Horrible Monsters That Want to Kill You

Scary Monsters

 

Cannibal Dragon

7-8' tall Draconic Shapeshifter 

7 HD  

Armor as Scale (d10) 

Alignment: Conniving

Wants: To Eat a True Dragon's Heart  

Move: Normal, Swim as Normal

Morale: 8 (Never fights to the death)

Attack: 1d8+3 Serrated Claws - 2d8+3 in Darkness, 

Str: 16 Dex: 14 Con: 14 Int: 12 Wis: 10 Cha: 12 

A two legged counterfeit Dragon. Black fire-proof Sharkskin stretched over rubbery cartilage. Instead of pinions, their forearms sport a row of serrated teeth for sawing through Dragon hide. Obligate carnivores, pathologically sadistic and self-absorbed. Like true dragons, they can shift their form at will. Most take the second-skin of a Human. They seek high station in societies; appearing from nowhere (sometimes with fabricated credentials) and using their vitality, subtle supernatural power, and sociopathy to rise swiftly through the ranks of martial culture. 

Cannibal Dragons share a biological imperative to seek out and devour the heart of one of their trueborn cousins, the bloody key to a metamorphosis into the final stage of their life-cycle: a Black Dragon. Their ill-gotten stations are inevitably put towards this end; culminating in betrayal regardless of the venture's success.

Shadow Breath: Breath Weapon. Exhale fuligin shadowsmoke in a 15' radius cloud centered on self, or 30' cone. Shadowsmoke only dissipates in daylight, otherwise lingers for weeks before settling. Cannibal Dragons can see through their own breath weapon.

Rubber Bones: Immune to Fire, half damage from blunt and slashing weapons. Can squeeze through any gap larger than 1' at full speed. 

Treasure:

• Meat: Piss-sour, drenched in ammonia. Causes extreme bowel distress. May be fermented for a year and a day inside of a gravel pit to create a mildly intoxicating and incredibly rare delicacy (that still tastes like piss.)
• Heart: Carries the blessing and curse of Dracomorphosis, if eaten while the blood is still hot. Skin-shift into a Cannibal Dragon at will.
• Hide: Fireproof. Can be made into Scale Mail (d10) or a Shield.
• Bones: Worthless, rots into gelatin in a month.
• Shadowsmoke: Thick fuligin ink that rots in daylight. Lingers thick in the air, even when it settles, enough motion will stir it back into the air. Can be kept in bags or phials to make smoke bombs. Selling this on the market will make people think you're a Cannibal Dragon and they might come to murder you and eat your heart. 
• Hacksilver: Cannibal Dragons keep smaller hoards, and are often too proud to use any magical weapons or armor they find. Roll on an intelligent monster table of the appropriate HD. 

Bloodlark

Cat-sized winged monotreme 

2d6+2 swarms 

1 HD  

Armor as Leather (d6) 

Alignment: Hungry

Wants: To drink rich blood, to tend the nest, to have many many children

Move: Normal (Flying,) Hobble at half normal when forced to land

Morale: 10

Attack: 1d4 sharp beak and spurs, blood drinking tongue. (Latches on a 3 or 4, ignores armor while latched)

Str: 10 Dex: 16 Con: 10 Int: 3 Wis: 10 Cha: 7 

Named in error, Bloodlarks are actually a kind of egg laying mammal, closely related to the Echidna. Their front and back limbs are leathery wings, and their snout is a beak. Their droning dirge-song drives domesticated animals (dogs, horses, cattle) into a frenzy, causing them to either bolt, buck their riders, or freeze. Their eyes are feeble, they navigate by the stench of blood alone; those without an open wound are safe from their hunger.

Bloodlarks eat more than just blood. In addition to snails and insects, they eat mud, wood resin, and ochre. The blood in their bowels thickens into a red paste, which they regurgitate and shape into rust-colored nests in the eaves of old churches and abandoned watchtowers, cliff faces, and the branches of Sequoias. These nests are infamous for growing large and labyrinthine, with the largest and most dangerous hosting up to a hundred Bloodlarks.

During the winter the flock hibernates- coating their bodies in a thinner layer of insulating ochre-bile and curling into a sleeping stone-like lump. A Bloodlark in winter is an ill-omen, a sign that the creatures have fallen out of balance through overpopulation or disease and must be culled before they frenzy.

Dirge: You hear them before you see them. Roll 1d4 for domestic animals (but not tamed wild animals, wolves, panthers, etc.) 1: Flee 2: Buck 3: Freeze 4: Unaffected.

