Chaugnar Faugn

**Chaugnar Faugn**, or simply **Chaugnar**, is an extradimensional predator that came to Earth from a distant world in outer space, over a billion years ago.

Physically, it is a bipedal reptilian creature, whose appearance is often likened to an elephant due to a long flexible proboscis, a pair of large membranous ears, and a pair of tusks. However, the proboscis isn't an elephantine trunk as much as a tubular snout, terminating on a disk-shaped mouth about a foot in diameter, which is used to suck the blood of its victims. The ears are webbed and tentacled, and the tusks are made out of a translucent material and intertwined at the tips. Its hands, conversely, are human-like. Prior to its coming to Earth, it had a different body, with long ropy arms that it used to absorb nutrients from lava pools.

Chaugnar's physical composition is mineral-like, making it resemble a stone statue when immobile. Its actual structure is unlike anything else on Earth, and can't be properly classified as either inorganic or organic. Despite this, Chaugnar can feed on human blood. When it feeds on the blood of the same individual for several days, the victim experiences a grotesque transformation, as their own facial features deform to resemble a disfigured parody of Chaugnar Faugn itself, including a flabby elongated nose and enlarged ears.

In the past, Chaugnar Faugn was served by its Brothers (which might be more accurately described as extensions or projections of Chaugnar itself, although they seem to be capable of independent thought and action), as well as by its own creations, the Miri Nigri, which are little more than organic automata animated by Chaugnar's will. It is also worshiped by a dedicated cult centered in the inhospitable Plateau of Tsang in central Asia, the ranks of which include humans and mysterious faceless creatures (possibly the Mi-Go, which are known to be present on the Plateau).

According to the Rajah of Jadhore, Chaugnar Faugn might be the same entity as the Hindu god Ganesha and the Hyperborean god Tsathoggua.

## Biography

Before it came to Earth, Chaugnar dwelt inside a glowing cone at the rim of a crater in an extragalactic world, and slept while absorbing nutrients from pools of lava with its ropy arms.

Occultist Roger Little estimated that the physical form that Chaugnar Faugn assumed on Earth dates back to about a billion years, although he later suggested that the being might have been present on Earth as early as two billion years ago, when it used the flesh of swarms of planktonic organisms to create the Miri Nigri.

At first, Chaugnar fed on other extraterrestrial beings that had likewise come to Earth to colonize the planet. It then switched to consuming Earth's native life as it developed.

By the time of the Roman Empire, Chaugnar and its Brothers dwelt in a cave in Europe, in the Pyrenees, and were served by the humanoid Miri Nigri. Twice a year, the Miri Nigri were sent down to the villages to kidnap young men and women, so that Chaugnar and its Brothers could feed on them. The Romans tried to exterminate the Miri Nigri, and while their legions were brutally massacred by Chaugnar Faugn's Brothers, Chaugnar itself preferred to find a new abode where it wouldn't be bothered by such conflicts. While its Brothers remained in the Pyrenees, Chaugnar moved to Asia, where it gained new servitors in the form of the prophet Mu Sang and his descendants.

The prophecy of Mu Sang claimed that if Chaugnar Faugn was carried safely "beyond the rising sun" it would grow to devour everything in the world: animal, vegetable and mineral. Even its own Brothers would be devoured by it. Only the faithful followers that sent Chaugnar into its journey would be spared.

For millennia, Chaugnar Faugn remained in the Plateau of Tsang in central Asia, served by human and non-human worshipers. Far from a benevolent god, Chaugnar was known for its cruel and capricious nature, feeding on its own cultists' blood as it pleased, and sometimes devouring them altogether, to the point that its very followers were eager to find a way to get rid of it, but feared the god's retaliation if they tried to.

