Nioth-Korghai
The Nioth-Korghai (AKA "space vampires", "Ubbo-Sathlans") are first mentioned in Clark Ashton Smith's "The Tomb Spawn", and more thoroughly described in Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires (fiction) and its movie adaptation, Lifeforce (1985 film).
Description
Inside, immense dim shapes were suspended. In the phosphorescent light, they looked like black octopuses.... In the dazzling beam, he could see that it was not black, but orange. At close quarters, it looked less like an octopus, more like a bundle of fungoid creepers joined together at one end.
— Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires (fiction)
A long-lived androgynous alien race from the water-world planet Karthis. Though the aliens have sometimes appeared as humanoid bat-like creatures, they appear in their natural form as yellow, fungoid, and squid-like beings which have ultimately evolved into insubstantial energy-beings from a higher dimension. The race possessed a highly evolved and generally benevolent civilisation millions of years ago, and according to them they elevated several sentient races in the Solar System, including creating the first true hominids after 700 years of experimenting.
A criminal alien cult of the Nioth-Korghai became vampiric, calling themselves the "Ubbo-Sathlans" after the malignant influence of that entity; these were outlawed by the Nioth race, but hijacking the bodies of a bat-like race, flew to the Solar System in a gigantic spacecraft seeking to free their master, Ubbo-Sathla.
The Ubbo-Sathlan cult made war against the rest of their kind, ultimately driving them from the Solar System, but were stranded in space when their ship was damage, leaving it orbiting the Sun in a comet, from which the Ubbo-Sathlans have periodically traveled in energy form to try to influence Earthly life when the comet approaches closely enough, giving rise to legends of vampires on Earth, but losing their power when the comet and their ship drift away again. One day, the Stars will be Right, and the comet will approach closely enough to earth to allow the ship's entire population to make the leap to earth to permanently steal human bodies, unleash their master, and reign on earth as the vampiric overloards of mankind.
Modern Era
The bat-like vampiric form in which the evil Nioth-Korghai attacked the Earth in the late 20th Century was apparently an alien race which they had possessed and possibly stolen the ship from. By the modern era, the close approach of the comet concealing the vampires' spacecraft was met by a human scientific expedition which accidentally awakened one of he vampires and brought her back to earth, with disastrous results (see events depicted in The Space Vampires (fiction) and Lifeforce (1985 film)).
Great Old One Nioth-Korghai
The name "Nioth-Korghai" was originally created by Clark Ashton Smith as a minor god in his Zothique stories, and Colin Wilson picked up the name and applied it to his aliens in the novel The Space Vampires (fiction); Chaosium has also used them in role-playing game materials.
Associated Mythos Elements
- deity: Ubbo-Sathla (the beings' name for themselves, apparently after the Great Old One they serve)
- race: Vampire (these are space-vampires)
- location: Karthis, water-world home planet
- tome: The Tablets of Ubbo Sathla
- race: Brood of Ubbo-Sathla
References
- fiction: Clark Ashton Smith, "The Tomb Spawn" (original mention)
- fiction: Colin Wilson, The Space Vampires (fiction) (most detailed description and lore)
- film: Lifeforce (1985 film) (adaptation of The Space Vampires)
- sourcebook: Malleus Monstrorum
