Nian

From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)

Story

The legend of the Nian occupies a fundamental role in traditional Chinese, having given birth to a tradition that survives very much unchanged among the Chinese of the modern era. Very few of the other great monstrous beasts and behemoths of mythology can lay claim to a legacy as enduring as that of the Nian.

In the ancient primoridal past when the race of man had yet to attain the position of ascendent power that it currently enjoys, the unfortunate ancestors of the Chinese race were subject to the ravenous predations of the terrifying wild beasts that dwelled in the bleak and unruly vicinity of the lofty mountains. Whenever hunger brought on by the onset of a harsh winter would prompt these grim monsters to temporrarily abandon their bleak home in search of raw flesh for their ravenous bellies, they would inevitably descend on the human farming settlements in the fertile valleys below, to raid the wretched inhabitants and carry off some pitiful soul doomed to become their meal for the night. Naturally, the miseries of the early humans were great, and not a single night would pass without a luckless family mourning for the loved one snatched away by some horror that had descended from the mountains.

But these dreadful brutes themselves lived in terror of a creature infinitely more awful and malevolent than all the rest of them combined. An immense