TEXT: By Kenneth hite
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  2
  Hideous Creatures
  hounds of tindalos
  Publisher:   
  Cathriona Tobin
  Author:  
   
  Kenneth Hite
  Layout:  
   
  Cathriona Tobin
  Cover:  
   
  Kyle Strahm
  Internal artwork: Stefano Azzalin
   
   
   
  Claude Bernier-Tremblay
   
   
   
  © 2013 Pelgrane Press Ltd. All rights reserved. Trail of Cthulhu is published by arrangement with 
  Chaosium, Inc. Trail of Cthulhu is a trademark of Pelgrane Press Ltd.
  Hounds of Tindalos is part of the Ken Writes about Stuff subscription series, 
  featuring new and original Hite goodness every month for twelve months. A 
  subscription costs $24.95 and as well as giving you a generous 30% discount 
  on the individual article price of $2.95, we’ll be offering an exclusive extra 
  later in the year to all subscribers.
  Any time you order, you’ll get all the issues of the current KWAS to date.
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  3
  Hideous Creatures: Introduction 
  3
  The Hounds of Tindalos 
  4
  Standard Hounds of Tindalos Abilities 
  5
  Possible Hounds of Tindalos Abilities 
  5
  Variations 
  6
  Mythic Echoes 
  7
  Akhlut (Esquimau) 
  7
  Black Shuck (Suffolk) 
  7
  Cadejo (Central America) 
  7
  Cerberus (Greece) 
  7
  Cwn Annwn (Wales) 
  7
  Inugami (Japan) 
  7
  Sha (Egypt) 
  7
  Shunka Warakin (Iowa) 
  7
  T'ien-kou (China) 
  7
  Tindalo (Solomon Islands) 
  7
  Investigations 
  8
  Clues 
  8
  Scenario Seeds 
  9
  Fugue in the Key of Dee 
  9
  Don't Mess With Tindalos 
  10
  The Dunne-ish Horror 
  10
  Every Dog Has Its Day 
  10
  Bibliography 
  10
  Lovecraft created his various “shadowy congeners” because the stories of vampires, werewolves, and even ghosts had become too 
  familiar and too formulaic to evoke true horror. Almost a century after he wrote, his own monstrous races have likewise begun 
  to seem like comfortable story furniture rather than unnerving signals that the world is horrible and wrong.
  Our goal with this series is to present a comprehensive look at Lovecraft’s hideous creatures, from as many angles as we can. Our 
  goal is contradiction, surprise, and most especially the uncanny: the recognition of something familiar as something weird. As 
  in the “Gods and Titans” section of the Trail of Cthulhu core book, this series deliberately contradicts itself, blurring boundaries 
  and erasing certainties in the name of the uncanny. In your campaign, these variant truths might be misunderstandings, legends, 
  heresies, or deliberate lies spread by the creatures to lull their foes into a false sense of familiarity.
  Change anything and everything in these pages, most especially the ability scores. If you need a terrifying assassin, a brief but 
  survivable fright, or a sanity-shattering horror, just add or subtract points at will.
  Hideous Creatures: Introduction
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  4
  These lean, ravening creatures dwell 
  at the farthest beginnings of time on 
  this planet, before DNA is formed in 
  the first pools of protein. They do not 
  so much resemble hounds or wolves 
  as they convey to their unlucky viewer 
  an inescapable sense of being hunted. 
  Consider describing the Tindaloth using 
  other predators:
  •  Sharks (rugose, rows of razor sharp 
  teeth, implacable)
  •  Wolverines (bristling, ferocious, musky)
  •  Cobras (swaying, hypnotic, striking)
  •  Tigers (subsonics, unblinking eyes, 
  mottled muzzle)
  •  Hawks (glittering eye, talons, hovering 
  in preparation, fast-moving shadow)
  They are variously described as gray, green, 
  dappled, shadowy, or black. They leave 
  behind a bluish pus, so they may be a dull 
  gunmetal blue or emit bright radioactive 
  blue light. They may have scales, spikes, fur, 
  stretched hairless skin, or decomposing 
  organs on the outside.
  They inhabit the angles of time, while 
  other beings (including mankind and 
  all common life) descend from curves 
  and dwell in Einsteinian curved space-
  time. Moving between the two states 
  is normally impossible for the Hounds, 
  until a curved-time dweller closes a 
  perceptual connection between the two 
  geometries. In other words, if a curved-
  timer sees a Hound, that sight becomes 
  part of the angled-time stream. The 
  Hound can enter the local space-time 
  of its perceiver so long as it features a 
  sharp (120° or less) angle through which 
  to pass. This angle can be as small as a 
  folded matchbook, or as temporary as a 
  ruler stood on its edge.
