Malleus Monstrorum Cthulhu Mythos Bestiary
Malleus Monstrorum Cthulhu Mythos Bestiary is Chaosium’s go-to compendium regarding the wide scope of inhuman horrors that your investigators may encounter through the course of their bad life choices in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. This two-volume set covers everything from how to play monsters, how to create them, all the way up to how the big guns like the game’s namesake operate.
Malleus Monstrorum delves into the absolute horror you can create for your players by putting forth everything else except giving them the monster’s name. The first volume goes into the imaginary feast you can create by evoking what it looks like, how it smells, how it (I’d avoid doing this so much) feels, but don’t give what the beastie actually is away.
“The easy identification of a monster takes away the mystery and reveals details about the plot.” There is what the player knows and what the investigator knows. If your player has ran into a Star Vampire twenty times before, but their investigator just stepped off a bus in Hoboken, NJ and is assaulted by one in the restaurant bathroom (it could happen and you know it), referring to it as a Star Vampire and thereby accessing the player’s past experience with it, you give the investigator an insight they have no business having. This dilutes the horror.
The Malleus Monstrorum goes deep into the creation of a monster as an experience rather than a known thing. Sure, your players may learn what they’re dealing with through the course of a scenario or campaign, but they stand a better chance of learning what the thing is at the same time their investigators do. I think that creates a more rewarding experience.
How to use Sanity rolls effectively with monsters and descriptions during combat are also gone into. Even tips on how to approach describing the thing’s death should the investigators take it out is analyzed. Your party takes out a Dark Young? Don’t just say “It thumps to the ground, lifeless.” They deserve better than that. Make it awful. Make it visceral. Make it worth another Sanity check.
If you want to create your own Mythos abominations, the Malleus Monstrorum has you covered. It helps you take your creation from inspiration all the way through to statistics and capabilities until you have your own very special TPK-maker.
Chapter 2 of the first volume of Malleus Monstrorum is an exhaustive collection of various horrors you can bring into your game. It starts off with the Spawn of Abhoth, along with a genuinely messed up picture to help you visualize it. It’s just wrong. So, so gloriously wrong.
This chapter, along with chapters 3 and 4, contain far over 100 Mythos horrors along with monsters from various world folktales as well as entries regarding various animals. Wanna kill your investigators with a moose? Now you can. They’ll probably be pissed about being taken out by something so non-squamous, but now you can.
The second volume of Malleus Monstrorum is dedicated completely to the Mythos deities. Not just individual ones, but the relation between themselves and humanity. The volume puts for the different “classifications” of the various Mythos deities, as much as such a term holds with such entities. There’s a breakdown between the Greater and Lesser Old Ones, the Outer Gods, and Elder Gods, Other beings such as Avatars are covered as well.
There’s a decent bit of content regarding the Mythos as it relates to humanity. Malleus Monstrorum doesn’t really seek to uncover the mystery behind the Mythos. Rather, it delves into the effect of the Mythos on their cultists and investigators.
These are beings of vast power who operate beyond a scale that the human mind can comprehend even in small measure. What does that look like to someone who worships them? How does it affect investigators who are trying to thwart them? This section of the second volume gives excellent overviews on how to answer those questions in the game, and create a fuller game experience in the process.
The second chapter of this volume goes deep into the various deities of the Mythos. There are of course the MVPs such as Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and Shub-Niggurath. However, the book is also filled with lesser-knowns such as Groth-gollca, Pharol, and Tulzscha, Info is also given for various Avatars including about 15 Avatars of Nyarlathotep, and the Ravening One, Avatar of Hastur.
When possible, information such as how the deity in question interacts with their cult, powers they may confer on their cultists, what an encounter with these beings face-to-whatever may look like, and also a description of the aura that surrounds them. All of this material goes a long way toward creating descriptive encounters, allowing you to flesh them out far past the “indescribable” fallback.
For the immensity of Malleus Monstrorum, none of the content is throw-away or filler. This is an excellent resource for those who want more out of the beasties in their game, or want to take a shot at creating their own cosmic horrors. All in all, Malleus Monstrorum sets an excellent standard for RPG bestiary collections, both now and in the future,
Malleus Monstorum Cthulhu Mythos Bestiary is currently available in PDF format directly through Chaosium. If you buy the PDF from them, you can purchase the hardcover when it’s released at a discount price.