Wamp

Wamp, Web-footed Wamp

Origin: American Folklore; H.P. Lovecraft's The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction) (where it is barely described), (Clark Ashton Smith's "The Abominations of Yondo (fiction))" (where the H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands book gets its description.)

Description

...Ghouls of the waking world do no business in the graveyards of upper dreamland (leaving that to the web-footed wamps that are spawned in dead cities)....
— H.P. Lovecraft's The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)

A strange, sack-like, web-footed, carrion-eating creature that digs up shallow graves for its food, and leaves a trail of salt behind it as its spoor. If especially hungry and there are no corpses around to eat, wamps have been known to attack and eat living people. Bodies partly-eaten by a wamp might transform into a wamp themselves, so to prevent this from happening, you should bury the bodies deep, or leave a measure of salt in the body's mouth as wamp-repellent, as the wamp (though it leaves a trail of salt behind it, attracting deer that follow the wamp for the salt-lick) is itself disgusted by salt.

Keeper Notes

...I heard a diabolic chuckle on the hillside above me. The sound began with a sharp abruptness that startled me beyond all reason, and continued mirthlessly, never varying its single note, like the mirth of an idiotic demon.... The chuckle grew louder, but for awhile I could see nothing. At last I caught a whitish glimmer in the darkness; then, with all the rapidity of a nightmare, a monstrous Thing emerged. It had a pale, hairless, egg-shaped body, large as that of a gravid she-goat; and this body was mounted on nine long, wavering legs with many flanges, like the legs of some enormous spider. The creature ran past me to the water’s edge; and I saw that there were no eyes in its oddly sloping face; but two knife-like ears rose high above its head, and a thin, wrinkled snout hung down across its mouth, whose flabby lips, parted in that eternal chuckle, revealed rows of bats' teeth.
—Clark Ashton Smith, "The Abominations of Yondo (fiction)"

• Sandy Petersen's take on the creature (S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors, H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands, and others) adds bat-like ears, a pig-snout, and multiple web-footed legs to Lovecraft's vague description, inspired by Clark Ashton Smith's "The Abominations of Yondo".
• Lovecraft was probably describing a different creature in his grave-robbing "web-footed wamp" from the salt-shaking "fearsome critter" of American Folklore (which is shaped like a sack of salt and has a hollow tail with a salt-shaker at the end), but here, we conflate the two beasts for convenience.
• What if the salt left behind by a folkloric Wamp after eating a corpse were Essential Saltes? Wamps might thus prove useful to wizards and cultists.... (YSDC)

Associated Mythos Elements

• setting: Folk Mythos, Dreamlands
• fiction: H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)
• fiction: (Clark Ashton Smith's "The Abominations of Yondo (fiction))"