Treasure: 

• Hibernating Bloodlark: Looks like a red clay lump. Sleeps like a stone. If kept in a cold space they can sleep for decades, awakening perfectly healthy, albeit ravenous. Used as traps by some cultures.
• Egg: Red Yolk and shell. Acquired taste. Shell can be ground for a rich red pigment, this hue is forbidden to adorn those not of Royal Blood.
• Guano: Can be milked from their offal and kept in a waterskin filled with oil. Sets into sturdy red concrete in seconds. 

Shot-wose

5' Elephant nosed sloth-ape

1d4 + 2 Packs, single guard-beast

2 HD  

Armor as Cloth (d4) 

Alignment: Skittish, territorial

Wants: Eat grass and snails, dominate rivals, protect the pack

Move: Normal, Climb as Normal

Morale: 6 (10 when maddened)

Attack: 1d4+2 60' ranged stone snotshot, 1d4+1 blunt claw-swing

Str: 12 Dex: 15 Con: 14 Int: 4 Wis: 12 Cha: 8

Bipedal herbivores sometimes mistaken for demi-humans. They eat thorny leaves and small snails/crabs too tough to be digested. To ease their stomachs' churning they swallow stones. When threatened, these gastroliths are quickly regurgitated into a chamber in the rear sinus, and can be launched with wicked speed and precision up to 60'. Shot-wose use the scent glands along their bushy tails to mark territory. When these demesnes are breached they take to the Redwood canopies at speed, harrying the intruder with nose-bullets. They keep small caches of stones in their knothole nests to "reload." Put to direct confrontation they retreat and regroup, preferring to take fights where they have the height and range advantage.

Gray Dwarves keep Shot-wose as guard-beasts. They are chained to alcoves and watchtowers cut into the cliffs where Gray Dwarves travel, and the lead shot (1d6+2) in their bellies maddens them to attack everything that comes into sight. Their blunt claws are tipped with steel talons (1d6+1) and their necks are fitted with wolf-collars. Those captured as pups keep enough of their wits to be trained and join skirmishes with their masters.

Treasures: 

• Meat: 1-in-6 chance it's bitter, oily, and foul, otherwise it's like lean venison. The tail can be used for soup. (Eating the flesh of an animal going insane from lead poisoning is not a correct decision to make.)
• Prism Snail Shell: Hefty enough to crack a skull when slung. Passes through magical barriers and armor. No prism snail has ever been found outside the half-digested pulp inside a Shot-wose.
• Skull: Can be loaded and fired like a blowpipe for sling bullets.
• Pelt: Too thin for armor, but their winter coat is excellent lining for gloves, boots, and cloaks.
• Musk: Ingredient for expensive perfumes. Drives away bears and wolves.

 

An Example Astral Planet

Kanda

I Dreamed a Place as Cruel as the Sea

Development : Post Industrial Global Society (Hobgoblins, Humans, Ogres) ; stable Afterlife Transfer (Positive/Annihilation) Colonized Moon

Astral Travel Aware : Yes

Habitability : Garden - Self Sufficient

Feywild : Hostile (Shallow Ocean type)

Shadowfell : Partially Developed (Abyssal Ocean type)

Significant Features : Restrictive Theocratic World Government

A temperate world with a full spread of biomes and a self-sustaining biosphere. Kanda experienced significant Elan activity early into its history, leaving behind a number of Superstructures termed "Fairy Bridges" in its Feywild.

Kanda has a single world government (with a few rebel enclaves in less developed areas.) This society is stratified into castes by a metric of Goodness. All citizens are annually scanned using a device created by the Church. This census grades sentient creatures on two axies- Goodness, and Lawfulness. The Prime Minister is said to be the only living creature who is both perfectly good and perfectly lawful. 

People which are both Lawful (and either good or neutral) are considered to be capable of self governing, and granted widely permissive rights to property, privacy, and self determination- recreational drugs, prostitution, and property ownership are permitted. People who are Chaotic are subject to invasive and paternalistic surveillance. They do not choose their own work or living arrangements, may not own property, and must petition a Higher Citizen before making a marriage proposal; while they may prostitute themselves and sell recreational drugs, they may not partake in them.

Lawful Evil people are drafted directly into military or hazardous labor programs. The Chaotic Evil are not considered to be "People" and are chattel. Their bodies are legally used for medical testing and organ harvesting.

