Help design alien madness!

Matt Larkin (author) · February 04, 2007, 12:19:28 PM

For those of you unfamiliar with my setting, Kishar, I have a kind of Lovecraftian horror type aliens from outside the universe called the Old Ones.

Now I'm requesting some creative community input in designing more of them. In addition to maybe wanting a few more original races, I still need forms and natures for five of the chief servants of Yaldabaoth.

The one I just posted:

[ic=Iao]Iao is one of the chief servants of Yaldabaoth, and one of the most powerful of all Old Ones. Like all of the six chief servants, it is unclear whether it is a unique entity or a manifestation of Yaldabaoth.

At first glance, Iao appears to be a rogue planet. It is rocky, barren, and has no atmosphere. However, it is alive and capable of extremely fast movement. It can also open a gigantic maw which it uses to devour anything that gets in its way, as well as a massive eye the size of a continent.

Iao feeds on almost anything, including other planets. It stalks the cosmos, slowly devouring them. It prefers planets with living beings on them, but will usually stop to devour all the planets in any solar system it comes to.

The Primordials have destroyed Iao at least twice, through extreme effort. But it always manages to reform itself.[/ic]

Epic Meepo · February 05, 2007, 03:25:41 PM

If you don't mind borrowing things from published settings, I'd recommend tracking down a Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium or two. Half of the monsters created for the Spelljammer setting resemble things like your Iao (rogue planets, killer asteroids, living prismatic spheres from the stars, giant regenerating space plants, etc.).

Matt Larkin (author) · February 05, 2007, 03:59:02 PM

I appreciate the pointer, but I kind of want to stick away from published materials. I'd rather have everything in my setting be based on mythology/folklore, or be completely original.

One reason I wouldn't directly use Lovecraft's stuff, even though I think the copyright expired on it now.

Side note, the only Spelljammer monster I think I've seen are those space hippo men. It's um... :huh:

Matt Larkin (author) · February 05, 2007, 04:42:55 PM

Well, here's a rough draft for a new one:

[ic=Sabaoth]
Sabaoth appears to be a gigantic mass of writhing tentacles. It stands three stories high, but this fluctuates, especially as it moves, undulating across the ground. Each of its many tentacles ends in a maw of razor-sharp teeth. Its tentacles appear to be able to spontaneous grow in length, reaching lengths of over sixty feet. These tentacles possess incredible strength, particularly the thicker, shorter ones.

The inner mass of its body is covered by compound eyes that radiate dark light. Its maws can spit a highly corrosive acid. They can also emit a sonic screech which can render most nearby creatures stunned or unconscious.

It normally shambles along on the ground or bottom of the sea, but can also fold space and appear great distances away. However, there seems to be some limit to its teleportation ability - it appears to be able to travel anywhere in space, but only comes to inhabitted planets if certain profane rituals are peformed. In space it is capable of some unknown means of propulsion.

Sabaoth will use its tentacles mouths to consume both organic and inorganic material, though it appears to be able to go long years without need of food.

Sabaoth can be injured, but regenerates from injury with alarming speed. It can regrow lost tentacles in a matter of seconds.
[/ic]

Tybalt · February 05, 2007, 06:22:58 PM

I like both of those...the first sounds a bit like Ghroth though, just fyi.

QuoteAnga-Manar, "the Whispering Water". This being was worshipped as a god of the seas by ancient races and may yet be. It appears as a sentient mass of roiling bubbles and eddies of material in which swim the spectre like remains of its victims, so that it seems at one terrified glance to be a great whirlpool or storm. Extending its power it is able to reach up to moisture in the atmosphere to form a gigantic waterspout and move against objects moving on the surface of the water. One of its other abilities is to send extensions of itself either in the undead waterlogged forms of its victims or else to form beings out of its living water substance, though these can survive on dry land for just an hour or so before they begin to gradually dissolve into the salt water they were made from. Legend states that if sacrifices are offered or performed that it will perform a service in exchange for this--but woe to the summoner who fails to provide the promised sacrifices! It will seek out then those who dared to waste its time even if it must track them down the lifetimes and generations.

It is further said that strange wisdoms of the ways of the seas and the mysteries within can be learned from this creature in a book known as the Book of the Waters.

