Nioth-Korghai

The Nioth-Korghai (AKA "space vampires", "Ubbo-Sathlans") are first mentioned in Clark Ashton Smith's "The Tomb Spawn", and more thoroughly described in Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires (fiction) and its movie adaptation, Lifeforce (1985 film).

Description

Nioth-Korghai as depicted in Lifeforce (1985 film)

Inside, immense dim shapes were suspended. In the phosphorescent light, they looked like black octopuses.... In the dazzling beam, he could see that it was not black, but orange. At close quarters, it looked less like an octopus, more like a bundle of fungoid creepers joined together at one end.
— Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires (fiction)

A long-lived androgynous alien race from the water-world planet Karthis. Though the aliens have sometimes appeared as humanoid bat-like creatures, they appear in their natural form as yellow, fungoid, and squid-like beings which have ultimately evolved into insubstantial energy-beings from a higher dimension. The race possessed a highly evolved civilisation millions of years ago, and according to them they created the first true hominids after 700 years of experimenting.

Some of the Nioth-Korghai became vampiric (calling themselves the "Ubbo-Sathla"), and these were outlawed by the Nioth race; a group of these alien criminals, shape-shifted first into the bat-like forms (as found on their spacecraft, apparently the vampires' previous alien victims before their arrival at Earth), and then into human form, in which they attacked the Earth in the late 20th Century (see events in The Space Vampires (fiction) and Lifeforce (1985 film)).

The name "Nioth-Korghai" was originally created by Clark Ashton Smith as a minor god in his Zothique stories, and Colin Wilson picked up the name and applied it to his aliens in the novel The Space Vampires (fiction); Chaosium has also used them in role-playing game materials.

Associated Mythos Elements

• deity: Ubbo-Sathla (the beings' name for themselves, apparently after the Great Old One they serve)
• race: Vampire (these are space-vampires)
• location: Karthis, water-world home planet
• tome: The Tablets of Ubbo Sathla
• race: Brood of Ubbo-Sathla

References

• fiction: Clark Ashton Smith, "The Tomb Spawn" (original mention)
• fiction: Colin Wilson, The Space Vampires (fiction) (most detailed description and lore)
• film: Lifeforce (1985 film) (adaptation of The Space Vampires)
• sourcebook: Malleus Monstrorum