Monster Dissection: Gnoph-keh

I recently re-read my old dissection of the Yugg and thought “you know, it’s been a while since I’ve roasted a bad bestiary entry”. So let’s roast a bad bestiary entry, courtesy of the Malleus Monstrorum for Call of Cthulhu 7e. 

(To be fully up front, I don’t think there’s a single good entry in the MM and I don’t expect to ever feel otherwise: Chaosium has both resources and experienced writers at their disposal, but they seem content to squander both and put out work that is consistently outdone by amateurs. I’m disinclined to give them a charitable read.)

Gnoph-keh

Something like a polar bear monstrosity, with six-limbs and covered in shaggy white hair. From its forehead rose a single horn, while its great mouth was filled with wicked and sharp teeth. Cunningly, it may walk upright on two legs or bear-like on four, other times it uses all six limbs to rip across the ice to find its prey.

This is an okay opening description. I think the last sentence is a bit bloated but compared to some other entries it is at least coherent.

Note: the ghoph-keh race of bear-like terrors is not to be confused with the Great Old One known as Gnophkehs.

Now, the great old one Gnophkehs is featured in the deities half of the Monstrorum, but its origin isn’t cited and the Lovecraft wiki, despite having sections directly plagiarized from this very book, doesn’t mention Gnophkehs at all.

Going back to the 2006 edition of the Monstrorum, however, gives us a citation for a story called - and woof, no wonder it seems to be memory-holed - “Nautical Looking Negroes” written by Peter Cannon and Robert M. Price in 1996. Men whose names appear absolutely nowhere in the modern Monstrorum, including the credits page; the Deep Cuts blog (which I discovered during writing this post and will certainly be returning to in the future, it's a very good read) had a write-up, however, which among other things revealed that yeah, maybe there’s a reason Chaosium didn’t want to include Price’s name. (The reason is active, still very-much-alive racism)

This is all to say that:

1. It’s safe to ignore Gnophkehs the Great Old One.
2. Chaosium failed to credit Peter Cannon and Robert Price, instead listing Scott David Aniolowski’s writeup from the 2006 edition of the Monstrorum as the source.

You know, if someone is nasty enough that you don’t want them on the credits page, maybe don’t use their stuff, Chaosium.

Also: If you thought a credits page can’t possibly have bad formatting, I have bad news for you. Look at this:

Anyway, back to the alien polar bears.

The gnoph-keh are a race of beings who appear to inhabit-

 One cannot appear to inhabit; one either lives in a place, or does not. If that cannot be determined, the verb should be “encountered”. 

-cold places, notably Greenland, northern Canada, and other isolated wintry wildernesses. 

I bet they perform a variety of 80s dance moves, too. 

“Cold places” is a weird vagary here, because the only two territories provided are pretty specific: near or above the Arctic circle, not in Eurasia. Antarctica not being included isn’t particularly strange, but the absence of Siberia absolutely is. Disregarding the Doyleist explanation, I can only think of two reasonable in-universe explanations:

Option A: The gnoph-keh have somehow been prevented from migrating to Siberia (or migrated out of Siberia)

Option B: The gnoph-keh are extinct in Siberia.

Option A lends itself to “...because a Great Old One is preventing them”, while Option B is open to more variety, including “...because the Soviets killed them all” and that is a hook with some bait on it (he said, of his own work)

Legend purports-

Whose legend? Given the territory established in the previous sentence the only real option would be Inuit, but that’s something of an umbrella category and you can get more specific. 

-that the gnoph-keh are the remnants of a lost tribe-

The Inuit migrated from Alaska to Nunavut and Greenland from about 1100 to 1500 AD; the earlier inhabitants of the region we just know as the Dorset culture who (according to Wikipedia article about indigenous Americans, bring a second salt lick just in case) remained in the cultural memory of the Inuit peoples as giants called the Tuniit.

I can understand the desire to keep it vague: The detailed version does entail “make up a fake legend for a real indigenous group about another real indigenous group”, but if you wanted to avoid that you can just not include the history. Or say they’re from the Dreamlands, or make up fictional groups that hold these beliefs, or something like that. Like if you say that they were once the Sannikov Islanders that one’s free because Sannikov Island doesn’t exist.

Why are these writeups always so obsessed with the origin of the monsters yet never actually doing anything with it?

-who turned from earthly gods to serve the Great Wind Walker, Ithaqua, and in so doing became something other than human. Other tales-

They’re not going to tell us who, where, or when. 

