Gloon
First appears in "The Temple" as an ivory carving with no name attributed to it.
The name "Gloon" seems to have appeared in a scenario in Cthulhu Now, and then in Malleus Monstrorum.
Description
Gloon, "Corrupter of Flesh" and "Guardian of the Atlantean Temple", may appear to worshipers as a tall, beautiful, naked young man wearing a laurel wreath, but its true form is that of a wrinkled, slimy, slug-like horror. (Malleus Monstrorum)
Possessing a statuette or idol of Gloon and touching it with bare hands will curse full-blooded humans with strange nightmare visions of sunken Atlantis and Gloon's ruined temple, carved from solid rock in a valley where a river once ran before the continent was submerged, the temple lit from within by some strange luminescence, with the ghastly dancing forms of Gloon's Deep One worshipers silhouetted against the windows and doorways. ("The Temple")
Quotes
- "Our men searched him for souvenirs, and found in his coat pocket a very odd bit of ivory carved to represent a youth's head crowned with laurel.... I could not forget the youthful, beautiful head with its leafy crown, though I am not by nature an artist." - HPL "The Temple"
Appearances
- "The Temple" (as unnamed ivory carving)
- Cthulhu Now
- Malleus Monstrorum
Rumors and Speculation
- Gloon may be a anthropomorphic, conventionalized representation of Dagon/Cthulhu carved by Atlantean artisans in a form less disconcerting to human worshipers of the Cthulhu cult, portraying Cthulhu and its Deep One priests as a beautiful male, human youth, to reassure those unfortunate human women chosen as "sea brides" for "Dagon", in much the same way that Gloon's female counterpart is conventionalized as a beautiful mermaid for the comfort of male humans who are to take wives from the Deep Ones.
