History Literature / TheNamelessOffspring

"The Nameless Offspring" was unofficially adapted into the comic "Terror on the Moors", first published in January 1951 in ''Vault of Horror'' #6 (#17). It also inspired severl plot points in the comic "The Woodlik Inheritance!", first published in ''ComicBook/{{Vampirella}}'' #31 in March 1974.

"The Nameless Offspring" was unofficially adapted into the comic "Terror on the Moors", first published in January 1951 in ''Vault of Horror'' #6 (#17).

* OurGhoulsAreCreepier: As per the Weird tradition, ghouls are canine-like monstrosities that dwell underground. Agatha Tremoth, who saw a full-blooded ghoul, describes it as having "a pale, hideous, unhuman face" and a "large and white" body with semihuman limbs, though it runs on all fours. Henry Chaldane, who saw a ghoul-human hybrid but admits his mind has refused to commit to a full memory, describes it as "a huge, whitish, hairless and semi-quadruped body, of canine teeth in a half-human face, and long hyena nails at the end of forelimbs that were both arms and legs." It stinks of carrion, but this might be a more a hygiene issue than a defining trait. The hybrid is the offspring of the full-blooded ghoul and Agatha. She had been erroneously pronounced dead and interred in the Tremoth Family vaults. The ghoul dwelling inside the vaults found her and instead of eating her, as it would do a corpse, it raped her. The hybrid is locked away and is docile for twenty-eight years until it senses the impending death of John Tremoth and becomes obsessed with consuming his corpse. Determined and strong as it is, it succeeds and on instinct finds its way to the vaults, escaping its pursuers.

"The Unnamed Offspring" is a ShortStory in the {{Horror}} genre, penned by Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith for inclusion in the June 1932 issue of ''Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror''. Its first print in book form occurred when it was selected for inclusion in ''The Abominations of Yondo'' collection in February of 1960. Of the stories about ghouls that Smith wrote, "The Unnamed Offspring" shares with "Literature/{{The Ghoul|1934}}" that they are both part of the Literature/CthulhuMythos, though only "The Unnamed Offspring" explicitly so.

!! "The Unnamed Offspring" provides examples of the following tropes:

"The Unnamed Offspring" is a ShortStory in the {{Horror}} genre, penned by Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith for inclusion in the June 1932 issue of ''Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror''. Its first print in book form occurred when it was selected for inclusion in ''The Abominations of Yondo'' collection in February of 1960. "The Unnamed Offspring" is one of Smith's three ghoul-heavy stories, the other ones being "The Ghoul and the Seraph" and "Literature/{{The Ghoul|1934}}". Both "The Unnamed Offspring" and "The Ghoul" are part of the Literature/CthulhuMythos, though only "The Unnamed Offspring" is explicitly so.

"The Unnamed Offspring" is a ShortStory in the {{Horror}} genre, penned by Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith for inclusion in the June 1932 issue of ''Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror''. Its first print in book form occurred when it was selected for inclusion in ''The Abominations of Yondo'' collection in February of 1960. "The Unnamed Offspring" is one of Smith's three ghoul-heavy stories, the other ones being "The Ghoul and the Seraph" and "The Ghoul". Both "The Unnamed Offspring" and "The Ghoul" are part of the Literature/CthulhuMythos, though only "The Unnamed Offspring" is explicitly so.

Happy birthday, dear nameless!\\

In a 1931 letter to Creator/HPLovecraft, Smith credits "Literature/TheGreatGodPan" for the inspiration behind his story about a monster-human hybrid and its conception. And although ghouls have become common place in Weird fiction since "Literature/{{Amina}}", Smith echoes that story specifically with a mention that the ghoul belongs in the Orient and not in a place like England.

* ConvenientMisfire: Harper and Henry each arm themselves with an antique revolver from a single set without checking the condition the guns are in. Harper's revolver works just fine, but he misses when the nameless breaks free and attacks them and gets knocked out. Henry's revolver fails possibly due to rust or aged gunpowder and the nameless attacks him before he can get another shot in. Thus, the two men fail to keep the nameless from eating John's corpse and escaping into the world.

* DramaticIrony: After what happened to his wife Agatha, John arranges for himself to be cremated after death and not interred in the family vault. He tells Henry that he can't stand the thought of decay, but implicitly he's afraid of being buried alive too and even more of being eaten by a ghoul. Unfortunately, when he dies, it takes one-and-a-half day for the mist and the rain to clear before a funeral pyre can be built. This is all the time the nameless needs to break through the walls, attack the two vigilkeepers, knock over the candles, and eat from John's corpse until the fire gets too much. While fleeing, Henry notes wryly that John "had found in his own deathchamber the funeral pyre for which he had longed."

* MadwomanInTheAttic: After the birth of the nameless and the death of his wife Agatha, John Tremoth decides to raise the monstrous ghoul-human hybrid by locking it away in a sealed room for twenty-eight years. The creature doesn't mind too badly, but it grows agitated when it senses John's impending death, needing to eat the dead body. With no other way out, it starts clawing at the thick wooden wall between its room and John's, needing about a day to get through. In its escape effort, the creature knocks over some candles that start a fire. It eats as much of John's corpse as it can before it has to flee the fire. On instinct, it makes its way to the Tremoth Family vaults and is never seen again.