  The Hounds dwell in an impossibly ancient 
  time (“beyond life”) before the angles 
  and curves of space-time had separated: 
  at least 3.8 billion years ago, but possibly 
  quintillions of years ago “on the pale grey 
  shores beyond time and space,” across 
  unguessed aeons. Their home may pre-
  exist dimensionality itself, where light is 
  dark and silence shrieks.
  Despite their immortality, they hunger, 
  and when they spot (or are spotted by) 
  any prey, they follow it through time and 
  space. What, exactly, they hunger for is 
  harder to determine:
  •   “Men awake in them cosmic hungers. 
  We have escaped, momentarily, from 
  the foulness that rings them round. They 
  thirst for that in us which is clean, which 
  emerged from the deed without stain.”
  •  They thirst for the purest curve-nature 
  of time-bound sentience, needing it to 
  propagate their shadowy existence in 
  the mouth of angled space-time.
  •  They feed on the energy of perception 
  itself, on the collapse of the 
  Heisenbergian wave function between 
  angled and curved observer.
  •  Hounds feed on life-potential, thus 
  their tie to the “yeth hounds” of 
  Devonshire folklore, supposedly the 
  spirits of unbaptized infants.
  •  They are merely drawn to observers 
  as opposite poles of a magnet are 
  drawn together; humans interpret 
  this fatal attraction as hunger because 
  our brains and endocrine systems 
  evolved to fear beasts that actually do 
  hunger for us.
  Driven off by a target, a Hound may well give 
  up, as its timeline now bends around its prey. 
  Unfortunately, the Tindaloth are difficult – 
  not to say impossible -- to drive off. Friends 
  who come to a target’s aid also invite attack.
  Despite their strong connotations of fatalistic 
  programming, the Hounds are probably 
  sentient, sapient, and intelligent. Their social 
  structure, if any, remains an enigma.
  Hounds of Tindalos
  Abilities: Athletics 6, Health 13, Scuffling 30
  Magic: 12+; spells always include Contact 
  Hounds of Tindalos, which costs Hounds 
  only 1 Magic point to cast.  Many Hounds 
  have other spells.
  Hit Threshold: 4
  Alertness Modifier: +3
  Stealth Modifier: +1
  Weapon: +1 (paw), tongue (see 
  below), pus (see below)
  Armor: -2 vs. any (semi-real hide); 
  regeneration (see below); immune to 
  mundane weapons or chemicals
  Stability Loss: +2
  The Hounds of Tindalos
  “they ARe LeAn AnD AthiRSt! … BeyOnD LiFe theRe ARe … thinGS thAt i CAnnOt DiStinGUiSh. they MOVe SLOWLy 
  thROUGh AnGLeS. they hAVe nO BODieS, AnD they MOVe SLOWLy thROUGh OUtRAGeOUS AnGLeS. … they ARe 
  hORRORS OF the SOUL, AnD yet … they ARe ReAL … ALL the eViL in the UniVeRSe WAS COnCentRAteD in theiR 
  LeAn, hUnGRy BODieS. OR hAD they BODieS? i SAW theM OnLy FOR A MOMent; i CAnnOt Be CeRtAin. BUt i heARD 
  theM BReAthe. inDeSCRiBABLy FOR A MOMent i FeLt theiR BReAth UPOn My FACe.”  – 
  –  FRAnK BeLKnAP LOnG, “the hOUnDS OF tinDALOS”
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  5
  Hounds of Tindalos
  Standard Hound Abilities
  These standard abilities appear in the 
  Trail of Cthulhu corebook for the 
  Hounds, although only one of them 
  (time travel) is actually attested in Long’s 
  story. Long’s version of Tindalosian pus, 
  for example, is non-caustic. Keepers, 
  feel free to change or remove the 
  effects of any of these abilities in your 
  scenario.
  Pus: The Hound’s paws (and the rest of 
  it) are covered with a sort of living bluish 
  pus, which a successful attack smears 
  onto the victim in addition to other 
  damage. The pus acts as a very strong 
  acid (+1 damage modifier) each round 
  until removed. It can be cauterized with 
  fire.
