Adumbrali

The Adumbrali are from Robert A.W. Lowndes' The Abyss.

Origin: Robert A.W. Lowndes - "The Abyss (fiction)"

Description

"There were things in the abyss, he said in hoarse tones, great shapes that were like blobs of utter blackness, yet which he knew to be alive. From the central masses of their beings he could see them shoot forth incredibly long, filamentine tentacles. They moved themselves forward and backward — horizontally, but could not move vertically, it seemed. They were, he thought, nothing but living shadows."

"...These be none other than the adumbrali, the living shadows, beings of incredible power and malignancy, which dwell without the veils of space and time such as we know it. Their sport it is to import into their realm the inhabitants of other dimensions, upon whom they practice horrid pranks and manifold illusions...."
— Robert A.W. Lowndes - "The Abyss (fiction)"

The Adumbrali are extra-dimensional beings that appear to human eyes as shapeless two-dimensional shadows armed with thin tentacles; these beings move in a peculiarly two-dimensional way, generally confined to their own plane but able with supernatural effort - equivalent to a spell - to leap between planes to pursue their victims on an axis vertical to the Adumbrali's normal movement.

The Adumbrali delight in hunting intelligent beings, who are brought to the Adumbrali's Nameless Dimension of Blue Haze to be chased, and upon capture, are subjected to "pranks and illusions", before being returned to their own world peculiarly altered: cold and pale and loathsome to touch, marred by strangely glowing and shifting bruises, drained of all blood through no visible wound, with limbs and body crushed and twisted strangely and only the eyes showing any sign of life or movement, seeming to peer at some point beyond the viewer.

To obtain pray for their malignant games, the Adumbrali employ Seekers: artificial beings constructed to look like the beings who will be hunted, which will use hypnotism and other psychic means to trick the victims into falling into the Adumbrali's strange dimension.

There are artifacts which may repel the Adumbrali, such as Shining Polyhedra of unknown origin, at least one of which is known to have been found on Earth - it is not unusual for such artifacts to be kept with or bound in copies of the Song of Yste; a Shining Polyhedron is peculiar, complicated regular geometric solid made of some glassy material, containing a fluid that emits a light that repels and possibly injures Adumbrali like a sort of weapon.

Associated Mythos Elements

• tome: Song of Yste
• artifact: Shining Polyhedron
• race: Seeker
• location: Nameless Dimension of Blue Haze, from which they originate

Quotes

“...And these be none other than the adumbrali, the living shadows, beings of incredible power and malignancy, which dwell without the veils of space and time such as we know it. Their sport it is to import into their realm the inhabitants of other dimensions, upon whom they practice horrid pranks and manifold illusions.... But more dreadful than these are the seekers which they send out into other worlds and dimensions, beings of incredible power which they themselves have created and guised in the form of those who dwell within whatever dimension, or upon whichever worlds where these seekers be sent.... These seekers can be detected only by the adept, to whose trained eyes their too-perfectness of form and movement, their strangeness, and aura of alienage and power is a sure sign.... The sage, Jhalkanaan, tells of one of these seekers who deluded seven priests of Nyaghoggua into challenging it to a duel of the hypnotic arts. He further tells how two of these were trapped and delivered to the adumbrali, their bodies being returned when the shadow-things had done with them.... Most curious of all was the condition of the corpses, being entirely drained of all fluid, yet showing no trace of a wound, even the most slight. But the crowning horror was the eyes, which could not be closed, appearing to stare restlessly outward, beyond the observer, and the strangely-luminous markings on the dead flesh, curious designs which appeared to move and change form before the eyes of the beholder. . . .”
— Robert A.W. Lowndes - "The Abyss (fiction)"

References

• fiction: Robert A.W. Lowndes - "The Abyss (fiction)"
• sourcebook: Malleus Monstrorum