@Flying Mutation is a Flying Polyp.
In the most ancient and forbidden strata of Earth's prehistory—chronicled in fragmented Pnakotic Manuscripts and the fevered revelations of time-displaced minds—dwell references to the Flying Polyps, relentless extraterrestrial predators that once dominated the planet in eons unimaginable. These entities, also known as the Polypous Race or simply "the polyps," represent one of the Mythos' most alien and merciless threats: beings of pure malice, invisible to mortal eyes, driven by an inscrutable hunger that spared no life form in their path. To speak of them is to evoke the whistling winds of primordial terror, for they are the stuff of cosmic genocide.
The Flying Polyps arrived on Earth billions of years ago, descending from the stars in vast numbers to colonize a young, steaming world. Originating from unknown voids beyond our galaxy—perhaps light-years distant in space or incomprehensible gulfs in time—they were among the first sentient conquerors of the planet, predating even the Elder Things. Utterly inorganic and non-terrestrial in biology, they required no conventional sustenance beyond the vital energies or physical forms of other beings, which they harvested with ruthless efficiency.
Their psyche is wholly alien: no trace of mercy, curiosity, or societal structure beyond predatory coordination. They exist as a hive-like swarm, unified in purpose yet individualistic in savagery. Ancient texts describe them as embodiments of entropy and destruction, delighting in the extermination of rival species not for territory alone, but for the sheer annihilation of opposition.
The Flying Polyps are perpetually invisible under normal conditions, their forms shielded by some extradimensional refraction or innate camouflage that defies light and perception. When partially manifest—often during attack or feeding—they reveal glimpses of nightmare: vast, polypous bodies composed of ropy tentacles, fibrous lobes, and glistening, semi-transparent flesh that shifts and pulsates like living coral or fungal growths. Eyewitnesses (or rather, survivors of mind-swaps into prehistoric eras) report shapes evoking gigantic, floating jellyfish or amorphous slugs, studded with sensory organs, sucking orifices, and whip-like appendages.
Their movement produces a distinctive, eerie whistling—high-pitched and variable, like gale-force winds through jagged flutes—serving as both locomotion signature and psychological weapon, inducing primal dread.
The polyps' arsenal renders them nearly invincible to primitive or even advanced foes:
Invisibility and Flight: Effortless levitation and aerial mastery, allowing silent approach and evasion. They navigate winds at hurricane speeds, immune to gravity or physical barriers.
Physical Manipulation: Tentacles capable of crushing stone or flesh, extending dozens of feet to ensnare prey from afar.
Wind Mastery: Generation of localized tempests—torrents of razor-sharp gusts that flay skin, shatter structures, or hurl victims skyward. These "wind weapons" are their signature, carving basalt towers and eradicating armies.
Psychic Resistance: Impervious to the Great Race of Yith's mind-swapping technology, making mental assault futile.
Vital Feeding: They drain life force or consume bodies wholesale, leaving desiccated ruins or polished skeletons.
No known ward reliably repels them save underground sealing or advanced Yithian traps. Modern weapons fare poorly against their intangibility.
The polyps' dominion peaked in Earth's primordial ages, where they erected colossal cities of windowless black basalt towers—ruins later discovered in Australian deserts and beneath Antarctic ice. Their reign ended with the arrival of the Great Race of Yith, cone-shaped time-travelers who fled their doomed original world by projecting minds into Earth's native cones.
Enslaved at first by the polyps, the Yithians rebelled, developing technologies to combat invisibility and wind assaults. A cataclysmic war ensued, culminating in the Yithians driving the survivors underground, sealing them in vast cavern vaults with eldritch barriers.
Eons later, the polyps broke free, exacting vengeance by exterminating nearly all Yithian cone bodies on Earth—forcing the Great Race to flee forward in time by possessing future human minds (as experienced by Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee). Remnants of polyps persist in subterranean abysses, occasionally surfacing in remote wastes or drawn by disturbances. Ruins attributed to them—cyclopean, doorless towers—litter forgotten plateaus, whispering of their enduring hatred.
Prehistoric Wars: Central to "The Shadow Out of Time," where time-swapped humans witness the Yithian-polyp conflict.
Modern Echoes: Explorers in Australia's Great Sandy Desert have vanished near polyp ruins; seismic anomalies in deep mines hint at resurgent activity.
In Forbidden Tomes: Pnakotic Manuscripts detail their biology; Yithian archives (accessed via mind-swap) warn of their unquenchable rage.
The Flying Polyps embody the Mythos' inexorable cruelty: invaders who claim worlds not through conquest but obliteration, leaving silence in their wake. They remind us that Earth has hosted horrors far older and more vindictive than humanity, and some still lurk below, whistling in the dark, awaiting the winds to rise once more. To disturb their seals is to invite extinction's echo.