  Regeneration: The Hound refreshes 
  2 Health points per round. Its Health 
  refreshes entirely between scenes. For 
  a horribly deadly Hound, its Health 
  refreshes entirely between rounds.
  Time Travel: Hounds travel through 
  time, at speeds of up to 100 million 
  years per day. They manifest into a given 
  space-time through angles and corners. 
  They first appear as a cloud of smoke 
  pouring from any sharp (120° or less) 
  corner or angle, from which the head 
  and then body emerges.
  Tongue: A Hound’s tongue is long 
  and hollow. If it strikes a person, it 
  bloodlessly and painlessly cores a deep 
  hole into their torso, somehow shifting 
  the organs around. The victim takes no 
  Health damage, but loses 3 rating points 
  of Stability. The Hounds normally save 
  this for the coup de grace.
  Possible Hound Abilities
  Mix and match these abilities for the Hounds in 
  your campaign. Even within the same scenario, 
  some Hounds might be alpha dogs, or the same 
  Hound might reappear with powers mapped 
  to a different time-point in its life-line.
  Blinding Blue Flash: In 25 years or so, 
  they’ll name this radiation effect after Pavel 
  Cherenkov, but for now, it’s what happens 
  when the Hounds’ quasi-matter connects 
  with the present at superluminal speeds. 
  When the Hound appears, everyone 
  in eyeshot must make a Health test at 
  Difficulty 8 or be blinded for a number of 
  rounds equal to their margin of failure.
  Clocks, Stop: Just before the Hound enters 
  a space, all timepieces stop and run slow.
  Fugue: So-called “packs” of Hounds are 
  just reiterations of the same Hound, moving 
  back and forth in time. Only one Hound of 
  any pack can be injured in any way, as the 
  others have “already” escaped harm.
  Held Back By Curves: A Hound 
  must make a successful Athletics test 
  against a Difficulty of 8 to cross a curved 
  line or surface. It can spend Magic points 
  on this test. It can only be damaged by 
  curves: curved sword blades, spherical 
  droplets of acid, etc.
  Hypersight: Hounds can see around 
  corners, through straight walls, and into 
  closed rectilinear containers. Add +1 to 
  their Alertness Modifier.
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  6
  Hideous Creatures
  Perfect Coordination: For every 
  additional Hound in a combat, one foe’s 
  Hit Threshold diminishes by 1 against 
  them. 
  Severing Tongue: In Long’s story, 
  Chalmers’ head is severed, but there 
  is no mention of a hole cored in his 
  torso. A Hound’s tongue doesn’t gouge 
  a wound, but slices quasi-materially 
  through the victim’s focal chrono-
  geometry. The tongue does +1 damage 
  on a hit, and then +1 automatically 
  every round thereafter, looped around 
  the victim’s “temporal spine” and sawing. 
  The end result is usually a bisected torso 
  or severed head, with no visible blood.
  Sped-Up: The Hound can strike more 
  than once in a round, for a cost of 1 
  Scuffling or Magic point per additional 
  strike.
  Time Skip: The Hound can flicker in 
  and out of existence to “skip” a round 
  of combat and re-enter anywhere in the 
  action sequence (before or after a foe, 
  for example) it wishes. This flickering in-
  and-out costs 1 point of either Athletics 
  or Magic. The skipped round counts for 
  regeneration.
  Variations
  “the nAtURe OF the DOeLS WAS 
  PLAinLy ReVeALeD, AnD i WAS 
  tOLD the eSSenCe (thOUGh nOt 
  the SOURCe) OF the hOUnDS OF 
  tinDALOS.”
  – “the WhiSPeReR in DARKneSS”
  •  The Hounds of Tindalos are the 
  “dogs that howl in the maelstrom of 
  Azathoth,” beings of chaos beyond 
  good and evil, motivated only by 
  their hunger.
  •  The Tind’losi Hounds, children of 
  Noth-Yidik and K’thun, patrol the 
  corridors of angled time waiting for 
  an opening into Einsteinian time. 
  They will lead their masters, the Old 
  Ones, through the weak points in 
  geometry when the stars come right. 
  •  The 
  spectral, 
  infra-geometric 
  Hound possesses the viewer. When 
  the witness returns his perception 
  to the present, he briefly barks like 
  a dog, twists and writhes, and then 
  rants in a download of his brain’s 
  imagery both seen and imagined 
  or dreamed. He sweats out blue 
  protoplasm stripped of enzymes as 
  his brain’s passenger shuts his body 
  down: his final act may be to sever 
  his own head in terror.
