Nightgaunt

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A nightgaunt (also Night-Gaunt or night-gaunt) is a fictional race in the Cthulhu Mythos and is also part of H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. The creatures appear in the poem "Night-Gaunts" and the novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, both by Lovecraft. Nightgaunts were inspired by Lovecraft's childhood nightmares^[1].

Contents 1 Description 2 Dreamlands 3 Occurances in pop culture 4 References 4.1 Notes

[edit] Description

Nightgaunts have a vaguely human shape, but are thin, black (though they are often depicted as purple), and faceless. Their skin is slick and rubbery. They sport a pair of inward-facing horns on their heads, and have clawed hands and a long barbed tail. They can fly using a set of membranous wings. They are unintelligent (having no language or culture) and function as mere servitors.

[edit] Dreamlands

Nightgaunts guard Ngranek, an infamous mountain on the isle of Oriab in the Dreamlands. They sometimes capture unwary climbers, tickling them into submission with their claws and barbed tails, and carry them to the lower reaches of dreamland. Nightgaunts are sometimes used as steeds by the ghouls of the deeper Dreamlands, but do not like to fly over bodies of water.

[edit] Occurances in pop culture

• In the computer game Quest for Glory I: So You Want To Be A Hero, if the player sleeps in unsafe areas of the forest at night, the game will instantly end with a message saying “Looks Like the Night Gaunt Got You.” The accompanying illustration shows a dark silhouette of an unhorned humanoid.
• In the computer game The Battle for Wesnoth, the Nightgaunt is a level 3 undead unit evolved from the Shadow, which in turn is evolved from the Ghost. It appears as a dark, ghostly figure wearing a red and white mask and having a large set of claws on its hands. The Nightgaunt is able to conceal itself from enemies at night and also has the backstab ability when attacking.

[edit] References

• Lovecraft, Howard P. [1926] (1985). "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", in S.T. Joshi (ed.): At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, 7th corrected printing, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House. ISBN 0-87054-038-6. 

• Pearsall, Anthony B. (2005). The Lovecraft Lexicon, 1st ed., Tempe, AZ: New Falcon Pub. ISBN 1-56184-129-3. 

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Lovecraft once wrote in a letter to a friend: "When I was 6 or 7 I used to be tormented constantly with a peculiar type of recurrent nightmare in which a monstrous race of entities (called by me 'night-gaunts'—I don't know where I got hold of the name) used to snatch me up [and] carry me off... Undoubtedly I derived the [creatures' appearance] from the jumbled memory of Doré drawings (largely the illustrations to 'Paradise Lost') which fascinated me in waking hours". (Pearsall, "NIGHTS-GAUNTS", The Lovecraft Lexicon, p. 301.)