The creature as depicted by Toren Atkinson for The Black Company Campaign Setting
| “ | Something exploded out of the sand ahead. An impossible something. A monster that could not exist in this world, a devil thing the size of an elephant but with more legs and hair than a tarantula plus some squidlike tentacles and a scorpion's tail thrown in for good measure. It staggered around groggily. Obviously it had lain there a long time, awaiting the footsteps that called it forth. | ” |
–She Is the Darkness, chapter 9 | ||
The Shindai Kus Horror is a demon inhabitant of the otherwise lifeless Shindai Kus desert. Its violent encounter with Goblin was observed by Murgen who described the event in She Is the Darkness.
The creature was a hairy giant with squidlike tentacles, a scorpion's tail, and more than eight legs. Like other demons encountered by the Black Company elsewhere, it was able to remain alive underground in a waterless and lifeless environment for a supernaturally long time. Its history and the wizard who conjured it were not specified in the Annals, but it was clearly placed there to guard the Shindai Kus desert from intrusions from the western sea. It is plausible it was summoned and planted by the Shadowmasters, perhaps Longshadow, as he was considered by Frogface to be "a powerful sorcerer, dreaded in the demon worlds".
The demon was triggered to attack when Goblin and some others accompanying him on the Shaded Road expedition came too close to its hiding spot. After the demon burst forth from the sands, Goblin struck first with one of his best sorceries: a three-legged throwing star, about one yard wide, which had the appearance of stained glass. Goblin's star severed some of the limbs from its right side, causing it to bellow and to charge ineffectively. It walked around in a wide circle, permanently disabled, and then "fatalistically" burrowed back under the sand with its remaining limbs.
The creature was not identified by name in the Annals; the name "Shindai Kus Horror" comes from the non-canonical The Black Company Campaign Setting.