  •  A powerful human (or other non-
  Tind’losi) sorcerer may bind a Hound 
  into his own perception, linking 
  human and Tindaloth geometries. 
  Such a Hound is called a ny’rela. The 
  binding involves a mark (usually an 
  angular scar or tattoo) known as the 
  Tyndalon, and occasionally an image 
  of a Hound worn as an amulet. After 
  his death, his spirit transcends time 
  and duration; his corpse may reshape 
  itself into the form of a hound, a bat, 
  or a lich.
  •  The Hounds of Tindalos hunt across the 
  skies of the Dreamlands during eclipses 
  and fell conjunctions of the great stars.
  •  Hounds 
  are 
  hyperdimensional 
  shapes that can only be perceived 
  serially, like frames of film or parts of 
  a Cubist painting. When they enter 
  our space-time, they sublime a shell 
  or coating of bluish protoplasm.
  •  Tindalos is a great city of corkscrew-
  shaped towers rising above the gray 
  plain of non-being at the beginning 
  of existence. The Hounds dwell 
  here under their Lords, of whom 
  Mh’ithrha is the greatest.
  •  As the Hounds get closer, you begin 
  to remember seeing them: in the 
  woods you dared not enter as a child; 
  in the trenches during the War; 
  devouring your long-lost lover, the 
  one you convinced yourself “just fell 
  out of touch.” The Hounds colonize 
  your personal past, because they 
  were always there. The memories 
  infested by Hounds get more and 
  more recent. When you remember 
  them boiling out of the corner of the 
  room and attacking you – they do.
  •  “A terrible and unspeakable deed 
  was done in the beginning. Before 
  time, the deed, and from the deed — 
  The seeds of the deed move through 
  angles in dim recesses of time. They 
  are hungry and athirst!”
  •  The Deed was the speaking of 
  certain horrible words, a negative 
  echo of Fiat lux. The Hounds follow 
  the sounds of those who say the 
  Words, but must see their prey to 
  enter curved space-time.
  •  The kabbalists knew of the Tandaloth 
  (Hebrew for “lean jackals of the 
  gate”) and hid their spoor in obscure 
  scriptures. They are the soul-symbol 
  of the qlippoth, the shards of failed 
  and broken Creation abandoned by 
  G-d before the Beginning.
  •  The Hounds of Tindalos are the 
  servitors of Nyarlathotep, who 
  created them to prey implacably 
  on humanity for its temerity in 
  rejecting the Shining Trapezohedron. 
  The Hounds were consumed and 
  remade by its angular glory; this 
  was the primordial Deed. They 
  gained their power in payment for 
  their obeisance; they seek to “repay” 
  humanity for its refusal. Hence 
  their Greek name Tinodalos, the 
  “firebrands of repayment.”
  •  The Tind’losi fear and hate Yog-
  Sothoth, that congeries of spheres 
  who demarcates the Key and Gate to 
  curved space.
  •  The Hounds have certain allies in our 
  space-time, among them the Doels and 
  the satyrs, who “can advance through 
  the Scarlet Circles.” Ancient Greek 
  magi could prevent such advances, but 
  their secrets have been lost.
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  7
  Hounds of Tindalos
  Mythic echoes
  A time-spanning species such as the Hounds 
  leaves tracks across human myth and legend. 
  Investigators may recognize the connections 
  after a suitable Anthropology spend; orthodox 
  scholars stubbornly refuse to see the pattern.
  As with the variations and possible powers 
  above, Hounds of Tindalos might more closely 
  match their various mythic depictions than 
  Mythos fiction.
  Akhlut (Esquimau)
  Also known as a keelut, the akhlut is a 
  demon resembling a hairless dog, or perhaps 
  a dog crossed with an orca. It devours lone 
  wanderers, leaving no trace except paw prints 
  that vanish into nothingness or into the ocean.
  Black Shuck (Suffolk)
  This is the Suffolk variant of the wider British 
  legend of a ghostly black dog that heralds the 
  death of those who see it. It is associated with 
  crossroads (angles) and electrical storms; it 
  usually has glowing eyes. Other British black 
  dogs are called church grims, barghests, or 
  hell hounds: they sometimes actually drag 
  their prey to Hell. The Scottish cú síth (“dog 
  of faery”) drags its prey to Faërie.