DeeL · February 05, 2007, 06:46:36 PM

[ic=The Lokar]The Lokar are a race of sessile invertebrates that begin their lives as barnacle-like carnivores with an odd feeding mechanism - essentially, they produce from within themselves a small mobile insectlike creature that ventures forth from the chitinous mound of the lokar proper, gorges on as much protein as possible, then returns to the lokar and is devoured. The lokar uses the biomass to fuel its own growth, producing a larger and thicker shell in the process.

The 'feasters' of the lokar are innocous to humanoids, at least on an individual basis, but about the time the lokar is the mass of a human it begins to produce swarms of feasters and release them to procure more food. As the lokar grows, the feasting swarms become large enough to annihilate the ecology in an ever-widening area, until the hill-sized lokar is at the center of an increasingly desert-like climate.

At this point in the lokar's development, it begins to cease to produce feasters and becomes quiescent for more than a century, during which time it's nervous system becomes far more complex, as does its ability to produce mobile biologics. At the end of this interval, it produces another swarm, but one with far more complex behavior - in addition to acquiring mere mass, these feasters observe and record the environment. When they return to the lokar and are devoured, the lokar reads their nervous systems in the course of digestion, and thus learns about the world outside its shell.

The lokar then begins to produce far more complex biologics, ones that mimic the pertinent appearance, odor and behavior of larger animals proximate to itself. It then sends these forth with the intention of luring or forcing these creatures back to the lokar to be eaten. Their nervous systems are read in turn, and more complex creatures are produced in consequence, some even more precise imitations of the local plants or animals, some more idiosyncratic expressions of the lokars will.

These creatures are then sent forth to perform more complex tasks, depending on the circumstances. The increasingly mountainous lokar becomes essentially the king of a vast ecological fiefdom, which could easily include sentient creatures. Some lokar take the roles of gods, hungry deities who require constant sacrifice and from whom emerge heros and prophets whose neurons are programmed to influence policies for the benefit of their progenitor. Others conceal their own existence, producing plants and fungi intended to camouflage their shells as cave-riddled hillocks; legends frequently speak of people entering such places and emerging therefrom sometimes decades or centuries later but appearing as if they hadn't aged at all. Sometimes, their personalities seem changed in odd ways...

A very few lokar produce huge, animallike beings intended to uproot them from their moorings and carry them like gigantic turtles. These individuals are more direct in their meddling than others; they do not particularly care what lesser races think of them, and thus are considered merely vast monsters from whom even the mightiest of heroes must flee.

Regardless, in humanoid terms the lokar are almost inherently evil. The lokar proper only has one sense - the sense of taste. This circuitous means of perceiving the world makes them narcissistic to the point of solipsism; although they interact with ecologies with precise complexity, they cannot imagine that anything beyond their own shells might have sense, will or intellect worthy of consideration. What the lokar call peaceful exploration and diplomacy, other beings call the worst kind of engulf and devour expansionism.

A lokar only dies from trauma; on such occasions, enclaves of cells within the shell produce one last feaster (or, if the lokar is old enough, a swarm of feasters.) These creatures fly far before they begin eating. After they have eaten their fill, they find a solid surface against which they secure themselves with resin, and there metamorphose into a juvenile lokar. Thus, a generation of lokar tend to arise generations after the death of one large individual of their race. In such regions, the secrets to finding and defeating the growing lokar might only be traceable in truly ancient folklore.[/ic]

Phoenix, is this what you are looking for? A single lokar could easily pass for a cultic god, a monster beyond mortal imagining, or as a local mystery defying all comprehension. They can function as 'body snatchers', in any sense of the term you like. They might possess psychic or mystical awareness, although they don't need to be approachable on even such abstract levels unless you would find it entertaining. They can serve the dramatic functions of the Great Old Ones in any number of ways. A lokar who had 'examined' a wizard of some sort might even begin extending its influence through multiple dimensions, which could have truly bizarre effects.

Heck, a sufficiently old and powerful lokar could stand in for R'lyeh itself, reshaping an entire locale according to its own alien aesthetics.

SA · February 05, 2007, 08:09:53 PM

Daym, DeeL, that there is near ingenious. Cunningly conceived. "Narcissistic to the point of solipsism." YOu know, I think my dear old mama might have called me such, once.

