On the secret GLOG server,
semiurge said somebody ought to write a monster post. No setting stuff, no Lore, just 'orrible monsters. Here you go.
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| Source: Thomas Nast, political cartoon for "Time" |
3HD (12HP), AC as leather, 5 morale
Squamous onychophoric vermin which eat anything and everything. Despite often being in excess of 10' long and 100kg in weight, they move in complete silence over level ground (over extremely rough terrain they engage their claws for traction, which produces a characteristic click-click-click). Carrion crawlers are ambush predators who use darkness and streams of glue from glands near their fanged mouth to sneak up on and disable their prey. Their eyesight is poor, but their sense of hearing is more sensitive than a cat's.
Movement: Never faster than a speedwalk
Morality: Animalistic predator (True Neutral)
Intelligence: Unusually high for a big bug. Form complex social structures in large nests, where mothers protect and raise their live-born young. Capable of understanding traps.
Attacks: +2 to-hit. Vicious crushing jaws (2d6), or a spray of goo (applies a -4 penalty to AC and all physical checks, can be applied multiple times. Removable with alcohol. 3 uses per day)
Soft Body — Can't survive long-term in an arid environment. Loses 1 HP an hour in sunlit areas. Takes 1d6 damage from exposure to salt water, and won't deliberately step across salt spilled on the ground.
Tremorsense — Landbound creatures can't approach within 20' of a carrion crawler without alerting it to their presence.
Who Will Know
2HD (8HP), AC as leather, morale 7
A furtive man in dark clothing, hat low over his face casting a deep shadow, something long and sharp under his coat
Movement: as man
Morality: hateful and sniveling (Lawful Evil)
Intelligence: Smarter than its summoner by just a tad
Attacks: +2 to-hit, with weapon
Man is the Real Monster — a Who Will Know is born when someone dreams day and night of killing another person for weeks and weeks, months and months, years and years. With enough focus, they begin to idealize the murder itself; the Who Will Know is born. It stalks the target like a poacher until it catches them alone and brutally kills them. Who Will Knows always leave bizarre riddles and clues in their wake, at first to terrify the target (things like open windows, menacing notes on pillows, slaughtered pets) and then to mock investigators and incriminate their summoner (bloody messages on walls, poems with obvious acrostics, personal items at the scene of the crime). Until it kills its target, this monster will merely brutally maim and exsanguinate other intelligent beings. After its target is killed, it begins to hunt others, preferring those who know most about its summoner's identity.
Bad Manners — an aggravated Who Will Know will steal the best magical weapon from a party's unguarded camp on a 2-in-6 chance every night, then use that weapon in its murders.
Immortal — so long as its master is alive, when a Who Will Know is killed it returns within 72 hours
Thousand Ghost Strings
1HD (1HP), AC as plate, morale 13
Translucent hands plucking the strings of a golden harp. Always willing to play for a suitably impressed audience. Murderously violent towards philistines.
Movement: instant teleportation room by room in a structure
Morality: interested only in art (Neutral Evil)
Intelligence: maestro's taste for art, illiterate berk otherwise
Attacks: +1 to-hit, strike a chord to send a vein-severing blade of air (1d6+1). One extra attack per turn for each sequential turn it spends attacking.
Ghost Musician — characters armed with musical instruments may play a tune to roll another reaction check with a +2 bonus
Golden Harp — worth 100gp. worth 5gp if smashed or burned by AoE magic or large weapons
Spirit — takes no damage from conventional weapons, fire, poison &c
Hesitate When It
6HD (12HP), AC as leather, morale 7
Enormous brain with six sets of bat wings, twelve eyes, pitcherplant mouth and steely ovipositer. Can't talk, but you can tell it wants to.
Movement: slow bobbing float through the air
Morality: incomprehensible enlightenment (Chaotic Evil)
Intelligence: infinitely beyond yours. So smart it can hear players discussing plans in real life.
Attacks: +4 to-hit, three eye beams (1d8 fire) against three separate targets or vomiting digestive acids (1d8 in 15' cone, check strength or become grappled) once every three turns, or vicious sting against a grappled target (1d8+4, implants target with thought eggs)
Magic: 4ND, Detect Magic, Speak Language, Greater Disguise Self, Cloudkill
Implanted Thought — eggs of the Hesitate When It are immaterial. Affected creatures experience intrusive thoughts of black goats and rapid movement through dark water. After 1d6 days, brain bursts from skull and flies away on bat wings. Drink so much alcohol you must save or die and you are cured.
Exposed Brain — takes double damage from acid, poison, or fire.
Robotic Cop Statues
2HD (8HP), AC as plate, morale 10
12' tall, wielding hundred-pound iron bars and clad in armor of imperishable metal. Glowing red eye-slit clearly indicates where he is looking.
Movement: steady pace just a bit faster than a light jog, never slowing
Morality: Enforces xenia and respect of the Burgomeister (Lawful Neutral)
Intelligence: like a man, but without creativity. Falls for the same tricks every time.
Attacks: +2 to-hit, two relatively rapid swipes (2d6) or one Vom Tag with agonizing windup (2d12, but with -6 to-hit). Always attempts to Vom Tag a target who is standing still.