  Cadejo (Central America)
  This black dog also appears to lone travelers 
  and kills them or leads them to Hell. The 
  size of a bull, it has hooves and fiery eyes; 
  sometimes it drags a red-hot chain behind it. 
  It may chew holes through its prey. In Maya 
  Yucatan and Belize, the cadejo is also called 
  the huay pek, or witch-dog.
  Cerberus (Greece)
  The original hound of hell, Cerberus (or 
  Kerberos) has three (or fifty) heads and keeps 
  visitors out of a grey-litten land inhabited by 
  the dead: i.e., the past. His name is cognate 
  the Finnish hell-hound Surma, and with 
  the hounds of Hel in Norse myth, Gifr and 
  Geri: “very ancient guards/who keep guard 
  until the gods are torn apart.”
  Cwn Annwn (Wales)
  These pale dogs follow the Wild Hunt 
  across the skies and desolate wastes of 
  Europe. The Huntsman may be Annwn 
  (god of the dead), Christ, the Devil, or a 
  local dignitary, depending on the specific 
  local legend. Wotan (and Odin) led Wild 
  Hunts in pagan Germany; seeing the 
  Hunt meant death unless you could keep 
  up the chase until morning. 
  Inugami (Japan)
  Evil sorcerers create these dog-ghosts by 
  starving a dog to death and incarnating its 
  hunger as a servitor spirit. The inugami can 
  be made to kill and mutilate enemies, hunt 
  down foes, or even possess targets and 
  compel them to madness or suicide.
  Sha (Egypt)
  These unidentifiable beasts are called 
  “Set-animals” because they accompany the 
  god Set in tomb paintings and sculptures. 
  The word sha is a determinative, used 
  to indicate words associated with chaos, 
  insanity, violence, storms, or perturbation.
  Shunka Warakin (Iowa)
  This is the “Dog Carries Off” spirit of the Ioway 
  Indians, very similar to the akhlut or the cadejo.
  T’ien-kou (China)
  The Dog of Heaven eats the moon and sun 
  during eclipses, threatening to upset time 
  and destroy the heavens. It is driven away by 
  the curved bow of the hero Chang Hsien.
  Tindalo (Solomon Islands)
  A powerful chief or sorcerer becomes 
  a ghost, or tindalo, when he dies. A 
  tindalo’s mana deforms, kills, or infects 
  those who trespass on its vanuha, a 
  place marked off by special stones or 
  statues. Living sorcerers called mane 
  kisu control or tap a tindalo by means of 
  tattoos, marks, or trance rituals. When 
  they die, they become (or return to the) 
  tindalo, which is eternal.
  investigations
  Keepers should treat this section, 
  and use these elements, even more 
  idiosyncratically.
  Clues
  Perforce, the clues in this section mostly 
  point to “conventional” Hounds as 
  painted in Long’s story “The Hounds 
  of Tindalos.” Many of them refer to the 
  drug Liao, which Long’s protagonist 
  took to perceive all time simultaneously 
  – unfortunately, including the Hounds. 
  Feel free to adjust them at will.
  Accounting: I tell you, it’s impossible. 
  Nobody could have that kind of good 
  luck buying mining shares unless he 
  had inside information. Perhaps if he’d 
  seen the rocks laid down a billion years 
  ago, he could do a better job than this. 
  (Geology)
  Anthropology: This is a “tindalo” 
  boomerang, probably carved on the 
  island of Tulagi around 1900. Note the 
  angled geometric design contrasting 
  with the smoothly curved wood – 
  you can see this same work on clubs, 
  paddles; other curved wooden items. 
  This boomerang is splintered, of course, 
  meaning the tindalo’s power has escaped.
  Archaeology: The missing man was an 
  enthusiastic participant in the underground 
  trade in certain ancient tablets depicting – 
  ah – obscene forms and, um, activities. 
  Inscriptions on those tablets prominently 
  mention this blue, er, slime.
  Architecture: This circular room 
  was added in the last few months, 
  probably by the householder himself – 
  the workmanship is rushed and hardly 
  professional.
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  8
  Hideous Creatures
  Art History: Picasso and Braque 
  invented Cubism – art that looks 
  simultaneously at all angles of a subject 
  – just after a private show of Melanesian 
  and African tribal art. Picasso was also 
  inspired by Gauguin’s sculpture Oviri 
  (Sauvage), depicting a Tahitian goddess 
  killing two ferocious hounds.
