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The worshippers at Saint Toad's Mere (Midlam's Kraken Cultists) have come up before. They meet at dawn on the beach to worship and call on their patron. Here they are, same as every day. But--this is NOT a day like every day. Today, their prayers are being Answered. Behold, the pale emissary of THE HUNGER IN THE GULF! "And the Beast stood on the shores of the sea." Click for full, awful turnaround. This avatar is hard to look at, from its rubbery, unwholesomely livid hide to the cracked fissures to the infinitely nested ventral mouths. You BETTER bet those can do some extradimensional shenanigans. I tried for a marble effect on the hammer but think I overshaded it. Onward, Squishian Soldiers! To new ways to shout and revel and kill! *** The Tomb-Tapper is apparently a faceless underground magic-hunter in D&D. But as soon as I saw the baggy, flaccid tentacles I knew this thing had to be related to the squid cult. The horrible mouths and cracked flesh just underscored it. I think the HUNGER IN THE GULF is a competing and opposed power to the PIPER IN THE WOODS. Neither of them are exactly "good," or even neutral. But they do give boons to those desperate enough to become their worshippers. It's always good for your setting to have multiple awful cults you can pit against each other. Either way, the HUNGER IN THE GULF is not from here originally, nor is this avatar more than a fragment of Its size and power.

The ritual has done its work. From a distance, an eerie light shines through the trees. The ground quakes under the tread of colossal hooves. There is a rushing wind, the sound of snapping branches. An indescribable tune, notes in a strange scale and meter, music from beyond the stars, builds to a skirling crescendo. HE is come. The PIPER IN THE WOODS is here. Burning with potassium flame, attended by HIS servants. Behold! The Horned Lord approaches! Deception and concealment among HIS sacraments! The Masked Messenger, the False-Faced! IA! IA! The power of a God, called to earth! HIS votaries rejoice, even as they cower! WHAT. HAVE. WE. BROUGHT. FORTH (This is a Nolzur's Nightwalker, given a little bit mote pizazz than the all-black example. I knew immediately that with the bone-mask face and the horns, it was the perfect avatar for the cultists. GW contrasts and good setting sunlight on the translucent flames; a GW demon skull from their Skullz set manifested in the upraised hand.) Featuring Dulkathar, Gromtar, Dark Creeper, a couple of Crooked Dice cultists, and Dark Young from RAFM and Reaper. (Reaper's 77516 is the big one in green).

Dawn at St. Toad's Mere. The worshipers gather by the dolmen. With scroll and orb, bell and blade, chalice, keys, and tome. But what manner of worshipers are these, so pale and clammy? And why does that one's hand bend so? Is that...is that an arm, or something else? Lo! a foul miracle! They have become as their unwholesome master, transmuted into a kind of glory through their dark rites. Some still retain hands, or things in the semblance of hands, the better to wield tools built by and for hands, but others have transcended or transgressed beyond even these. Soon they will renounce limbs and spines altogether, shed their robes and live to writhe and squirm beneath the mire with their lord forever. These are fantastic fellows--something about their eyeless fleshy heads makes them even more enigmatic and eerie than your average illithid. What are they up to? and what will their rituals bring upon the troubled earth? For all your eldritch cult needs. Could work as an alien species in a pinch. (The cultist with the dagger does not come with a bell; that's a repurposed earring back and pin.)