Cold One

The Cold Ones, also known as Ylidheem, are from Clark Ashton Smith and Lin Carter's "The Light from the Pole (fiction)".

Description

And the white spirits of the boreal wastes—the Cold Ones who obey the behests of the worm, and haunt perpetually the frozen wilderness, and shriek upon the nightwind like damned, tormented souls.
— Clark Ashton Smith and Lin Carter, "The Light from the Pole (fiction)"

The Cold Ones, also known as Ylidheem, are a race of semi-corporeal ice-spirits like ice-cold howling ghosts who serve the Great Old Ones Aphoom Zhah and Rlim Shaikorth. Though not immaterial, these nearly vaporous entities can slip through the smallest of cracks to pursue and kill their victims with frostbite-like attacks. The victims are usually frozen solid, their bodies appearing eerily white, and remain preternaturally cold, not melting nor warming even when exposed to fire, but some victims instead rise up as Cold Ones themselves after death.

Associated Mythos Elements

• deity: Aphoom Zhah, Rlim Shaikorth
• deity: possibly Ithaqua, though by some accounts they have little or nothing to do with this entity
• race: compare/contrast with Wendigo
• location: Yikilth, an iceberg where Rlim Shaikorth dwells

References

• fiction: Clark Ashton Smith and Lin Carter, "The Light from the Pole (fiction)".
• sourcebook: Malleus Monstrorum