  Assess Honesty: That woman was 
  really, seriously, in fear of her life. Her 
  dreams may sound wild to us, but she 
  believes them implicitly. When that dog 
  barked outside, she jumped out of her skin.
  Astronomy: The constellation Draco 
  represents the Serpent of the Fall, 
  although the Arabs called it the Jackals. 
  Its Egyptian name was Tanem, and 
  they identified it with the Devourer of 
  Souls. Code for some cosmic predator 
  intimately connected with the dawn of 
  consciousness?
  Biology: The fluid resembles living 
  protoplasm, but lacks enzymes. Without 
  enzymes, cells should not be able to 
  move or live, yet this matter is alive. 
  Enzymes also hydrolyze dying cells: 
  without enzymes, protoplasm might 
  never die, possessing enduring vitality, 
  i.e., immortality. Enzymes are the 
  negative components, so to speak, of 
  unicellular organism, which is the basis 
  of all life. That living matter can exist 
  without enzymes is impossible.
  Bureaucracy: The clerks are unanimous 
  in their insistence that no “Valerie 
  Collinswood” appears in any city record; 
  places where she should appear (like the 
  title deed on her house) are smudged or 
  blank. It’s as though her very historical 
  existence has been devoured.
  Chemistry: The bluish slime on the 
  body seemed almost alive, but it was 
  completely anaerobic, and contained 
  polyphosphates and hydrogen sulfide 
  rather than proteins. It no longer burns, 
  although when it was on the victim, it 
  must have been highly acidic judging 
  from his wounds.
  Cop Talk: You would not believe the 
  number of calls Animal Control got 
  that night – it seems everyone awake 
  thought they saw a wild dog in the street 
  or in their house, though none of their 
  descriptions matched. Or even made 
  much sense.
  Credit Rating (1-2): The cleaning 
  woman has a family to feed. She didn’t 
  know that taking money to leave a bent 
  hairpin in the room would do any harm, 
  but she’ll describe the man who paid 
  her as long as we keep her out of it and 
  nobody tells the heat.
  Evidence Collection: Whoever was 
  in this room filled in all the corners 
  with plaster and got rid of all their 
  furniture except rounded pieces. They 
  even puttied over the corners of their 
  windows and picture frames.
  Forensics: The body was found flat 
  on its back, burned and corroded as if 
  by acid, but covered with a non-acidic 
  bluish slime. The head was severed and 
  laid on the chest, covering a hole drilled 
  with some sort of smooth-sided tool. 
  The hole somehow did not puncture any 
  organs. The cause of death was a massive 
  coronary. The body showed old needle 
  tracks indicating drug use, but none 
  were found in the system.
  Geology: Look, if these things are 
  trapped on the other side of the life 
  barrier – in the Pre-Archaean – then 
  perhaps that life can hold them back! 
  Blue-green algae was the first life on 
  Earth, and it leaves stromatolite fossils in 
  smooth, rolling curves. Unfortunately, 
  we need a hypersaline lake for living 
  stromatolites, and the nearest one is in 
  the Mexican desert.
  History: The descriptions in his “dream 
  journal” tally exactly with eyewitness 
  records of the Battle of Bouvines in 
  1214 – records that have never been 
  published, and certainly not in English.
  Law: The search warrant explicitly 
  mentions “narcotics” but none were 
  found in the murder room according 
  to the official police record. Is someone 
  covering up a drug ring in the police 
  force, or is something else going on?
  Library Use: The back files of the 
  Partridgeville (N.Y.) Gazette contain 
  a story of a very similar murder: that 
  of the occultist and novelist Halpin 
  Chalmers, on July 5, 1928. He was found 
  in a locked room naked, beheaded, and 
  covered in blue slime. (Cop Talk)
  Medicine: Apart from the obvious 
  signs of heavy drug use, I suspect that she 
  hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in almost 
  a month. Her pulse and heart rate are 
  thready and elevated, evidence of near-
  constant stress. The closest parallel I 
  recall is some of the worst shell-shock 
  cases during the War, under heavy 
  bombardment for weeks on end.
  Occult: Halpin Chalmers’ The Secret 
  Watcher (Charnel House, 1927) contains a 
  number of speculations about the nature of 
  “parallel life,” originating with a force before 
  time and matter. This force is the “Secret 
  Watcher” of the title, acting in our dimension 
  through agents called the Doels. As Chalmers 
  wrote, “It moves through strange curves and 
  outrageous angles. Someday I shall travel in 
  time and meet it face to face.”
