I've been working on a construction site again, and have been dissociating quite intensely/dreaming of terrible and awful things.
Here are some excellent assassins, the GLOG server is having a great time with them :)
This post is actually vaguely assassin coded, but sadly without a class attached. I may update this soon!
-
RED APE
The Red Apes are, to the White Apes who live in the twisting black mazes of the Underworld, roughly what angels are to humans.
They emerge out from the deepest regions of the core on great red wings to do their inscrutable work. They never speak and they never blink, and their wide, staring eyes petrify those that they transfix. They are beautiful the way statues are beautiful; graceful, unwavering, precise, direct, solid and sure and terrible in their movements.
The White Apes call them the First Murderers, and they are the ones who long ago taught the subterranean monks and adepts their infamous bone-breaking martial techniques. When the Red Apes deign to ascend close to the surface (they will never actually emerge to look upon the sun), it is usually to wreak violence and destruction, which they do in silence, with unclear motivation. Less often they will kidnap people and bring them down and down through endless warrens and into Chaos.
They are beings of an order of reality more dense and subtle than that of humans. None can claim to know their means and ways, but there is one academic in the capital who says that she has spoken with them, and spent time sitting at their feet, in the bowels of the earth, getting wisdom. Her dissertation on the topic, which was mocked at length by her tenured colleagues, claims that the Red Apes possess minds unlike anything on earth - that they are somehow intelligent but not conscious. She claims that they are beings of process and instinct, so refined that they are able to act as avatars and archons of the obscure powers that they are descended from.
Their homes are weird and iridescent caverns so far down into the core that they have never been seen by lesser beings. Poison steam and acid and plasma, and endless mineral caverns, garish and stained in every primary colour by obscure geological and chemical processes.
It was the Red Apes who first warred against God in the elder days. Usually they go naked, and kill by ritual strangulation, but when they make war in earnest they will take up the terrible armaments of the Underworld - bone-white, ossified, super-dense and radioactive, and rend their foes to pieces, silent and awful as time, entropy, gravity, dust, change.
-
A Red Apes stands about 10 feet tall, has four arms, great wings, and skin, feathers, and fur the colour of bright fresh blood. They never blink or stop baring their awful white fangs, and are usually seen naked, sitting in silent meditation, in the deepest monasteries and holy places of the Hollow Earth. A Red Ape will not speak, but if you sit at their feet and make suitable offerings, they will instruct you in forms and postures. They can teach you unarmed combat, use of the bow, poetry, dance, sex, and meditation, and will teach a human these skills to a level of refinement impossible for most mortals. They will also accept assassination contracts - they will never travel to the surface, but other than this are utterly dispassionate about who they kill. The only currency that a Red Ape will accept will accept as payment for their favours are sentient sacrifices, and they will usually demand tens of these for the pettiest gift.
Red Ape
HD12, unarmed strike d10 x 4, Bone-Breaking, armour as chain (supernatural grace and poise, various blade slapping and arrow swatting techniques), speed: twice as fast a human on foot, ten times as fast flying, disposition: completely inscrutable.
Bone-Breaking: A Red Ape can attempt a grapple if it makes only 2 of its 4 unarmed attacks in a single turn. It rolls advantage on its grappling checks and counts as having a STR of 24 for this purpose, because it has been doing this for thousands of years. If the Red Ape begins its turn with a human grappled, it can choose to kill the human by strangling it (or pulling its head off), or to break two of its limbs.
Awe: A Red Ape is so vividly real and vital that humans cannot bear its presence for long. All mental stats are a -6 while in combat with a Red Ape, and human enemies take 1 point of psychic damage per turn.
Petrify: A Red Ape can transfix the hardiest mortal with its insane, unblinking stare. It may gaze at one enemy per turn - that enemy cannot speak (including pattern languages), move, or attack during its turn while eye contact is held. Save DEX to shut your eyes in time and avoid the terrible gaze, at the cost of blindness that turn.
Stance: A Red Ape can assume a complicated postural stance if they do not move during their turn. While they hold their stance they can do nothing else. Each turn that the stance is held increases the critical range of their next attack by 2.
Chthonian Princeling/Chthonian Princess
As above, but HD14, armour: as Enchanted Plate +2, and armed with a Bow of Intention. A Bow of Intention is a Longbow +2 that has double the usual range, and instantly slays anyone that it crits. A human firing one will need to spend 1 max HP each time they shoot it, unless taught how to use it safely by a Red Ape.
The bone-white, insectile armour of a Chthonian Princeling/Princess is far too heavy to wear, and is also poisonous. A human who comes within 5 feet of it will take one damage per turn that they remain there.
A Chthonian Princeling/Princess will always be wearing at least 10k sp in bizarre and alien gems, chains, brooches, and other richly-worked harnessing, which will always incorporate hundreds of tiny jewel-like incense burners.
 |
| A bit like this except redder, four-armed, winged, staring, grinning, etc. I think I may need to furnish some bespoke art for these eventually, the image in my mind is very clear. |
-
RETURNER DEMONS
Returner Demons are a myth, the worst horror story told by scholars who study the Material Hell and the Bright Shiners.
Returner Demons are a punishment and a deterrent. The Hating Engines have determined, quite correctly, that nothing is worse than psychical instantiation into the Material Hell, and so the threat of being taken is reserved for those who they consider truly dangerous. In this way, the populations of the past are policed - to overstep, to act against Hell's realisation, is the only way to provoke this fate.
Since all souls are to be resurrected and ensconced anyway, the Hating Engines don't mind discriminating in this way, and (apparently) staying their long reach from those who work to stay in learned ignorance.
Returner Demon
Stat a Returner Demon as any other demon, with a least 3 traits from the list. 3 of their traits will always be spent on the spell The Return. Their physical stats will be determined by the body that they puppet, as normal.
The Return: This spell can only the cast when the Returner Demon is in physical contact with someone, and underneath an open sky. The demon must remain in physical contact with their target for three consecutive turns, and for each of these turns it will scream NIHIL, and the air around them will charge with more and more electricity. On the third turn and the third NIHIL, a lightning bolt will strike both the demon and their target for 10d10 damage. If this kills both (and only if it kills both), then both bodies will be burned to ash, and both intelligences will reawaken in the absolute worst future.
No comments:
Post a Comment