-speak of the creatures as earthly extensions of alien powers, always at the periphery, waiting and watching in the vast wilderness to pounce on those who would forsake the safety of civilization.

This is not at all exclusive with the first option, I don’t understand why they are listed separately. Still no explanation of where this comes from, so I am going to go with “this is what the Soviets believe, there were definitely some GRU paranatural division guys who believed gnoph-keh attacked people for being insufficiently Marxist.”

Some tomes-

I am going to stop asking questions and just mad-libs this: Pnakotic Manuscript 3756-G07.

 -recall the attack of the gnoph-keh upon doomed Lomar. 

This is Dreamlands material, which should probably be mentioned in the writeup.

Whatever their true origin, gnoph-keh are territorial, individualistic, and rarely encountered. 

“Gnoph-keh are highly territorial solitary predators” should be one of the first things in the writeup, because it will be directly relevant to both players and referees: how does the monster behave?

Seemingly, their solitary existence is broken only occasionally,-

How many qualifiers can we add to this verb?

-when two or more gather to form a pack for unknown reasons- 

I can only presume fucking is involved, stay tuned for my upcoming monograph “Courtship Rituals and Mating Practices of the West Greenlandic Gnoph-keh.”

—perhaps when they sense the arrival of Ithaqua or some other manifestation of the Great Old One.

This entire sentence can be reduced to “outside of the mating season, gnoph-keh gather only during manifestations of Ithaqua.”

Especially harsh winters may bring them down into lowland regions and closer to humanity.

Ambiguous sentence, needs clarification on whether the harsh winters are driving The gnoph-keh into warmer regions (which makes little sense) or if they move south with the harsh winters (much more sensible).

Weird, but expected, incongruity with territory, here. They are described as if they live in mountainous environments, which makes sense, but migrating makes less sense if those mountains are in Nunavut and Greenland - I don’t think an especially harsh winter in Nunavut or Greenland is going to have a marked differential on the “It’s Fucking Cold” scale between the mountains and lowlands.

Feared by those who are aware of their existence, there are a few isolated communities who have turned their fear into a form of worship, venerating the gnoph-keh as harbingers of icy fate and, in doing so, some have been touched by the mind of Ithaqua and turned their devotions to the Great Wind-Walker.

There’s a much easier way to frame this: 

• Community is beset by a gnoph-keh.
• Community attempts to placate the gnoph-keh.
• Gnoph-keh uses human sacrifice as a meal ticket, as it’s much easier than hunting a group of humans with rifles and snowmobiles 
• Close contact with gnoph-keh + the whole ritual murder thing and all the social damage that causes opens community to influence of Ithaqua.
• Shit gets worse until community collapses; any survivors either transform into gnoph-keh or wandering parahuman cannibals.

Monster behavior should serve as the framework of a scenario: how does this thing act and what does it do, and how is that currently going horribly for people around it and how will it react to the PCs? 

Such communities soon turn to the terrible delights of cannibalism and consort with the gnoph-keh in blasphemous ceremonies.

Stop beating around the bush and just say they fuck the alien polar bears, guys.

Also, because I am specifically this kind of pedant:

• Blasphemy = Insulting acts / words / etc directed towards sacred subjects.
• Heresy = Belief that is at odds with the orthodox doctrine of a religion. 
• Apostasy = Renunciation or abandonment of one’s faith 
• Heathenry = The religious practices of Those People Over There Who Aren’t Us

So unless ritually fucking the alien polar bear also involves shitting inside a tabernacle or getting real artistic and intentional with your violations of Qaujimajatuqangit, it’s heathen, not blasphemous.

**

So there we have it. Honestly, I like the tweaked version I made enough that I might throw it in somewhere, though it'd need a name change. I have a grammar of West Greenlandic lying around on my hard drive that would help with that.

Harping on the quality of the entry is a diminishing return, especially if I ever get the itch to do another one of these. I was going to end with a somewhat-relevant Horror Fiction Thought, but then I wrote 1320 words that didn't end up going anywhere and decided to shelve it for another day. Some long ramble about the overton window of the unknown and how modern horror often bypasses the first layer of obfuscation by putting the fragments of the cursed tome (or weird VHS tape, or the paperwork of the shadowy organization) directly in the hands of the readers, thus letting the audience fill the role once held by the Lovecraftian Protagonist. Ah well. Maybe another time.