* OrcRaisedByElves: The nameless is a creature born from a ghoul father and a human mother. Its biofather disappeared after conception, its mother died after birth, and left to raise it was its mother's human husband. Which John Tremoth did, though by locking the nameless away in a sealed-off room for all its twenty-eight years of existence. Whether due to this treatment or because of its paternal heritage, the nameless developed into as much of a ghoul as its biofather. It eventually consumes John's one day-old corpse and flees to the vault its biofather once dwelled or still dwells in.

* SinisterScrapingSound: The nameless senses John Tremoth's impending death and becomes agitated, desiring to consume its adoptive father's flesh the moment he breathes his last. Because all exists from its room are locked and reinforced, it begins scratching the wooden wall. Tremoth Hall is an old house with firm, thick walls, so the nameless has to scrape for a full day to break free, much to the mounting dread of Harper and Henry.
* SpookyAnimalSounds: Henry only once hears the nameless's voice and it's in the form of a long ululation that begins low and muffled and ends in a shrill fury. It is a sound that leaves him no doubt that the stories about the secret of Tremoth Hall he'd been told in his youth are true.

* TraumaInducedAmnesia: Henry remembers many horrible experiences from his stay at Tremoth Hall, including the sight of John's gnawed-down corpse. The one thing he has never been able to recall with any degree of distinctness is what the nameless looked like. He reckons that the revulsion was too much for his mind to store the memory.

%%* DarkSecret: The legend of which I speak was familiar to me from childhood, as a theme of family whispers and head shakings, for Sir John Tremoth had been a schoolmate of my father. But I had never met Sir John, had never visited Tremoth Hall, till the time of those happenings which formed the final tragedy. My father had taken me from England to Canada when I was a small infant; he had prospered in Manitoba as an apiarist; and after his death the bee ranch had kept me too busy for years to execute a long-cherished dream of visiting my natal land and exploring its rural by-ways.

%%* DesecratingTheDead: Normally, ghouls eat human corpses. As it turns out, they may also rape people they find to have been buried before they actually died. Or maybe they also get handsy with corpses and then regaining

%%* DueToTheDead: For generations, the tradition of those living in Tremoth Hall was for their dead to be interred in the vaults hewn out of the hill behind the manor-house. So was Agatha Tremoth, only she was prematurely declared dead and there also ghouls dwelling in the vaults, one of which raped her. John Tremoth

* BigFancyHouse: Tremoth Hall in the ancestral manor-house of the Tremoth Family. Some of the furniture is dated to the 1600s and the manor-house is implied to be at least that old itself. It is a large estate with not only ample garden space to its name, but it's location is also a good distance away from the nearest settlement. Behind the manor-house is a hill that has been excavated to house the family vaults. That said, it isn't made clear whether the vaults were made for Tremoth Hall or if Tremoth Hall expanded a preexisting excavation. The vaults are said to be of "almost fabulous age and extent."

%%* DueToTheDead:

%%* HalfHumanHybrid:
%%* HauntedHouse: There are a guard booth and a gate, but the former is unoccupied and the latter open. The path up to the house
%%* ItsASmallWorldAfterAll:

%%* MadwomanInTheAttic:

%%* PrematurelyGreyHaired: John Tremoth is around sixty, possibly younger. Henry recognizes him to be scarcely beyond middle life, but also marked with deep wrinkles, a cadaverous pallor, and feeble tottering by both a three decades-long sorrow and an illness, angina pectoris.

%%* JackOfAllTrades:
%%* TheJeeves: a combination of valet, butler, housekeeper and chef
%%* TheLostLenore:

* OminousFog: The narrator gets caught by a sudden autumnal mist that rises from the sea during his motorcycle tour through England. The bad weather leads him astray from the middle of the afternoon to twilight's end. It is only because he loses his way in this mist that he ends up at Tremoth Hall and becomee part of the last act of the Tremoths' secret.
* OrcRaisedByElves: The nameless is a creature born from a ghoul father and a human mother. Its biofather disappeared after conception, its mother died after birth, and left to raise it was its mother's human husband. Which John Tremoth did, though by locking the nameless away in a sealed-off room for all its twenty-eight years of existence. Whether due to this treatment or by its paternal heritage, the nameless developed into as much of a ghoul as its biofather. It eventually consumed John's 1-day old corpse and fled to the vault its biofather once lived or still lives in.
%%* OurGhoulsAreCreepier:

%%* PrematurelyGreyHaired: John Tremoth is around sixty, possibly younger. Henry recognizes him to be scarcely beyond middle life, which fits with the nameless being twenty-eight years old in a time when thirty was the average age for a man to become a father.
%%* RainRainGoAway:

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rdesotoart_thenamelessoffspring.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear nameless! Happy birthday to you!"]]

%%* CampbellCountry:
%%* ChildByRape:
%%* ClosedCircle:
%%* ConvenientMisfire:

%%* DeathByChildbirth:

%%* HauntedHouse:

* OminousFog: The narrator gets caught by a sudden autumnal mist during his motorcycle tour through England that leads him astray from the middle of the afternoon to twilight's end. It is only because he lost his way in this mist that he ended up at Tremoth Hall and became part of the last of the Tremoths' secret.