When an American archaeologist named Clark Ulman arrived at the Plateau, the cultists took advantage of the prophecy that claimed that Chaugnar Faugn would be carried "beyond the rising sun", being nursed and guarded along the way, and that afterwards it would claim the entire world. They offered Ulman to Chaugnar Faugn, who fed on the explorer's blood, and ordered Ulman to take Chaugnar (in its dormant form that could pass off as a stone idol) to America with him. Although tempted to throw the thing overboard during the trip, Ulman was too conscious of the god's powers, and fearful of its vengeance, so he duly took Chaugnar to the Manhattan Museum of Fine Arts.

Ulman did warn the museum's curator, his young friend Algernon Harris, about the true nature of the "statue", and urged him to destroy it, but not even Ulman's disfigured state (a side effect of Chaugnar's feeding on his blood) was enough to convince Harris that the idol was a real living entity. As he tried to warn Harris, Ulman suddenly fell dead, telepathically killed by Chaugnar as punishment.

After Ulman's death (misattributed to heart failure caused by extreme anxiety), Harris agreed to put Chaugnar Faugn on display in the museum to appease the press and the public. On the same night, sensitive individuals such as occultist and inventor Roger Little and laundry shop owner Hsieh Ho experienced strange dreams related to Chaugnar Faugn's return. Hsieh Ho's dream led him to go to the museum at night, where he witnessed Chaugnar feeding on a museum watchman named Cinney, whose body was found on the next morning, bloodless and mutilated, with nothing of Cinney's face remaining. The Chaugnar "statue", meanwhile, was found covered in blood, particularly on its mouth and tusks. Meanwhile, in Europe, Chaugnar's Brothers likewise started to descend from the mountains and attack humans, leaving rows of decapitated and exsanguinated bodies scattered over the valleys.

At last willing to believe in Ulman's story, Harris sought help from Roger Little, after learning about him from ethnologist Henry C. Imbert. Little recognized the urgency of the situation and the extreme danger that Chaugnar Faugn posed to mankind, and proposed to use his invention, the entropy-reversing machine, to destroy Chaugnar's physical form and banish it back to the higher dimensional plane it had come from.

Together, Little, Harris and Imbert estimated Chaugnar's location by the string of deaths reported, and pursued the monster by car, with Little's entropy-reversing machine mounted atop the vehicle. While ordinary matter was annihilated by the briefest exposure to the destructive beam, Chaugnar's antiquity and abnormal composition required several minutes of continuous exposure before its body finally started to collapse, banishing Chaugnar and its Brothers (linked to it extradimensionally) back to the alien realm they originated from.

## Abilities

Made of an unidentified, extraordinarily tough material that is neither mineral nor organic, Chaugnar Faugn's body usually stands about 4 ft. in height (~ 1.21 meters) and weighs as much as granite, being easily mistaken for a stone statue when immobile. However, it is able to grow in size by altering its molecular structure, becoming at the same time larger and less dense.

Being native to a higher dimension, Chaugnar's physical form is merely a manifestation of it, and even the destruction of its body would amount only to a temporary incapacitation, as opposed to permanent death, although it might take years or centuries to reform itself. Like a vampire, it seems to form a psychic connection to its victims, to the point of being able to kill them telepathically. It can also manipulate the dreams of psychically sensitive individuals.

Chaugnar Faugn's worshipers believe that all of time and space is contained within Chaugnar Faugn, and that after creating the universe, it inserted itself into it, to remain until the day it would consume and reabsorb its creation, making all of existence part of it. Conversely, Roger Little opined that, for all its power, Chaugnar Faugn was not a literal god, but a naturally-evolved being: "the spawn of remote worlds and unholy dimensions, but a creature and not a creator, a creature obeying inexorable laws and occupying a definite niche in the cosmos".

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 *The Horror from the Hills*, by Frank Belknap Long (1931)
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "When Chaugnar Wakes", by Frank Belknap Long (1932)
3. ↑ "The Dweller in the Tomb", by Lin Carter (1971)
4. ↑ "Death Is an Elephant", by Robert Bloch (1939)