Kruel'shekt - The Chuul
If you find the ribcage-shaped stones near the tidepools, turn around. The marsh doesn’t end there — it sinks. And he waits beneath, like a promise forgotten by time.
Role in Its Society:
Kruel'shekt is no mindless aberration. Once a temple guardian in service to ancient aboleths, he survived their collapse — and worse, he remembered. Where most chuuls serve with blind loyalty, Kruel’shekt clings to a shattered theology, treating aberrant knowledge as scripture and seeking new disciples through dream-invasion and psychic drowning.
In his lair beneath the sunken ruins of an ancient worship-site, he acts as high priest and keeper of secrets, preserving alien relics and turning wayward minds toward the Deep Memory.
To the surface world, he is myth: “The One Who Watches From Beneath.” To mind flayers and other aberrants, he’s a relic too dangerous to trust, and too stubborn to erase.
Appearance Description:
An immense crustacean-like form, Kruel'shekt’s chitin is stained black and green with rot-moss and layered barnacles. His eyes glow with unnatural yellow light, and his tentacle-beard twitches constantly, sensing thoughts. Several gold and stone relics — seemingly fused into his shell — shimmer with aboleth runes. His massive claws bear sigils etched deep by scarified ritual, not battle.
Backstory:
Once a holy sentinel in the temple-halls of the drowned aboleth city Ylkresh (now lost beneath the Briarthorn Bluffs of Eldervast), Kruel'shekt was left behind when his masters perished or ascended. But the Deep Memory, the collective psionic imprint of his creators, remained.
Over time, his mind twisted not from decay, but from devotion. He believes he is the last keeper of sacred truths — and that it is his duty to baptize others in madness, to spread the ancient knowing like spores.
Now, he stalks the tidal tunnels and sunken fens, collecting broken minds and offering "memory communion" to those who stray too near.
