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Call of Cthulhu: Malleus Monstrorum: Cthulhu Mythos Bestiary
That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die...
Here, shall you know the terrors of the void, the nightmare bringers, and the unspeakable lurkers.
Ancient secrets, whispered lore, and collected facts concerning the alien and otherworldly horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. A cavalcade of monsters and god-like alien intelligences beyond human understanding, all vividly detailed and portrayed. With over 250 entries to inspire countless adventures.
The information within is designed to bring the creatures and bizarre races of the Cthulhu Mythos to life at the gaming table, as well as all manner of Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, Elder Gods, Avatars, and Unique Beings. Their lore and statistics updated and revised for the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition game. All brought to startling life by the illustrations of expert artist Loïc Muzy.
This two-volume collection is packed with ideas, concepts, and insights to immerse your scenarios and campaigns deep in the heart of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Volume I Monsters of the Mythos
Volume II Deities of the Mythos
Here, shall you know the terrors of the void, the nightmare bringers, and the unspeakable lurkers.
Ancient secrets, whispered lore, and collected facts concerning the alien and otherworldly horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. A cavalcade of monsters and god-like alien intelligences beyond human understanding, all vividly detailed and portrayed. With over 250 entries to inspire countless adventures.
The information within is designed to bring the creatures and bizarre races of the Cthulhu Mythos to life at the gaming table, as well as all manner of Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, Elder Gods, Avatars, and Unique Beings. Their lore and statistics updated and revised for the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition game. All brought to startling life by the illustrations of expert artist Loïc Muzy.
This two-volume collection is packed with ideas, concepts, and insights to immerse your scenarios and campaigns deep in the heart of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Volume I Monsters of the Mythos
Volume II Deities of the Mythos
480 pages, Hardcover
Published January 11, 2021
4 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Mike Mason
118 books80 followersMike Mason is the best-selling, award-winning author of The Blue Umbrella, The Mystery of Marriage, The Gospel According to Job, Champagne for the Soul, Twenty-One Candles, and many others. He has an M.A. in English and has studied theology at Regent College. He lives in Langley, BC, Canada, with his wife.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 2, 2021
This Malleus Monstrorum is a two-hardcover-book slipcase update of an earlier Chaosium publication and it brings a lot to the table. Just looking at the gorgeous and gross full blazing color cover art pieces for these books should convince you that it was worth the money. In function, it is an updated and expanded monster manual for Call of Cthulhu improving on the bestiary included in the Keeper Rulebook. You get better artistic representations of the monsters and a ton more ghoulies to play with.
The first book is for the comparatively mundane monsters. The first section of the book is a super helpful guide in to how to make alien monsters, well, more alien. It's a good reminder that most Cthulhu Mythos monsters are intelligent and they should act like it. This includes not necessarily going straight for the throat. Sometimes just being gross for a turn can have a lovely effect. And this helps because combat in Call of Cthulhu tends to be fast and brutal and giving the players more turns to realize their bullets aren't working may not be a bad thing.
The monster entries run the expected gamut from your Dark Young to your Deep Ones to your Fire Vampires and so forth. The fan favorites get some glorious artwork with a few getting full page spreads including a glorious rendering of a Hound of Tindalos. It functions well as an expansion on the bestiary in the Keeper Rulebook.
The second book is a giant list of mythos gods and godlike entities. Each god is given some flavor text, a semi-in-character write-up of its goals and status, a listing of any cults that may exist for it and how they operate (Including alien cults. The Mi-Go seem to worship everything), and possible encounters with the mythos being, and glorious combat stats (for if your players decide they want to go out in a blaze of futility). It makes a relatively compact package that gives you plenty of plot hooks you can extrapolate on and most entities are accompanied with some piece of artwork.
While I love the artistic renderings of the various and sundry mythos gods, one of them is represented by a picture of an idol of it instead. I absolutely adore the big gross paintings of the various gods but there is a part of me that wonders if maybe all of them should have been represented by effigies. A representation from a human mind incapable of grasping the whole of the being it's dreaming about would leave room for your imagination to fill in the blanks and you could add the details that really scare you. However, the big wonderful gross out art is kind of the selling point here and while that design choice might make more sense I can definitely see how it would hurt the product as a whole.
It's a lovely product with one primary problem: The books are rife with typographic errors. This Malleus Monstrorum is built up as a high-priced boutique product. This is kind of unacceptable in such a format. It gives the whole an unpolished tarnish. One of the mythos gods in the second book even has its name misspelled in big bold red letters. It's pretty galling. It's not enough to sink the product for me, I still really like it. But, a slipcase that expensive should be free of these very basic errors. Chaosium, are you having trouble finding copy editors? Put me in, coach! Will copy edit for product.
The first book is for the comparatively mundane monsters. The first section of the book is a super helpful guide in to how to make alien monsters, well, more alien. It's a good reminder that most Cthulhu Mythos monsters are intelligent and they should act like it. This includes not necessarily going straight for the throat. Sometimes just being gross for a turn can have a lovely effect. And this helps because combat in Call of Cthulhu tends to be fast and brutal and giving the players more turns to realize their bullets aren't working may not be a bad thing.
The monster entries run the expected gamut from your Dark Young to your Deep Ones to your Fire Vampires and so forth. The fan favorites get some glorious artwork with a few getting full page spreads including a glorious rendering of a Hound of Tindalos. It functions well as an expansion on the bestiary in the Keeper Rulebook.
The second book is a giant list of mythos gods and godlike entities. Each god is given some flavor text, a semi-in-character write-up of its goals and status, a listing of any cults that may exist for it and how they operate (Including alien cults. The Mi-Go seem to worship everything), and possible encounters with the mythos being, and glorious combat stats (for if your players decide they want to go out in a blaze of futility). It makes a relatively compact package that gives you plenty of plot hooks you can extrapolate on and most entities are accompanied with some piece of artwork.
While I love the artistic renderings of the various and sundry mythos gods, one of them is represented by a picture of an idol of it instead. I absolutely adore the big gross paintings of the various gods but there is a part of me that wonders if maybe all of them should have been represented by effigies. A representation from a human mind incapable of grasping the whole of the being it's dreaming about would leave room for your imagination to fill in the blanks and you could add the details that really scare you. However, the big wonderful gross out art is kind of the selling point here and while that design choice might make more sense I can definitely see how it would hurt the product as a whole.
It's a lovely product with one primary problem: The books are rife with typographic errors. This Malleus Monstrorum is built up as a high-priced boutique product. This is kind of unacceptable in such a format. It gives the whole an unpolished tarnish. One of the mythos gods in the second book even has its name misspelled in big bold red letters. It's pretty galling. It's not enough to sink the product for me, I still really like it. But, a slipcase that expensive should be free of these very basic errors. Chaosium, are you having trouble finding copy editors? Put me in, coach! Will copy edit for product.
Displaying 1 of 1 review