Dimensional Shambler

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The Dimensional Shambler is one of the many monsters of the Cthulhu Mythos. Described as resembling something like a cross between an towering ape and an insect ala the Umber Hulk, these eerily mute creatures earn their name from their uncanny range of motion and their natural ability to casually walk between dimensions at will.

In the Mythos

The Dimensional Shamblers first appeared in H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Horror in the Museum". They might, emphasis might, also be the same as the eponymous entities described in Clark Ashton Smith's story "The Hunters from Beyond"; the publication of which predates Lovecraft's tale by a year.

Little is known about these beings who seem capable of walking between the planes and worlds of the cosmos, never spending much time at any location. It is unknown whether they are a distinct interdimensional species or constructs created in the deep passages of time to serve a higher power, but are now free to roam where they will. Rumours suggests that these entities occasionally serve the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones, yet their individual motivations and purpose remain a mystery.

The Shamblers come from a lower dimension described as "a long, gray, oozing plain, beneath skies where the fumes of Hell were writhing like a million ghostly and distorted dragons." In this dimension thousands if not more Dimensional Shamblers live. Humans sucked into this dimension sink into the gray ooze to have their minds and souls eaten by the Shamblers.

The official description of Dimensional Shamblers from 1933's "The Horror in the Museum" portrays a Shambler as a black-colored half-ape, half-insect. This is one of the areas that contradict the creatures from 1932's "The Hunters from Beyond", where they are pale grey in color and have a canine-meets-ape appearance. The official Lovecraft wiki includes this description, but fails to clarify which story it's taken from:

These "hunters from beyond" appear as short crouching creatures with tight grey mummy like skin. Its head is semi ape like and semi canine, and has crooked stained fangs. Its eyes are recessed in deep eye holes and appear as yellow slits. It has long arms with huge claws. Though it has the appearance of being material the Dimensional Shamblers originate from a different dimension, making it immaterial in our world, making it unable to touch or be touched.

In Call of Cthulhu

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In D&D and Pathfinder

Dimensional Shamblers appeared in Pathfinder first and foremost in the adventure module "Wake of the Watcher", of the Carrion Crown Adventure Path. In Pathfinder's lore, Shamblers are presented as brutish, savage and sadistic, with a love of torturing all non-shambler sapients that they encounter. Their most defining trait is a constant drive to explore the planes, and this forms the crux of their needs and wants - shamblers are actually not immune to all planar hazards, and so they are very definitely interested in protective talismans and other items that could expand their travel horizons. Nobody actually knows why they constantly travel around the multiverse; most attribute it to simple curiosity, but it may instead be in service to some unknown goal, a form of strange nutrition, or even a pleasure-fueled addiction. They do seem to be particularly drawn to unusual planar phenomenon, and a shambler might spend weeks or even years just standing there and silently observing such disturbances before moving on.

The simple method of just asking a shambler why it shambles through the planes is sadly unavailable, since their default reaction to being asked is to try and rip the head off of whoever was dumb enough to poke it into their business.

The fact shamblers are sadists is definitely not up for question. If a creature is capable of comprehending its own peril, dimensional shamblers take particular pleasure in abducting them to the far corners of the multiverse. What they do to such victims afterwards is unclear, but it is known they play some key role in their ultimate demise, and the few survivors of such abductions always escaped or killed the dimensional shambler that took them. Many victims who manage to escape undoubtedly perish anyway, as dimensional shamblers favor remote and dangerous places as their destinations.

Despite their unrefined intellects, dimensional shamblers have an instinctive mastery for the magic of planar travel. For their own use, this allows them to easily step between nearby points on the same plane and travel between planes with such mastery that they can drag along unwilling victims. This knowledge also makes them extremely adept at countering the magic of others. They can simply negate most summoning spells with impunity and resist planar bindings with the skill of far stronger creatures, replacing raw power with specialized knowledge. They can also struggle against effects that would typically restrict the use of teleportation and planar travel in the same way one could struggle against physical bonds, often with enough success to temporarily slip their hold.

The difficulties of mortals attempting planar travel often inspires them to summon dimensional shamblers to take advantage of their powers. One method of summoning them involves blood sacrifice rituals involving a pure metal blade, mathematics, and runes. Specific combinations are tied to individual dimensional shamblers, leading to the spellcasters who discover such details to hold them as treasured secrets.

The Book of Abstruse Geometries, an ancient discourse on the secrets of the Dark Tapestry, has directions for summoning one of a hundred named dimensional shamblers.

Dungeons & Dragons has yet to bring the DimensionaL Shambler in amongst its other Mythosian monsters, but there are two third-party sources for it in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: the Cthulhu Mythos 5e splatbook by Sandy Petersen being one of them, and the other being the Tome of Beasts by Kobold Press.