Ramsey Campbell Deities - The Horror Under Warrendown

The Horror Under Warrendown

The Horror Under Warrendown was created by British author Ramsey Campbell for his short story of the same name (1995).

The Horror, which lives under Campbell's invented village of Warrendown in Campbell's Severn Valley setting, resembles one of the giant, cephalic statues of Easter Island, the Moai, albeit one completely covered with vegetation. The plants, however, do not grow separately from the statue, but are in fact part of the Horror itself. It can extend vine-like tentacles to capture a victim or to give a communion offering to a worshipper.

The Horror possesses a strange mutagenic ability: Anyone who partakes of its flesh (i.e., the vegetables that grow from its plant-like overgrowth) will eventually transform into a grotesque, rabbit-like mutant. These mutants worship and serve the Horror, and are dedicated to tricking others into joining their cult by offering them fresh vegetables harvested from it.

While the Horror is unnamed in Campbell's story, it was given the name "The Green God" in the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.

A similar plant-like deity named E'ilor is mentioned in the short story "Correlated Contents" by James Ambuehl. Like the Horror, E'ilor dwells in a large cavern deep beneath a small farming village in the Severn Valley, and possesses vine-like tentacles which can be used for capturing prey or offering communal sacrifices. Both of these deities receive brief mention in the multi-volume grimoire Revelations of Glaaki.