Shub-Niggurath

 

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Shub-Niggurath
Health	40000 Can only take damage from Telefrag
Attack Damage	Aura (10)
Found in	Quake
[Source]

Shub-Niggurath, codenamed Quake is the absolute ruler of the demons and monsters in Quake's reality and the final boss of Quake. Shub-Niggurath is the mother of the monsters that roam the dimensions of Quake. She has spawned an army to invade Earth using the humans' own portal technology. She'd planned on using the four runes to cause such destruction but the runes were instead sought by the player, and were used to gain access to Shub-Niggurath's Pit to confront and kill the Witch-Goddess. She physically resembles a massive demonic tentacled creature, with three huge tendril-like limbs extending upwards from her bleeding central mass. After her death, Armagon was appointed to take charge.

Assassinating Shub-Niggurath and stopping her invasion of Earth is the main goal of the game. The player fights through the four episodes to locate the four Runes which he/she uses to open a passage to Shub-Niggurath. Shub-Niggurath spawns a force of Shamblers and Vores to kill the player but all fails and the player uses the Spiked Sphere to kill the evil beast and end the threat of Quake.

Combat Capabilities

Shub-Niggurath spawns hundreds of demons but has no attacks of her own, relying purely on the power of her children. Shub-Niggurath's one 'combat' ability is her impossible defence. None of the player's weapons can hurt Shub-Niggurath, making her practically invulnerable. The only way to kill her is using the Spiked Sphere (see below).

Jumping over to Shub-Niggurath and standing near her will result in the player losing health. This could be some kind of defensive aura.

Strategy

Shub-Niggurath is confronted in Shub-Niggurath's Pit. To kill Shub-Niggurath, the player must kill a whole load of Shamblers and Vores, notable as the most powerful and toughest enemies in the game and reach the far end of the room via a path that goes around her.

At the end of the path, there is a portal which will teleport the player to the location where the Spiked Sphere is currently floating. Watch the sphere and wait for it to fly through Shub-Niggurath. Jump into the portal just as it enters Shub-Niggurath to telefrag her and the game is over. Watch as Shub-Niggurath explodes, revealing the player as the victor.

The above is a quick overview of how to kill Shub-Niggurath at the end of the level. For a more detailed walkthrough for the entire level, click here.

Appearances

• Shub-Niggurath's Pit

Trivia

• Shub-Niggurath's name is taken from one of the "Old Ones" of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. This is reflected in the .mdl files such as oldone.mdl.
• The Quake emblem is very likely formed in the visage of Shub Niggurath. (2 curved protrusions with one straight all forming from a "stem" as one might call it)
• Two unused sound files can be found in "Sound/Boss2". One is an idle sound (idle.wav), the other (sight2.wav) when Shub-Niggurath sees the player.
• Although there is a death message written for Shub-Niggurath in client.qc (seen below), she has no actual way of directly killing the player, thus the message is never seen in-game.
• In early releases of Quake it was possible to kill Shub-Niggurath by brute force by shooting her until all 40,000 hit points were expended, which would then cause the game to crash. This was fixed in version 1.06.

Death Messages

• "Player" became one with Shub-Niggurath