  Oral History: The villagers all agree: 
  the Hell-Hound appears every 204 years 
  and carries off the heir to the Brachan 
  manor. In 1734, it is blamed for Sir James 
  Brachan’s disappearance. In 1530, they 
  say it took a barmaid’s son, who was 
  posthumously judged to be Lord Brachan’s 
  bastard by the local bishop and by a ducal 
  court of inquiry. They say the Hound can 
  always smell the true bloodline of the 
  knight who first called it up in 1122.
  Outdoorsman: I don’t know how 
  this 
  Cimolestes 
  skeleton 
  turned 
  up buried in this guy’s wall – it’s a 
  primordial shrew that’s been extinct 
  for 60 million years. (Biology)
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  9
  Hounds of Tindalos
  Pharmacy: This sample of the so-
  called “Liao” drug is a combination of 
  vegetable resin and refined alkaloids: 
  the closest parallel might be an 
  opium-nuciferine blend, but there 
  are trace chemicals quite similar to 
  the DMT molecule synthesized in 
  1931 by Richard Manske. Whatever 
  is in it is definitely psychoactive, and 
  could easily cause hallucinations and 
  paranoia.
  Physics: In 1905, the German 
  physicist 
  Arnold 
  Sommerfeld 
  theorized that an electron moving 
  faster than light would move backward 
  in time, or perhaps set up an infinite 
  corridor linking the remote past and 
  the present. As early as 1889, Oliver 
  Heaviside predicted that such motion 
  would release a bright blue flash just 
  like that described by the witnesses.
  Sense Trouble: What’s that horrific 
  stench? It’s pungent, acrid, and 
  nauseating, but smells like nothing 
  you’ve ever encountered.
  Streetwise: Sure, I can put you in 
  touch with the On Leong tong. They’ll 
  know who’s running Liao, or rather, 
  who’s running the real stuff. You know 
  as well as I do that half the “Liao” on 
  the street is just tar and incense.
  Theology: The sage Chuang Tzu 
  records that Confucius “slept beneath 
  the straw dogs” and received both 
  prophetic dreams and nightmares that 
  endangered his life. The Tao Te Ching 
  mentions these “straw dogs” implying 
  they encompass all the “ten thousand 
  things” and that the “inhumane” Sage 
  consigns mankind to them.
  Scenario Seeds
  Here are a few Tindalosian tales to get 
  your angles jangling.
  Fugue in the Key of Dee
  A long-lost John Dee manuscript has 
  surfaced in Manchester, where he served 
  as warden of the College at the end of 
  his life. Written in code, De Flectatura 
  Tempore apparently deals with the most 
  abstruse mathematics. A report in the 
  Empire News claims that the physicist 
  Sir Arthur Schuster read the translation 
  and confirmed that Dee had “anticipated 
  Einstein” – amazing news, if true. 
  The eminent scholar died (October 
  17, 1934) the day after that report 
  ran, and his family and the university 
  have denied everything. The supposed 
  translation with Schuster’s alleged notes 
  has disappeared – a controversy worth 
  looking into.
  
  TRAIL OF CTHULHU
  10
  Hideous Creatures
  Book-Hounds may also want to look into 
  the De Flectatura Tempore manuscript 
  itself: it should sell for a pretty penny if 
  the frantic flurry of client telegrams is 
  any indication. The eccentric occultist 
  who found it isn’t interested in a sale, 
  but not everyone finds that an obstacle. 
  Investigators or Book-Hounds find 
  themselves trapped in a battle between 
  rival sects of Tindalos-cultists: the book 
  may hold Dee’s reconstruction of the 
  Seal of Tindalos, offering safety from, and 
  perhaps command over, the Hounds.
  Don’t Mess With Tindalos
  In 1938, paleontologist Roland Bird 
  discovers a long series of brontosaur tracks 
  fossilized in stone near Glen Rose, Texas. 
  He visits Glen Rose following rumors 
  that human footprints could be found 
  in the same stone, but leaves without 
  seeing anything definitive on that front. 
  Drawn by the publicity, later gawkers 
  and Bible-thumping creationist preachers 
  “discover” human tracks thereabouts: 
  one set of tracks shows human footprints 
  in fossilized stone, running flat out away 
  from the tracks of an unknown beast.
  The attention to the prints slowly draws 
  the Hound that made them out of the 
  Jurassic toward Glen Rose. Its approach 
  leaves more prints, which draw more 
  attention. Eventually, the Investigators, the 
  Hound, and the small town of Glen Rose 
  meet in time and space: possibly, not ours.
  The Dunne-ish Horror
  In 1927, the Irish aeronautical engineer 
  J.W. Dunne published An Experiment 
  With Time, which became hugely 
  influential and massively read. In it, he 
  posits that all time exists simultaneously: 
  past, present, and future. Dunne proposes 
  the following experiment to test his 
  theory: record your dreams minutely, and 
  compare them to future events. The more 
  correspondences, the more likely the 
  theory is to be true.
  Unfortunately, some of the millions 
  of people now dreaming of time 
  are watching the distant past – and 
  attracting the attention of the Hounds. 
  Used to chasing down one or two 
  occultists a century, suddenly Tindalos 
  reels under perceptual assaults. The 
  Hounds prepare a sweep through 
  humanity to sever its time-sense 
  forever – and the Investigators have 
  dreamed of the point in space-time 
  their assault will break through. This 
  can be a single adventure turning 
  aside the lead Hound, or build to the 
  climax of an entire campaign designed 
  to harness Mythos time- and dream-
  travel and prepare for war against the 
  Precambrian.
  Every Dog Has Its Day
  In the summer of 1935, Wing 
  Commander Victor Goddard flew 
  his Hawker Hart through “purplish-
  yellow clouds” and a strange electrical 
  storm. Below him, he saw the derelict 
  RAF base at Drem, Scotland restored 
  to military activity – complete 
  with strange yellow-painted planes, 
  including a futuristic monoplane he 
  didn’t recognize. Either that (a “friend 
  at the Ministry” asks them to look into 
  Goddard’s wild story) or the reports 
  of a red-eyed black hound shrieking 
  in the woods near Dunbar draw the 
  Investigators to East Lothian.
  That county famously tried and 
  executed hundreds of witches between 
  1560 and 1705, among them one 
  Jane Baird, of Tyninghame, burnt in 
  1661. She had used her hyperspatial 
  geometries to bind a Hound to herself; 
  on the advice of a local scholar, the 
  parish paid for a candle to burn in 
  perpetuity on a precise spot tangent 
  to it, sealing her and the Hound up 
  together at the moment of her fiery 
  death. Construction work in the 
  church extinguished the candle; the 
  Hound now scrabbles at local space-
  time to escape.
  Bibliography
  The seminal tale of the Hounds 
  of Tindalos is, of course, Frank 
  Belknap Long’s story “The Hounds 
  of Tindalos.” Lovecraft mentions the 
  Hounds briefly in “The Whisperer 
  in Darkness,” officially canonizing 
  beasts that heretofore had no direct 
  Cthulhoid connection. Long wrote 
  his own reimagining of his story, 
  “Gateway to Forever,” which appears 
  along with Peter Cannon’s satirical 
  extensions of the “Chalmers Mythos” 
  and several other less notable stories in 
  The Tindalos Cycle from Hippocampus 
  Press. Michael Cisco’s “Firebrands 
  of Torment,” in that anthology, does 
  at least look at the Hounds (and 
  “Hounds”) from a different angle.
  The Hounds also appear as more-
  conventional dark-fantasy monsters in 
  Brian Lumley’s Elysia and The Transition 
  of Titus Crow, as they did in the 
  Howardian round-robin “novel” Ghor 
  Kin-Slayer (three chapters of which 
  also appear in The Tindalos Cycle). 
  Roger Zelazny brings the “Hounds of 
  Thandalos” on stage toward the end 
  of his fantasy novel The Changing Land, 
  where they are effective but hardly 
  cosmic threats.
  Brian 
  Sammons’ 
  “One-Way 
  Conversation” and Elizabeth Bear and 
  Sarah Monette’s “Mongoose” both 
  present science-fictional takes on the 
  Hounds. Adam Niswander’s The Hound 
  Hunters brings the Tindaloth into the 
  American Southwest, and Thomas 
  Monteleone’s Fantasma makes them 
  the secret weapon in a mob war. Chris 
  Lackey’s “Snack Time” plays interesting 
  games with the Hound(s?); that story 
  appears in Shotguns v. Cthulhu.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Ken Writes About Stuff/Ken Writes About Stuff Vol. 1/Hideous Creatures - Hounds of Tindalos.pdf