Mini Marine Monster Post

Ghost Nets 

Every year a shit ton of animals are killed by nets abandoned at sea. In fantasyland, this becomes an issue that fights back. A roiling cacophony of desperate enraged perpetually drowning marine life, held in vile shape by taut and taunting rotting rope. 

~

A halo of ragged undead birds dart around a massive looming form, necks snapped. It takes a ragged step forward. The boat tips precariously.
An animal's spirit is a little thing, like a fish, and what do fish hate more than a net? When enough life is dragged down and drowned by a net errantly cut loose, a dull and throbbing singular thought moves through the spirits of the dead. They swim together.
A thousand writhing glassy eyed fish stare at you gasping. Its strangely quiet, raised fists glistening in the moonlight
A pain becomes an anger, an anger a desire. Swim up. Swim up and don't stop. A creature's spirit is like a little fish. 
The knowing eyes of a porpoise pierce you, squinting past its own bloat. The fist snaps the mast like so many little bones. 
What would they do when they hate? 

Ghost Net

HD 7/AC Chain/Damage 2d6 (smash) or as dart (undead bird)

DIS: Aggressive, Cowardly, Confused MOR 10

WANTS: To drown fishermen, sink boats, tear down lighthouses

NEEDS: To be freed, to be cut loose, to rot 

AVOIDS: The day, the tide, the depths 

DESIRES: To stop the tides, to reach the moon, to quell a fear it doesn't understand

 

 

Eelmen

Some people have orcs. I have eelmen. If orcs and trolls are strong and dim, then eelmen are fast and cunning. The Venn diagram of all three has "vicious" at the center. 

I like linking them to weather tables. They attack during thunderstorms, compelled by the changing air pressure to raid, when rivers flood and they can stay moist. They only need to submerge once a day, they're quite terrestrial, their lakeside camps flooded and full of craft-eels. Crossbows and nets are a favorite. They always prefer to ambush and always in greater numbers or tactics. They do not have legs but slither like cobras. 

They're very clever, like traps and have effective caravans, full of great slimy cauldrons. Dear god what's in them.

~

Tidepool crawler. Beach comber. Man renderer. Feed all the parts to a pit of eels under a full moon and spread thin the fat of the sacrifice. What is left in the morning is man's pride and drive and eel's cunning and savagery and the viciousness of both. It is handed a hooked ax and slithers off, confident.

Eelman

HD 1+1/AC as armor/Damage as weapon

DIS: Cruel, Stalker, Prudent/MOR 7

WANTS: to abduct, to propagate 

NEEDS: to eat, to stay damp, to attack during thunderstorms

AVOIDS: aridity, greater numbers

DESIRES: to feel rain on their skin, to feel superior

Retributive Bite. When critically struck or reduced to 0 hp, it may reactively bite a foe and latch on. A STR check with a -4 can unhinge the eelman's jaws, but its pharyngeal jaws bite all the while, automatically dealing 1 damage each round it is not removed. They often do this before they die, locking the jaw as a final act of defiance, -8 to unhinge. Dragging an eelman corpse around, halves your speed and hurts. 

Trip. Skilled with polearms they may trip for half damage on a successful hit. Prone foes take triple damage. There's a reason "he fell" is synonymous with death. 

The Lady-in-Waiting

dedicated to my beloved

A stonefish

The knight has travelled weeks back to the Lady of the Cave. This task was the most arduous of all, quarry hanging heavy on his horse, heavier on his heart. His footsteps are slower now, the newly earned limp his only companion besides the horse. But its ok, because the Lady will fix him. She always does. 

The cave entrance is jagged, uneven, hardly befitting of one so wise as her he thinks, one so knowledgeable. One who would, he recalled the words, come to "encompass him," in eternal glory and wisdom he knew. The Lady was kind. She was transcendent. She had to be, as desperate men often decided. The horse's ears twitched.

He no longer entered nervously as has he had so many times before. Cautious he had been, but this was his final quest. She would give him sight beyond sight as the holy men had said. Something to help home. The horse chuffed nervously. 

She floated there above his head, all warm light and honeysuckle, her attendants floating lazily around her. He idly wondered why such a perfect being chose such a dank place to dispense wisdom but under the warm cave-sun the stone might have well been pheasant-down to him. He dropped the quarry at his feet, hunted to exhaustion only slightly more than him. He avoided the vacant glassy eyes. It hurt his heart. The light intensified and he smiled the smile of a boy long since gone. His aches faded. 

"You have succeeded." The voice was raw and unearthly. 

"For you, my Lady. My pledge drove me on." He was met with only silence. He only looked up when his horse took a nervous step back. Then the light began to fade away, and with it the warmth that blanketed his wounds.  "My Lady, long I have trekked, much of you to others have I spoken. Many at home count on me as I have on you. Forgive my terseness but the wisdom please."

"How many?" The voice was thicker now and quicker, as if panting. "How many have you told of me and this place?"

"All in every town between here and the distant peak you sent me to."

"Good." The voice was thicker still, resonant. The glowing attendants moved faster now, agitated. They flit like so many minnows sensing the shadow of an ibis overhead. "More will come then." The horse reared in a panic, the attendants winking out in rapid succession and the Lady faded away. 

And two glassy black eyes replaced them. 

Knight and horse together were swallowed up before his hand could reach his sword. 

The Lady-in-Waiting, or the Land Angler Fish

(L)Angler Fish

HD 5/AC as Leather/Damage 1d6

DIS. Cruel, Cunning, Honeyed/MOR 6

WANTS: to appear divine, to be worshipped

NEEDS: to satiate a monstrous appetite  

Special. Its lure takes the form of a glowing celestial, different for all, but one deemed comforting, wise and angelic. While the light glows, the rest of the creature cannot, and indeed has not, been seen.  In fact, it is not truly there, hiding just out of reach in a nearby dimension or plane, only the lure physically present. Those who bask in its presence are healed 1 HP per hour and wounds and sickness mend and cure themselves at a rapid rate and indeed the (L)Angler encourages this. 

Vacuum. Once per fight, the Langler Fish open its vacuum sealed maw from the dimension it hides in. All Close creatures must make a difficult Test of Strength or be swallowed. 

    

Suitors, glowing brightly

HP 1/AC as Plate (speed)/Damage as dart
DIS. Doting, fanatic, starving/MOR 11

WANTS: to breed 

NEEDS: to be patient 

AVOIDS: being devoured 

Special. They flit to and fro between Lady and foe in a fight, healing her the damage they do, a living blood transfuser. 

 

 

 

 

 

An Anti-Meta Monster: The Malfectorix

I am a compulsory doodler. A clear sign of the ADHD missed for so many years, childhood margins were filled with twinkling lines and dashes, pictographs and comics. Perhaps compelled by the gallery books of Waterson and Larson I scribbled and scrabbled so much that I am happy to say I have filled a good chunk of a journal with absurd drawings.

However, a special book I have, custom made by mi amour, of spiral binding and dotted background, that I fill with my monsters. Most are, to me at least, original or else grounded in folklore. Some are reinterpretations of classic one's, my own spin on them. One stands out, one I am especially fond of. 

The Malfectorix. A name that would strike terror into the hearts of anyone, if I had ever run it as a monster in my games.

D&D has its beholders and dragons and mindflayers on the front of its bestiaries. My own would have this guy: 

Born of a boring virtual training class, the Malfectorix whose name means "very bad" and "you don't understand Latin" is a great beastie that should have one more HD than is reasonable in your system. I have written in my book here HD equivalent to "15 men" but perhaps it would be better off at 11 HD, many more than I would ever give a creature in a system where a HD tops off at 10+. 

It is the pinnacle of awful monsters. Incredibly strong, it runs faster than a horse, and with an immense appetite, it will sunder entire country sides seeking food, that being anything it thinks could be food. Unlike its contemporaries, dragons and beholders, it is frightfully unintelligent. Nature has conversely given it a head harder than granite to protect the precious few bundles of neurons it has. This is good (for it) because its primary form of locomotion is straight, with no care for lies in its chosen path. It can and will sunder an entire castle wall with minimal brain damage, though this is more because the castle was in the way of the direction it chose a few miles back than any issue with the wall itself [1].

Killing it confers no benefits to the killer, beyond its absence. No part of it is valuable. Its shaggy pelt will leave you freezing and its meat is vile and toxic. Its claws are brittle in death, losing their razor sharpness quickly. Its stony head could be of use it you had enough men to carry it, and its mouth's edge is vorpal sharp, but it will begin to crack and crumble by next winter. Unlike many monsters with stomachs and crops just for holding swallowed treasure, the Malfectorix's stomach will only contain 2d3 bowling ball sized stones. It is theorized these allow them to break up the horrible things they eat. There's another theory that the Malfectorix confuses them for eggs and that this causes its troublesome indigestion and is the primary cause of its bad temper. 

Their corpses, not unlike whales, explode after, unlike whales, 1d3 hours, making bringing a head in for reward difficult. The explosions can send the stony craniums upwards of half a mile away or, half a meter through your buddy. 

Interestingly, its eye stalks are on the side of its head. Perhaps a distant ancestor grew tired of smashing them to a pulp during its preferred ramming attacks and divested itself from its brothers' kiddy gene pools, searching for deeper waters. The resultant effect was the stretching of its already thin brain. As such the eye stalks sometimes fight, confusing the other for another Malfectorix. This makes breeding, thankfully, a challenge and breeding pairs hate each other, compelled by mother nature to get along long enough to well, get along. 

In truth the creature's true purpose in my games is perhaps to befuddle and annoy players. It has no reasonable loot, is difficult to kill and easy to trick. Therefore, its favorite food is power gamers and it should always fall for the first ruse provided by the shyest player. In a world where my monsters' lives are measured in rounds, the Malfectorix stands apart. It seeks instead to challenge their notions of a monster's purpose. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd give the monster negative XP, taking a level per player on death. It is the "BANG!" flag that comes out of a loaded clown's revolver. It exists for its own sake and not the sake of any player. Cleverness will suffice for defeating it and not even much is required. If it by some miracle it is killed, it can take a player out with an explosion and the resultant noise summons every monster in the area. Perhaps even, another Malfectorix. 

Some Stats for the Foolhardy 

HD: 21 Men (learned though much trial and error); or 1 more than is standard for the system you use
AC: Stone Maw like plate, body like chain
MV: Easily outruns a horse on its disturbing chicken legs, but only in straight lines
#1°: 1, 1d2 (mated pair, angry) + 1d4 chicks (ravenous bastards)
Sp: Vorpal Maw, its crits decapitate heads and remove limbs in one hit. It ignores armor. It is famously stupid.

Noxious gas. Can be emitted from its nostrils, varying in potency: 1. Deadly 2. Acidic 3. Anoxic 4. Paralyzing 5. Confusing 6. Sleep inducing. The latter three can affect the creature itself, if it stands in its own cloud for a round. 

WANTS: to eat (anything)
NEEDS: to fight that other Malfectorix
AVOIDS: nothing
DESIRES: to eat large rocks
TREASURE: those very same rocks

Meta: It targets power gamers first and the last thing to hit it second and falls for the first trick proposed by a quiet player. On its death, it takes one level of XP per player with it. The level can be retrieved with an arduous series of interconnected fetch quests that form an ouroboros back to the first quest giver.

The other picture didn't capture his regal nose smoke

1. Foes have tried to use this to their advantage, luring the beast over, having it smash a hole in a wall to end a siege early, only to fail when the monster put a hole in the wall on the other side allowing their quarry to escape.

There's no discharge in the war!

You must listen to this first. 

"orcs,

orcs, 

orcs, 

orcs 

marchin' up and down again 

there's no discharge in the war!"

-Rudyard Kipling, probably

" You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it." -Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

"A monster is a sign, something somewhere in the world has fucked up." -Dan, Throne of Salt

War and Starvation, those wretched gods that dance together in love and lust, through the mired field of the dead and dying. Their dresses are made of vulture feathers and the stink of hungry feral hounds. Atop the armor stripped from the dead for everlasting glory, they sway, they sway to the sound of the great hangers on of Bloody Campaigns, the cooks and porters and slaves that feed War's Great and Terrible Machine. They two- and three-step to the wailing cries of ransacked towns, the tearing of ration cards and the growls of empty stomachs. And they laugh. 

But while they laugh, men march to the sound. And march. And march. And march. Until they lose their minds. 

~~~

Everyone thinks they have the best orc and everyone is right. 

These are mine

 

Don't- don't- don't- don't- look at what's in front of you. 

March a man half to death and then do it again. Feed him hard tack after the beetles have had their fill. Drain his canteen until only a drop remains and do it for a week and then do it again. Tell him little and make him hate his Officer, for an Officer is a thing, an oracular machine who reads the winds of war in the entrails of those he sends to death. Tell them to find the Enemy, that thing so wretched and godless that it must be found like a hound on the path of the wolves who take the shepherds and their flock in dead of night. The Enemy is that thing. The Enemy is what the Officer says it is. Tell them to ignore the angry glares of those they fight for, they are not part of the efficient machine that makes machines that make war. Tell them to scorch the earth until the angels who sound the trumpets in heaven jump and cry at the heat under the soles of their ironclad and seamless floor because it will never be more then the distant and smothering ceiling of those who march. And then do it again.

Watch the soles of his feet thicken after the blisters never heal. Wear his boots thin and thinner still until there is no boot. Make him patch it. When it's all patch replace it until you don't. Then do it again until no boots are left in the whole damn world because the cobbler got drafted, the luckiest man alive he is, for who gets to find the Enemy and snuff it out. 

Make hunger his friend and the white pallor of his skin his blanket. Watch this sallow skin yellow and then green and his jaw jut out at first in pride for he seeks the Enemy and then later to keep from biting his own tongue clean off. Watch his teeth grow wicked and sharp because he knows when he runs out of the bullets in the bandoliers he's counted one one-thousand times and his bayonet dulls because he's whittled his whetstone to nothing that he will use them to destroy the Enemy, who is determined by the Officer, who is the oracular machine, which finds the Enemy. 

Never let him set his rifle down or the Enemy will be atop of him. Watch as by degrees and days his arms are stretched until they hang to his knees, dragging his rifle in the mud behind him. Make him hate the sight of the man ahead of him. Make him hate the Enemy, decided by the Officer, the oracle machine that makes machines that make fire to scorch the earth. 

Never let him find the Enemy. When he can think of nothing but the Enemy, he is a man. When he forgets the Enemy, when his mind has been wiped clean for nought but marching and boots- boots- boots, he is an orc. 

Orc-As-Class

Equipment. Armor, worn. Weapon, worn. Boots, worn to nearly nothing. A nearly empty canteen, a nearly full bandolier of ammunition, an empty helmet atop your head. 

+1 STR and +1 damage per template

A). Boots (boots, boots), The Officer

B). The Enemy, Hate

C). The Machine, Lunatic

D). Apotheosis 

Boots- Boots- Boots-. You gain Fatigue like anyone else from a forced march, starvation and exhaustion which fills an inventory slot. Unlike others, Fatigue can be stacked in threes before it fills the next slot. You use this to keep watch all night, so the Enemy does not get atop of you. For every slot filled with Fatigue, stack 1d6 atop your character sheet. These are your Fatigue Dice

The Officer. When you have no Fatigue, you may remember the voice of your Officer. He reminds you what (never who) The Enemy is. If today's Enemy is not yesterday's, you do not question it. 

Irrespective of Fatigue, when you would make a save against the Enemy, or make any save to prevent charms, mind-control or fear, you recall his voice and add your Orc templates to the save. You may also add half your orc templates to morale saves of any hirelings in your service, as long as you stand. 

This is like a rangers favored enemy but you can pick what (not who) it is. It cannot be a people specially but it can be that what causes the problem that aids the Enemy. 

    Δ March 100 miles (16 Hexes) and wear through Ten Pairs of Boots. A week's march gives modest boots the need for a patch. At the end of each week you have Patch-in-6 chance the boot needs replaced. A la Dings 

The Enemy. The Enemy is that thing which you hate more than anything in the world except boots- boots- boots- boots. When you find the enemy, whatever you use to kill them is considered a deadly weapon including your bare hands and teeth which are clawed and sharp respectively. When you kill The Enemy, you may remember the voice of your Officer, who will remind you what the Enemy is, even if you are Fatigued. 

Hate. You may reduce Fatigue by one when you kill the Enemy. 

    Δ Stay Awake for Ten Days with no reprieve. 

The Machine. You may reduce Fatigue by 1 and remove 1 Fatigue Die from your character sheet to deal ten times the damage to The Enemy you normally could or twice the damage to anyone else. 

The Machine must also be fed. You may remove one or several Fatigue Dice from your character sheet, roll three times on the Carouse Table, and take the worst choice. You are ran out of town in addition to the result and after everything not nailed down, you take. You take 1d6+ [Fatigue Dice] slots of loot, divvied up between food, jewels and trophies, as you see fit.  

Anyone could raid a town for supplies and get 1d6 slots of loot but you're good at it because the alternative is death. Consider scalps as trophies if it fits the tone of your game. 

Lunatic. The first time you take damage from an attack, you do not. You still bleed, have an arrow in you or are poisoned, you just don't care. A lunch, rest or killing an Enemy, resets this.  

    Δ Kill 10 Enemies and pillage 1000 gold worth of food, jewels and trophies. 

Apotheosis. Gain +1 reach from lengthy limbs held down by weapons you never part with. Gain night vision in whites and greens from too many sleepless nights on watch (it is temporarily lost from bright flashes). When you drop to 0HP, gain HP equal to Fatigue Dice on your character sheet which you then remove. You can smell loot, ambushes and the Enemy. It's everywhere. 

Orc-As-Monster

March men, and only men, a thousand miles in a hundred days though ten pairs of boots. Do not let him eat, sleep or piss without fear the Enemy will be atop him. Make sure he always has his rifle and bayonet. Give him no reprieve from boredom, fear, orders and most of all marching. When he does not find the Enemy nor recognize himself in the polish of his boots, he will be an orc. 

HD 1/AC as Armor -1/Damage as Weapon+1

DIS: Aggressive, Militant MOR 8

WANTS: To find the Enemy, to fight, to drink and feast

NEEDS: To march, to eat

AVOIDS: Authority, organization, reprisal, abuse 

Tackle. On a failed STR check, target is knocked down. 

Shakedown. On a failed STR check, the target is robbed of all rations, boots or a bag of gold. If more than two orcs do it, it's a Hard test (roll under half STR). 

Special. Oath made to orcs are magical. When you make an oath, they will ask you, "Bones or blood?" Each day you do not uphold the oath, you will lose 1 max HP if blood, or gain a random injury if bones. Roll 1d6 for head, torso, limbs etc. Each limb can be broken twice before it is mangled beyond repair. 

 

Orcs use their oaths to their advantage in the long run. They are picky about what they accept in return for whatever you ask (usually "stop attacking us" or "go away" or "serve me") but can usually be satisfied with the promise of food, boots or treasure though never as a one-time deal. Its food when they're hungry and boots when they need shod and treasure which they'll need more of because they'll spend it all. They will be quite clear about this. Cowardly town leaders will promise this in exchange for them not attacking until one day the wells run dry. 

~~~

 Some levity.