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Gug: Gugs are a race of horrifying giants that appear in the H.P. Lovecraft short story "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath." They are speechless, communicating only by facial expressions, but tend to make strange, random sounds.

"It was a paw, fully two feet and a half across, and equipped with formidable talons," Lovecraft wrote. "After it came another paw, and after that a great black-furred arm to which both of the paws were attached by short forearms. Then two pink eyes shone, and the head of the awakened gug sentry, large as a barrel, wabbled into view. The eyes jutted two inches from each side, shaded by bony protuberances overgrown with coarse hairs. But the head was chiefly terrible because of the mouth. That mouth had great yellow fangs and ran from the top to the bottom of the head, opening vertically instead of horizontally." (Shown here is a plush Gug toy produced by the Toy Vault.)

According to Lovecraft, the Gugs were banished to the underworld by earth’s gods, the Great Ones, for an unnamed blasphemy and now reside in a terrifying, underground city, dwelling in lofty, round, cyclopean towers. Nearby, colossal monoliths mark the cemetery of the Gugs. In the midst of the gug city, the Tower of Koth contains a stairway that leads to the Enchanted Wood in the upper Dreamlands. There it is sealed by a huge stone trapdoor with a large iron ring. Because of a curse of the gods, no Gug may open that door, although no such restriction prevents a Gug from climbing to the very top of the tower.

Gugs prey on the ghasts that live in the Vaults of Zin (though prior to their banishment, they had been known to devour wayward dreamers). When in sufficient numbers, ghasts may likewise prey on the gugs. Though gugs would seem to have the advantage, they nonetheless superstitiously fear ghouls. The gugs often indulge in great feasts and, once engorged, retire to their great towers to sleep.

Nitokris

Nitokris: Nitokris is a legendary figure who may actually have been the last pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty. She appears as queen of the ghouls, leader of an army of abominable composite mummies, and consort of undead King Kephren in "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs," a short story H.P. Lovecraft ghost-wrote for Harry Houdini. Nitokris, "who once invited all her enemies to a feast in a temple below the Nile, and drowned them by opening the water-gates," is presented by Lovecraft as a sinister but beautiful woman, the right side of whose face has been "eaten away by rats or other ghouls."

Nitokris is the subject the "The Queen's Enemies," a play by Lord Dunsany, pointing once again to the heavy influence of that author on Lovecraft.