The functionality of the Census device has never been authenticated by an outside party. Supposedly it was first developed as a countermeasure against infiltration by an aggressive Fey species called Changelings.

The Theocracy's relationship with Starfarers is unsteady. Starfarers are exempt from being subject to Census and seizure, so long as they remain on either the Lunar Colony, or the Feywild/Shadowfell.

Kanda's natural Fairy Rings manifest through a bioluminescent species of phytoplankton, whose patterns of propagation are a matter of scientific study across the planet's universities. Despite the ease of crossing, Kanda's Feywild is abnormally hostile. Though none of the original Elan remain, they left behind dangerous Bioconstructs across the Shallow Oceans of the Feywild. The density of these hostile Fey increases proportionally to proximity to the Fairy Bridges, compelling evidence that they were created as their guardians. A few such creatures are detailed below.

• Salmon Trolls - placid herbivorous bipeds which  undergo a berserker metamorphosis when exposed to Fairy Ring phytoplankton.
• Reverrachnids - a kind of Ophiuroid which can ignore gravity. They live inside the Fairy Bridges and appear to be sentient. They cross into the Prime Material to steal the children of the sentient races and turn them into Changelings.
• Changelings - Surgically and alchemically altered Sentients. Incapable or uninterested in speaking to other members of their own race. Autopsy reveals them to be missing certain internal organs; most frequently their reproductive systems, gallbladders, and portions of the brain with the highest density of mirror neurons. Naked, sexless, and unashamed. They have been taught to kill other Sentients with their bare hands and teeth- but are equipped with Fey technology and augmentation that grants them an edge against better equipped foes.
• Butcherbirds - a kind of finned pelagic slug that can fire jets of water and gas out of a siphon on its belly- generating enough lift to fly short distances through the air. Their skin is covered in microscopic spurs which inject paralytic venom. They eat their prey slowly over the course of several days, keeping them alive to preserve the flesh. 48% of survivors develop synesthesia after recovering from paralysis.

Due to the feywild's Hostility, Kandan Astral Traffic routes through the Shadowfell, which is comparatively empty. There are seven stable Shadowgates of black fulgurite found at tectonic intersections below Kanda's sea level. Their origin is unknown, but geologically predates the Divinity which seeded the planet with life. Kanda's Shadowfell is an expanse of black water whose surface touches the Astral Sea directly, which makes entering and leaving Astral Orbit extremely efficient, requiring only a functional diving bell or bathysphere. The upper fathoms of the Shadowfell are vacant and lifeless; thoroughly patrolled by the Church's military submarines, which prowl for smugglers and the rare incursion of something from below. Expeditions have been funded, in search of a Shadowfell counterpart to the Fairy Bridges or for a hidden rebel stronghold, but none have returned. Data on potential Shadow-fauna is distorted by superstition and hearsay.

Reasons to visit;

1. Chasing the secrets of the Fairy Bridges
2. Assassinating a Priest
3. Smuggling Materials into or out of the Church's cordon 
4. Stealing a Census device 
5. Exploring the Shadowfell's Eutrophic Depths

Kandan Items;

Fair

1. Fairy Sword : Blue Metal razor-disc held under the tongue. Can be fired by whistling. 1d8 damage- Vorpal. (If a damage dice explodes, the target of the attack cannot soak the resulting damage with Toughness.)
2. Echo Minnow : A two inch long glowing fish that can swim inside reflective surfaces like glass and metal. As intelligent as a Dog, and as willing to take orders from someone with treats.
3. Scapegoat : Circlet of Black Fulgurite. Two spikes mimic horns. Allows a willing wearer to take on the injuries, curses, or diseases of anyone they are touching.
4. Ancient Fossil : Like nothing you've ever seen. Grants permanent waterbreathing and cold immunity to the creature that swallows it.
5. Pistol Shrimp Claw : A living weapon hibernating until picked up by a warrior's hand. Functions as a crushing gauntlet/claw- and when submerged, a cannon. (Declared action/Breath weapon; fires a bubble of plasma within 60 feet that deals 3d6 fire damage, Dexterity save for half.)
6. Census Device : A Brass/Silver/Golden sphere with a lens and a handle. Attunes to the soul of a single user, must be released before attuning another, and will not attune to anyone present at the moment of the previous user's death. At will a user may either designate or detect another living thing's "Alignment." After designation, all future attempts to detect that creature's alignment will return the same value. A value can only be overridden by a higher tier of Census device; and only Golden devices can designate Lawful Good.