Soul-Symbol

The Soul-Symbol of the Corpse-Eating Cult of Leng comes from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Hound (fiction)".

Description

In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. It was the oddly conventionalised figure of a crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a semi-canine face, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade. The expression on its features was repellent in the extreme, savouring at once of death, bestiality, and malevolence. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St. John nor I could identify; and on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.... Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but we recognised it as the thing hinted of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the ghastly soul-symbol of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the dead.
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Hound (fiction)"

The Soul-Symbols of the Corpse-Eating Cult of Leng are small jade pendents carved in the shape of Ghoul Hounds of Leng, enchanted and bound to the pendent's owner, with whom it is buried. Should the grave be disturbed, either the owner may rise from the grave in the form of an undead beast - something like a Vampire, Werewolf, or Ghoul, or a Ghoul Hound of Leng bound to the amulet may be summoned, with either monster pursuing the would-be grave robber, terrorizing the robber from an increasingly closer distance, until at last pouncing upon the robber and tearing him to shreds.

• Number of known copies (if rare): (unknown, but rare in the Daylands, likely more common in the Dreamlands)
• Last known location of surviving copies (if rare): (occasionally buried with witches, vampires, werewolves, or ghouls)
• Spells: ? (likely enchanted with one or more spells connected to raising the dead as vampire-like creatures, or summoning Ghoul Hounds bound to the amulet)

Associated Mythos Elements

• tome: The Necronomicon (describes the Ghoul Hound and its nature and function, and possibly also how to summon and bind it)
• location: Plateau of Leng
• deity: Mordiggian
• race: Ghoul Hound of Leng
• race: Ghouls
• race: Men of Leng
• race: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves
• cult: Corpse-Eating Cult of Leng

References

• fiction: H.P. Lovecraft, "The Hound (fiction)"
• sourcebook: Malleus Monstrorum