Hardbody — takes 1 damage when hit with a blade, half damage from hammers and maces, full damage from picks and railroad spikes
Raised Visor — if his Vom Tag misses you, you may run up his weapon (if ye be brave enough) and strike at his eyes (AC as unarmored)
Marmoreal Darling
5HD, AC as leather, 7 morale
Movement: as a man, but totally silent
Morality: bloodthirsty predator (Neutral Evil)
Intelligence: more cunning than a bear
Attacks: +5 to-hit, whiplike limbs (1d8+4, range as a thrown knife) or strangling appendages (strikes only from surprise, renders target unable to speak, opposed MOVE every round: victim escapes after three successes, falls unconscious and is dragged away after three failures)
These beasts are said to dwell in new growth forests, where fields or towns have been abandoned and the thin young trees have sprung up. Their fat spidery bodies can fold and warp to hide behind fence posts or beneath shrubbery or other places you wouldn't think a creature the size of a cart can hide. The only rigid part of the Marmoreal Darlings are their faces, seemingly carved from marble, which depend from long wavy necks and might be taken for pareidolic tricks of the light in a sun-dappled woods. Darlings prey on lone travelers, especially lost children, though bolder ones may try to steal scullery maids from wells or gardeners from orchards when they are out of earshot from other humans. They strangle their victims with long pink tongues and bury them in shallow graves. After a few weeks, they return to the site to stick their tongues into the ground and suck up the liquid rot.
Marmoreal Darlings have a cow-like unwillingness to cross even very low fences or pass through even very broad gates. Though they are enormously strong, they never attempt to force doors. Darlings sleep in nests of clothing stolen from drying lines or picked off of corpses. Some have been seen to wear veils or shawls, perhaps to keep warm (they quickly enter a state of torpor in cold weather or at night) or perhaps to enhance their camouflage.
Colored Vire
4–6HD avian, AC as chain, morale 7
Movement: crashing and ungainly when crawling on the earth, fast and silent like an owl while flying
Morality: apex predator (neutral)
Intelligence: turkey-stupid, but with good instincts when protecting its nest or hunting.
Attacks: +2 to-hit, two bites with low-slung jaws (1d6), or one with gnarled claws (1d8+HD). +HD to grapple attempts
Breath Weapon — per color
Vire (rhymes with "wire") are lone flying predators that roost in rockpiles in dry locations. Despite the fact that they resemble scrawny plucked roosters with bat-wings, they are widely imagined to be a type of dragon, as they possess breath weapons whose elements are connected to the color of their wings. Peasants will call vire "old [color] men" for their distinct habit of craning their necks from a high perch while bundling themselves in their wings; while doing so they faintly resemble 12' tall humanoids with rail-thin bodies wrapped in colored rags.
All vire have a special organ in their teardrop-shaped bodies which produces a bezoar that they may projectile-vomit 60' away. They can only do this once per hour, and won't waste it when hunting wild pigs or small farmers. A bezoar harvested from a recently-deceased vire is a valuable reagent if immediately preserved in mineral spirits.
Red vire are the most common. Their bezoar, famously, explodes in contact with atmospheric moisture, dealing 2d6 fire damage in a radius of 10'. Red vire resist mundane fire, and prefer to prey on goats and hikers in their hillside habitats
Blue vire make their homes in wastes and deserts. Their bezoar produces noxious blue fumes as it flies disintegrating through the air; the moment it makes contact with a target, the vire completes a circuit in its jaws and deals 2d6 lightning damage to all those in contact with the ionized smoke. Notably, Blue vire do not resist lightning damage. If they attempt to use their bezoar during a storm, both they and anyone in contact with the smoke are struck by an actual thunderbolt for 6d6 lightning damage. Vire are dumb as shit and don't know this.
Green vire are the most feared kind, as they are sometimes encountered by monster hunters expecting easier prey. Their bezoar produces great choking clouds of pus-yellow smoke, which deal 1d6 poison damage every round of skin contact, and another 1d6 with every breath you take. Green vire are immune to the poison of their own bezoars, and resistant to other types.
STRATEGY: Vire are preferential scavengers. They avoid dangerous-looking enemies or large groups, unless protecting their eggs and chicks. During most of the year vire hunt alone but in springtime they nest together. Red Vire mate for life and return to the same nesting areas each year, which are shared between 2–12 pairs. Blue vire mate for life and build a new nest each spring, which the female will guard as the male decimates surrounding ecosystems for prey. Green vire do not mate for life. The flight displays of the gloriously green males — almost always interrupted by a vicious aerial grapple with a rival — are reason to immediately contact several monster hunters.
TACTICS: Vire are more stupid than most birds. Their decisions in combat are fairly deterministic, which experienced hunters will exploit.
When in combat:
- If they're in a fair fight, then they flee. Vire will break this rule to protect their nests, but are otherwise terrible cowards.
- If it is the first round of combat, then they do not use the breath attack. Vire never open with their breath attack. Perhaps they are afraid of ambush, or are just slow to react? Either way, they will attempt some other attack on their first turn.
- If 50% of enemies could be hit with a breath attack, then they use the breath attack. Vire are not smart enough to use their breath attacks in a calculated way — e.g. by electrocuting the 4th level Wizard when she's separated from her two 1st level Fighter friends, or by waiting for a better opportunity.
- Red vire will attempt to grapple enemies and drag them (up to 30') off nearby cliffs or across rocky terrain. They cannot lift more than 30 or 40 kilos, so this is their preferred method of killing larger prey.
- Blue vire will attempt to tuck their wings and drop onto targets. If they succeed in an attack, this deals an extra 2d6 damage to the target and the vire flies off. If they miss, this deals 1d6 damage to them and the same to the target, and grounds the vire. If they critically fail, they miss entirely and slam into the ground for normal falling damage. Ha!
- Green vire, the smartest and most vicious, will attempt to use bait. On the first round of combat, they circle the area to locate enemies. Then they vomit their bezoar near the most delicious-looking target and land in the smoke. The vire then grapples them to prevent escape and waits for others to attempt a rescue. If no one comes before the target dies, they're also perfectly happy to eat the free meal and fly off before the smoke clears.
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