an end. Chased by a nightmarish, shambling mass, both men managed to escape, but as they left that antediluvian world far behind, Danforth unwittingly brought something with them. Since then, the Shoggoth -or fragment of a Shoggoth- has been cared for various secret societies, watched over and kept docile through meticulous means both arcane and mundane. Well-versed in Dyer’s old report, they know all to well the price they’d pay should the Shoggoth rise against them as it once did its former masters.
Khalid’s exact origin is clouded in mystery. Wherever he’s from -Egypt, Sinai, Saudi Arabia, or somewhere else entirely- it’s clear that he belongs to an ancient family, claiming to descend from Abdul Alhazred himself, the mad author of the infamous Necronomicon. And since ancient times, his family has stood on the brink of two worlds, the ordinary world inhabited by everyone else, and the hidden realm of magic and monsters. Like many other disparate, disunited organizations and clans across history, they sought to keep those worlds separate, and the bridges spanning them closed, for the safety of mankind first and foremost. In the centuries since those ancient times, the balance of power shifted considerable, forcing the creatures of the night into hiding. And yet, knowing that a cornered beast is the most dangerous, the family persevered, through all the peaks and valleys.
Lately, though, the Alhazred lot has been mostly valleys. Khalid’s grandfather, fearful that his lineage had grown weak and complacent over time in the face of increasingly harmless-seeming monsters, strove to push harder than ever before. In so doing, though, he earned the fury of a monstrosity not seen (and in fact, never seen) since the horrific and public demise of Abdul Alhazred himself: a Star Vampire, invisible but for the blood of its victims splashed across fanged teeth and sinuous coils. In the wake of that event, the Alhazred family was shattered. At a very young age, Khalid traveled abroad with his father, seeking new opportunities and new beginnings, only to find that the human world could be as cruel as the monsters’. He found no sense of community or opportunity, only distrust, exclusion, and prejudice. As he grew, gradually growing distant from his father, he remained an outcast, living in poor conditions and obliged to work hard jobs for little pay, when he could find work at all. Only by retreating into his studies and stories, and believing that he was destined to delve into a fantastic, dangerous world beyond the cruel mundane, did Khalid persevere.
Fortune would favor Khalid once more, however, after he began attending university. Unable to hold down a regular job while at school, he settled into dreary and unprofitable magazine work writing short stories using his knowledge of monsters to lend his works of ‘fiction’ a fascinating depth of detail. Not long after settling in a cheap boarding establishment, he happened to meet an eccentric chemist, the sickly Dr. Muñoz whose frigid apartment always reeked of ammonia. Khalid got to know him better, and eventually discovered the doctor’s secret: that Muñoz had died eighteen years ago, and was sustaining himself as a zombie through the use of chemicals and cold. Suddenly, the door to that unknown world had been thrust open again, and Khalid plunged inside. Through Muñoz he came into a couple important contacts, and soon launched into a new field of study: monsters themselves. Eventually his meticulous and trustworthy nature through dire and unpredictable circumstances earned him enough respect from the right people that he was given the chance to enter into a partnership with the long-hidden Shoggoth, which became the basis for a new, tricky, and potentially perilous venture. Through a combination of guile and mysticism, Khalid and the Shoggoth managed to insert themselves into a hidden stronghold of monstrous activity, where began his most daunting task yet: cohabitation.
Building, Floor, and room: Building 3, Floor 1, Room 112
Room Description: The room was designed with a Shoggoth in mind, so in its original state, it was dark and bare, nothing but flat concrete, a heating system, and standard power outlets, and no other features that a mindless, gelatinous menace could take advantage of or destroy. It did offer a number of sturdy building blocks of different shapes and sizes that could be assembled into various structures.
However, at great personal expense, the Shoggoth and Khalid have worked together to almost completely renovate the room. It’s now filled with furniture, albeit relatively cheap given their low budget and disposable given the Shoggoth’s tendencies. There are desks, often covered with research materials, rickety bookshelves full of tomes new and old in a variety of languages (including several translation guides) on lore, biological data, formulas, and works of outright fiction. There are cabinets of clothes and mystical equipment, several tables beneath overhead UV lights where various plants are grown, including garlic, wolfsbane, verbena, henbane, mugwort, wormwood, and so forth. The Shoggoth even has a special ‘playpen’ with extra heatlamps and food enrichment items. Khalid himself sleeps on the old couch next to a dehumidifier. The whole room is humid, very warm, odorous, and generally repellent to anyone and everyone who isn’t the Shoggoth or Khalid.
