Urhag
Urhags are a Dreamlands monster from H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction), adapted to the Call of Cthulhu RPG from a description provided from August Derleth's The Lurker at the Threshold (fiction).
Lovecraft's Description
High over Mount Ngranek's jagged rim huge ravens flapped and croaked, and vague whirrings in the unseen depths told of bats or urhags or less mentionable presences haunting the endless blackness.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)
Lovecraft didn't provide much of a description of an urhag, except that these creatures produce a vague whirring sound that might be mistaken for bats, and the implication that it's an unpleasant creature that lives in dark crevasses.
Derleth's Description
A being with wings of dark substance and likewise as it were serpents running forth from Its body but attached to it... from such as it did gibber, it came from Kadath in thee Cold Waste, which is nigh unto that Plateau of Leng.
—August Derleth, The Lurker at the Threshold (fiction)
Chaosium's description of and Urhag is derived from August Derleth, making Urhags vaguely humanoid bat-winged creatures with numerous long tentacles where the legs should be.
Pathfinder Urhag
The Pathfinder/D&D Urhag is similar to the Chaosium/Derleth version: a bat-winged, tentacled creature, which furthermore is able to wear humanoid bodies like a costume, slithering into the body and using its tentacles to move the body like a puppet. These Urhags are additionally infested with a 'red plague', an infectious disease that, left unchecked, will result in an infestation of Urhag tadpoles.
Beastmaster
The 1982 Don Coscarelli fantasy film The Beastmaster featured a scene involving bizarre, humanoid, bat-winged flying creatures that would feed by swooping down out of trees to envelop victims in their wings, and then secreting digestive acids which would liquefy the victims down to the bones into a soup ,which the creatures would slurp up as they feed, dropping the bones onto the ground when finished. Though unnamed (variously given fan-names like "bat-people", "bat-creatures", "winged devourers"), these creatures might effectively be thought of as Lovececraftian Urhags.
Associated Mythos Elements
- setting: Dreamlands
References
- fiction: H.P. Lovecraft, Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)
- fiction: August Derleth, The Lurker at the Threshold (fiction)
- sourcebook: H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands
