Dreamtime Entities...

The Dreamtime for the native Australians is a term with a number of interpretations. For some it is simply a ‘long ago time’, a mythological history explaining the presence or absence of certain geographical features or creatures. The legends and stories of the Dreamtime explain the laws and customs of the many Aboriginal tribes and informs their conduct both in relation to the land and to each other. A particular tribe’s Dreaming, is its store of cultural wisdom; its ethos and morality as well as its collection of myths. Acquiring knowledge of this information is a process of self-development and learning and is referred to as getting one’s own Dreaming. Given the vast distances in Australia and the diversity of languages spoken by the Aboriginal peoples, the legends and myths vary wildly from region to region and a consistent mythological tapestry is difficult to perceive (although it is there nevertheless). Regardless, all Aboriginal tribes believe that the events of the Dreamtime, as well as those of their own personal Dreaming, exist within a single current timeframe, so that what once happened impacts sharply upon that which is happening in the subjective ‘now’.

Gurumukas & Nadubis

These are vampiric spirits endemic to the Dreaming of the tribes that dwell along the Top End of Australia. Mention of these beings occurs whenever tribespeople, especially children, are prone to wander at night, and the stories surrounding them are certainly designed to instil fear in those who would tend to wander off by themselves.

The Gurumuka stories derive from Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria. They are described as tall, incredibly thin people, able to hide amongst the undergrowth. They have sharp projecting teeth and creep up behind their victims in the darkness to bite them on the back of the neck. Unless the victim can reach a medicine man before dawn, they will die in great pain. The only way to foil a Gurumuka’s attack is to travel in groups and avoid the darkness.

The Nadubis of Arnhem Land also operate only in the darkness. They resemble ordinary people but they have sharp spines sprouting from their knees and elbows: when attacking, they try to drive one of these spines into the flesh of their victim, preferably striking from ambush. Once the spine has lodged itself in the victim, their spirit begins to die and their body along with it, suffering terrible agonies. If a medicine man reaches the victim in time they are occasionally able to remove the spine; mostly however, the victim is doomed. As with the Gurumukas, light repels a Nadubi.

The medicine men of these Dreamings are able to see these creatures clearly in the darkness and are able to recognise their tracks and other signs of their local occupancy, thus warning their people of the imminent danger. Most of the time they are able to hunt them away from the tribe’s territory, but occasionally the creatures sneak through...

Kulpunya & Mamu

These are two different types of spirit dingo. Kulpunya is spoken of by the tribes around Uluru in the centre of Australia. In order to avenge an insult against them by another tribe, the medicine men of the wattle-seed tribe created Kulpunya from mulga roots, twigs and the teeth of a marsupial mole. They sung many evil songs and filled Kulpunya up with their hatred and desire for vengeance. After a corroboree lasting several days, the spirit dingo came to life and attacked the ill-fated tribe which suffered terrible losses.

While Kulpunya is a magical construct, the Mamu is a nearly-invisible night-dwelling beast that preys on the young of the aboriginal tribes of Central Australia. If a Mamu finds a child wandering outside the circle of the tribe’s firelight, it attacks and savages the victim, before bounding off into the darkness. Thereafter, the child’s spirit begins to die over the next few days, leaving the body and flying off to the Mamu, who eats it at its leisure. Without the intervention of a medicine man, the attacks are usually fatal.

Malingees

The Malingee is a malignant nocturnal spirit with eyes that smoulder like coals and knees made of stone which scrape loudly together as it walks. It chooses to avoid human beings but if confronted or angered, it will try to kill and eat those who do so. It attacks with a stone knife that is horrendously sharp and capable of cutting through most substances. Given its glowing eyes and the sound that it makes as it walks, it is relatively easy to detect and avoid and Aboriginals in its Dreaming know to keep a wary eye out for its approach.

Mimis

Mimi spirits are part of the Dreaming of the Gunbalanya peoples of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. They are represented as tall thin spirits of a mischievous disposition. They are said to have been the original inhabitants of the country and, when the Aboriginal tribes appeared, they taught them language, dancing and tribal law, as well as how to hunt. Mimis are said to be grotesquely thin and elongated, to the point where high winds are able to cause them damage. They are also said to be sexually promiscuous and legends often turn about them seducing villagers away from their campfires.

The following statistics are available for those Keepers who wish their parties to encounter an average Mimi:

STR: 50

CON: n/a

SIZ: 19

POW: 30

DEX: 20

Move: 20

HP: n/a

Av Damage Bonus: +3D6

Weapon: Enchanted Spear: 100%, Special: POW vs. POW roll – failure equals death; success equals a 6-month comatose state

Armour: Invulnerable to physical weapons

Habitat: Remote fastnesses in the Arnhem Land, Northern Territory

SAN Loss: It costs 0/1D6 SAN to see a Mimi

Mokoi & Mopaditis

In the Dreaming of the Yirrkala tribal territories known as Arnhem Land the spirits of the dead are called Mokoi and must wait until the ghostly canoe paddled by the spirit Wuluwait, comes to take them away to Purelko, an Aboriginal ‘heaven’. The Mokoi are generally considered to be inoffensive but can become angered if they overhear bad things being said about them.

Further to the West on Melville Island, part of the Tiwi tribal lands, this notion is further elaborated upon. Here the spirits of the dead depart but sometimes choose to stay, form their own camps and carry on their old lives. They do this in order to perform burial rites for members of their old living tribe, to ensure that they ‘pass over’ safely. These spirits are called ‘Mopaditi’ and they can often be heard in the night time, singing and chanting the burial rituals. The Mopaditis cannot be seen as they are invisible in the day, dark in the shadows and pale in the moonlight. Occasionally, these spirits become morose and will waylay a solitary traveller, capturing their soul in order to keep them company in their exile between life and death. The affected traveller gradually weakens and dies over the course of a few days, unless a medicine man can intervene to halt the process. When the Mopaditi decide to move to Purelko, they are often accompanied by flocks of black cockatoos which raucously announce their arrival.

Muldjewangks

It is unclear whether there are many of these creatures or if there is only one. It haunts the Murray River between New South Wales and Victoria and, like the Bunyip, attacks those who wander foolishly into its range. Sometimes it is depicted as a type of merman; other times it is said to be a large bovine monster although, again, this could just be confusion with the Bunyip.

There is a white legend recording an encounter between a Muldjewangk and a steamboat captain from Echuca on the Murray River. It is said that the Muldjewangk grabbed the boat and stopped it from moving. Despite warnings from several Aboriginal elders on board, the captain fired several pistol shots into the enormous hands which gripped the bow of the craft: although freed, the elders warned the captain that his doom was assured and indeed, he died six months later from weeping red sores that erupted all over his body.

Nargun

The Nargun is an ogre creature from the Gunai and Kurnai tribal Dreaming. It is a monstrous half stone, half woman creature that steals children and drags them off to her lair on the Mitchell River in Southern Victoria to be eaten. According to legend the creature is made entirely of stone except for her arms, hands and breasts. Attacking the creature is said to be pointless as all weapons used against it are turned back upon their user.

Ningauis

The Ningauis are a miniature people who dwell among the mangrove swamps of the Top End. It is said that they do not know the secret of making fire and so they eat all of their food raw; paradoxically, they are able to control the amount of light that surrounds them, illuminating dark corners of the sunken forests and instantly causing darkness if their discovery by outsiders is threatened.

Tjinimin

This is possibly another insidious mask of Nyarlathotep and links directly to his incarnation as the Father of all Bats.

According to the Dreaming of the Murinbata people of the Northern Territory, Tjinimin developed a great lust for the attendants of the Rainbow Snake, the Green Parrot sisters. In various attempts to dissuade his lustful advances, they struck him with swarms of bees, diverted the courses of rivers and finally threw him off a cliff. He was able to use magic to reassemble himself, however.

In retaliation, he struck the Rainbow Snake with his spear and caused it to writhe horribly upon the ground, re-aligning the landscape. It fled into the sea to escape, but took all of the fire in the world with it, leaving the Aborigines without this useful resource. In time Kilirin the Kestrel taught people how to make more fire with sticks and overcome this issue.

Tjinimin in the meantime, went insane and began to sleep upside-down in the trees. Fire and its resumption within the world terrified him and he fled from light wherever it occurred. As a final indignity, the magic which held him together after his great fall partially failed and his nose dropped off – this explains, according to Aboriginal legend, why bats have snub noses.

But so much for the Dreamtime legends.

In the 1920s a white explorer named Huston went to the Northwestern deserts of Australia and set in motion certain procedures that would see Nyarlathotep released into the world. To this end he instigated worship of the Outer God in a form that had great resonance for the Indigenous population. This Avatar is known more widely as the ‘Haunter of the Dark’, but amongst certain tribes it is referred to as ‘Sand Bat’.

Huston’s tampering with the legends surrounding this manifestation created a cult dedicated to maintaining the secrecy of its activities and to furthering Huston’s efforts for his grand plan. Huston tattooed his faithful with a secret mark that would identify them to their brethren; this symbol was developed from desert depictions referring to Sand Bat and were modified by him for his own twisted ends. The Aboriginal peoples do not have an artistic tradition that lends itself to symbolic representations; painted depictions have a strictly functional purpose and do not serve to convey information in the way that Western written traditions do. Rather, the paintings and images created by the Aborigines serve as mnemonic devices for their oral tradition. Huston’s sign of the Sand Bat is his adaptation of one of these devices and has little relevance for the indigenous community. For this reason, the symbol is normally only found tattooed on the skins of white devotees of the cult.

Wandjina Spirits and the Gyorn Gyorn

These spirit entities are peculiar to the Mowanjum peoples in the Kimberlys region of northeast Western Australia. The Mowanjum are comprised of three distinct language groups – the Worora, the Ngarinyin and the Wunumbal. Within these tribes’ Dreaming, the Wandjina is the supreme creator spirit and codified the laws which govern their lives. The Wandjina also brings rain to the region in return for which the tribes paint images of the spirit upon rock walls. These figures are pale and large-eyed with elaborate headdresses representing different types of storms or rain. The Wandjinas are never depicted with mouths as this would make them too powerful and they might drown the world with their rains.

There are other figures painted on the rock walls too. These are often called ‘Bradshaws’ after Joseph Bradshaw who first discovered them in 1891, but are more correctly called Gyorn Gyorn. These figures are tall with attenuated limbs and represent the Mowanjum ancestors before the Wandjinas brought the law. They are often found painted over by Wandjinas and other imagery. Joseph Bradshaw described them thus in the Transactions of the Royal Geographical Society of Victoria in 1892:

“We saw numerous caves and recesses in the rocks, the walls of which were adorned with native drawings, coloured in red, black, brown, yellow, white and a pale blue. Some of the human figures were life size, the bodies and limbs were attenuated and represented as having numerous tassel-shaped adornments appended to their hair, neck, waist, arms and legs; but the most remarkable fact in connection with these drawings is that whenever a profile face is shown the features are of a most pronounced aquiline type, quite different from the native we encountered. Indeed, looking at some of the groups one might think himself viewing the painted walls of an Egyptian temple. These sketches seemed to be a great age...”

Together, The Wandjinas and the Gyorn Gyorn represent the oldest continuous sacred painting movement on the planet.

Yara-ma-yha-who

The Yara-ma-yha-who is described as a small red man with smooth skin, a large head, no teeth and octopoid suckers on its hands and feet. In many ways it resembles the Dreamlands creature the Haemophore. The Yara-ma-yha-who usually waits in the foliage of large fig trees and drops down upon those foolish enough to rest in the tree’s shade. The creature drains the blood of its victim through the suckers on its hands and feet and then, devours its victim whole. Legend has it that the Yara-ma-yha-who then regurgitates its victim whole and alive but noticeably shorter and with a more ruddy skin. After several repeats of this process, the victim then becomes a Yara-ma-yha-who himself and leaves their tribe for the solitary vampiric life.

Yuuris (or Yowris)

The Aboriginal Yuuri should not be confused with the creature of white Australian Folklore known as the Yowie. The Aboriginal Yuuri is a nebulous creature that lurks in waterholes and billabongs and originates from tales of the New South Wales and Queensland tribes. It is said to be single-eyed and shaped much like a gigantic ant or similar insect with limbs of an eel-like mobility. This compelling image by a white traveller remains in the collection of the Australian National Library: