Anyone Recognise This Story?? Poss. Inspiration For Tindalos Models?

[Profane Creation]

I recall, probably near on 20 years ago, reading in one of my Primary School reading books this story that's stuck with me ever since. I'm hoping maybe it rings a bell with someone here.

The basic plot was about this girl who had to walk through these woods to get to her granmother's house. Now, in these woods there lurked these beasts in the treetops, a bit like ethereal-ish rays or skates, which would prey on men, but for some reason never harmed women. I think it described them a bit like a skate or a stingray or something. Anyway the story was more the girl musing on these critters and her emotions flitting between fear and actually feeling safe around these things. Obviously nothing bad happened, it was in a school book intended for 7 or 8 year-olds. But I remember these things in the trees that would fly down and hunt men. It was only a few pages, and if it were more than just a short story then it was a fairly complete exerp. Also, I believe it was a contemporary story.

Does this ring a bell with anyone?


As I say the idea of "air-skates", for lack of a better term, has never left me, and not long after I began reading Lovecraft I started sketching my own Mythos beasties, one of which was a nightmarish "air-skate" with a stylet in it's tubelike mouth and a prehensile tail for hanging onto treetops. Then I read The Hounds of Tindalos- the two kind of connected and not it's how I imagine the Hounds to look... I've got one figure somewhere that looks a bit like this that tends to appear and then disappear out of the depths of my lead piles every now and then (think it might have been for D&D??? A ray with a scorpion-like tail?) but I'd be keen to find more like this; does anyone know of such a thing?

[Connectamabob]

Dunno about the story. Certainly sounds interesting.

I Like the Hound of Tindalos related idea though. Seemed obvious to me reading the original story that the word "hound" was in reference to their role or behavior, not their physical shape. Admittedly recognition value is important in a gaming mini, but making them literally dog like seems... rather bluntly unimaginative, at best. I'd personally welcome more exotic HoT concepts.

[TheBlueShoggoth]

Dunno about the story. Certainly sounds interesting.

I Like the Hound of Tindalos related idea though. Seemed obvious to me reading the original story that the word "hound" was in reference to their role or behavior, not their physical shape. Admittedly recognition value is important in a gaming mini, but making them literally dog like seems... rather bluntly unimaginative, at best. I'd personally welcome more exotic HoT concepts.

I always thought this was the best depiction of a Hound myself :


Allthough id change the head a bit as it looks a bit too earthlike (maybe more eyes?)

[Connectamabob]

It's definitely a good start. I agree the head needs to be redone to make it less terrestrial. Different eyes, different mouth structure. I keep picturing something like one of the "heads" of the 456 from Torchwood, only with a whiplike retractable tube/tentacle dangling out of the mouth hole... thing, but even that seems not quite there for some reason. I dunno, have to think about it.

I also keep thinking maybe they should look like a cubist painting in 3D, what with all the talk of angles vs. curves, but then again maybe that's too literal. It's not like angles in that sense are anything foreign to our "curve based" reality. More likely IMO it's part of the character awkwardly struggling to express concepts our language doesn't have the vocab for.

Hope I'm not derailing the thread too much.

[Profane Creation]

Not at all, but I can't see the picture

[B. Basiliscus]

Neither can I. 

[archangel1]

Don't recognize the story but the creatures remind me of 'the Dark' from Barbara Hambly's Darwath Trilogy (great reads).

'...Rudy got a hideous glimpse of the fanning canopy of shadow and the endless, engulfing mouth, fringed in sloppy tentacles whose writhings splattered the floor with smoking slime...the creature drew back, unbelievably agile for that soft floating bulk, the slack of its serpentlike tail brushing Rudy's shoulders as it uncoiled in a whip of darkness...'

Good stuff!

No pics here, either. 

[Connectamabob]

When I first looked I couldn't see it either, so I clicked "quote" to view the plaintext, and copy-pasted the URL from there. I put something in my post about the img tags maybe not working right, but then after I hit "submit" the pic was there in the thread where it hadn't been before, so I figured it was just my own connection or browser at fault and edited out the comment about it not showing up.

Anyhoo, here's the pic TheBlueShoggoth posted:

http://www.templeofdagon.com/artwork/toren-macbin-atkinson/Hound_of_Tindalos.jpg

I tried redoing the img tags, but whenever  I hit "preview" or "submit" the forum software automatically changes them to something that doesn't work. Looks like maybe the forum is trying to resize it, but keeps getting its own code mixed up, resulting in a blank space where the resized image should be.

... And now the very same URL is leading to a 404 page instead of the pic. Brilliant.

... And now the URL works again, but Ghostery is telling me there's something weird attached to the page that I can't decipher. Malware installer? Web tracker? Half-bothered anti-hotlinking code? Otherdimensional entity trying to get in through the internet? I can't tell, I'm not programmer enough to make heads or tails of the alphanumeric soup it's showing me.

Heh, there's an idea for a story: a URL that acts as a conduit/doorway for a mythos beastie, so that if you open it in an unprotected browser, the beastie can manifest out your screen and into your local meatspace.

[archangel1]

Okay, is this the beastie in question?

[Connectamabob]

Yarp.

[B. Basiliscus]

That's always been my absolute favorite hound as well - and I also agree that more eyes couldn't hurt!

As for your mystery story, I don't have the faintest, unfortunately.
Love the idea of ray shaped outsiders, I do hope we can turn up some kind of lead.

[LidlessEye]

I think I have a few of those in my collection of rarely-used Call of Cthulhu CCG cards.  Not a bad game, actually, though I can only speak to the old collectible version.  And now I'm surprised to discover it's from an artist who contributed to Shocking Tales #2 - small world, it seems!

Very much agreed though that "hound" may be partially a visual descriptor, but mainly speaks to their behaviour.  Long never describes them explicitly in his story (an excellent read, incidentally, if you haven't had the opportunity - Long may be the best writer among Lovecraft's "disciples"), but makes it clear that they are distinctly not of our world.

Back to the original post, while it's not the story in question, I was reminded of certain similarities to (again, coincidentally) Frank Belknap Long's 'The Space Eaters' which features nasty beasts dwelling in forests, dropping from trees and burrowing into their unfortunate victim's brains.  Of course the creatures in that are described as "all long, crawling legs", but the parallel is still interesting.

[Profane Creation]

Heh, there's an idea for a story: a URL that acts as a conduit/doorway for a mythos beastie, so that if you open it in an unprotected browser, the beastie can manifest out your screen and into your local meatspace.

Pickman's Modem? Actually there was a short by that name, by Lawrence Watt-Evans but I don't remember much about it. Don't think I enjoyed it as much as I hoped.

[Alxbates]

I always liked Lumley's description of Hounds of Tindalos (Tind'losi hounds) as like flapping rags in a vaguely canine shape, bits appearing and disappearing as they moved.

Ever seen a piece of paper or plastic bag blowing in the wind, that will occasionally look like a bird flapping its wings, or a fish wriggling?  Imagine that, but pony-sized, with teeth, and made of unearthly meat.

That's how I imagine the Hounds.

-Alex

[Connectamabob]

That sounds really cool, I can totally picture that.

Still think they shouldn't look like dogs at all though, not even vaguely. Beyond even the point of not being quadrupeds, or having limbs with common chordate joint architectures (another point against the art above). There's nothing in the original story to imply the word "hound" is even partly a physical descriptor, and the stuff that is said about them makes about as extreme a case for a "the more alien the better" as can be.