Crawling One
"Cursed the ground where dead thought live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumor that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores out to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."-- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Festival"
One of H. P. Lovecraft's earliest "Mythos" stories was The Festival. Christmastime, an unnamed narrator went to visit the town of Kingsport, Massachusetts, to see their yuletide festivals. However, it turne dout that once every century, they celebrated something different. Something older. Their town leader, a strange man with a rubbery face, led the town in a dark, pagan ritual, where they danced to music played by a half-unseen, squirming, horrible thing. And then dark creatures (later identified as the Byakhee) flew in, and the villagers rode off on their leathery wings. Finally, the narrator realized that the town elder's face was a mask, and pulled it off to reveal the above quote - a horrible mass of worms masquerading as a man!
The Crawling One as represented in Arkham Horror is kind of a mixture of two of the monsters - the worm colony, and also the squirming thing in the shadows. "Something amorphously squatted far away from the light, piping noisomely on a flute". And there it is... the Crawling One, the Worm That Walks.
Crawling One
"Cursed the ground where dead thought live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumor that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores out to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."-- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Festival"
One of H. P. Lovecraft's earliest "Mythos" stories was The Festival. Christmastime, an unnamed narrator went to visit the town of Kingsport, Massachusetts, to see their yuletide festivals. However, it turne dout that once every century, they celebrated something different. Something older. Their town leader, a strange man with a rubbery face, led the town in a dark, pagan ritual, where they danced to music played by a half-unseen, squirming, horrible thing. And then dark creatures (later identified as the Byakhee) flew in, and the villagers rode off on their leathery wings. Finally, the narrator realized that the town elder's face was a mask, and pulled it off to reveal the above quote - a horrible mass of worms masquerading as a man!
The Crawling One as represented in Arkham Horror is kind of a mixture of two of the monsters - the worm colony, and also the squirming thing in the shadows. "Something amorphously squatted far away from the light, piping noisomely on a flute". And there it is... the Crawling One, the Worm That Walks.