Matt Larkin (author) · February 06, 2007, 09:45:49 AM

@Tybalt, I had never heard of Ghronth, but I had not read Campbell's stuff for Cthulu. I might try to modify Iao a bit for that.

Thanks for the crazy sea god thing, a very cool idea, especially the description. I might change the name to one of the chiefs, since it sounds pretty powerful (if you don't mind). But then I might have to make it more cosmic, so maybe I won't...Just thinking outloud.

@DeeL, yes that's exactly what I'm looking for. And very brilliantly creative at that. I am truly impressed with that one, sir.

Thanks to both of you :)

On a side note, while I no longer really use D&D for Kishar (or do much gaming at all lately), when I did, I had the least powerful of Old Ones (the Dwellers) at CR 18. So any other race should be at least a little higher, and individualls on par with gods.

Tybalt · February 06, 2007, 01:43:47 PM

I certainly don't mind. And I don't know if you want to change the planetoid creature unless you are planning to publish this stuff, after all the idea is cool. I don't think Ghroth so much devours planets as it apparently is the Harbinger. It is featured in two CoC adventures, both involving the Mi-Go as well.

I like DeeL's as well, for being particularly different and unsettling in a less godly way--it very much is in the flavour of CoC's strange alien beings which are completely un-anthropomorphic.

Matt Larkin (author) · February 06, 2007, 03:02:45 PM

I do plan to publish writings set in Kishar. Even though a lot of the background material might not see print (some of this included, maybe), at least not right away, I'd prefer to keep it original.

But then, after looking up Ghronth in Wikipedia, I think I make some relatively minor changes (like the eye thing), and make is sufficiently different.

I actually kind of see Iao as a giant space pac-man, though I would never use that description on site for the sake of seriousness.

Maybe with volcanic craters for eyes, instead of the one big eye?

And yeah, one of the reasons for reaching out for other ideas, is that completely non-anthropomorphic are so far outside the box they can be harder to come up with some times.

Bill Volk · February 06, 2007, 04:34:54 PM

If you're looking for more Lovecraftian horrors on the same scale as massive planet-eaters, consider a sort of larval Old One that drifts through the cosmos until it buries itself inside a host star. While the Old One is incubating, the star becomes progressively tainted and gives off a discolored, alien light that twists and mutates the life on surrounding worlds. If it should survive its period of metamorphosis, it bursts forth as an Old One of staggering power. Figuring out how to destroy such a larva, or how to prevent one from finding a host in the first place, would be a suitable epic-level obstacle or an explanation for the existence of weaker pseudonatural beasties.

Matt Larkin (author) · February 06, 2007, 05:00:19 PM

I like that, especially the part about it giving off wierd light and (presumably) some kind of strange radiation.

I might even make it one of the chiefs of Yaldabaoth.

Bill Volk · February 06, 2007, 06:16:27 PM

Thanks! It's an indirect ripoff of Lovecraft's "The Color Out of Space." If you haven't, I'd recommend reading it to see where I'm coming from and get ideas for horrific side-effects of the alien light/radiation.

Even easily-killed, rank-and-file Lovecraftian horrors still need to be horrific. Here's an idea: in a large city or community that's been exposed to the alien light, a whole generation of children is born monstrous. PCs may find themselves cleaving through swarms and swarms of gray-skinned, empty-eyed infants who attack with acidic intestine-tendrils from their mouths.

So-Keher · February 06, 2007, 07:54:54 PM

wow thats freakin...freaky! Maybe they start killing off the adults to make way for the new race of aliens!

Xeviat · February 07, 2007, 01:26:04 AM

I don't advocate "designing" alien madnesses, I believe in the organic method: let them come to you. Pick your vice, alcohol or caffeen, then do this: don't sleep for a full 24 hours, and on the start of the 25th hour, drink a fair amount of either. Then watch your favorite horror movie.

You may fall asleep if you drank alcohol, or you may go into betawave heaven if you drank caffeen. Either way, ideas will come to you.

You should always consult your phisician before undergoing a madness summoning ritual. As with all madness summoning rituals, some madness may result. Test subjects reported appendage growth or transmutation, the ability to taste objects at a mile away, and backwards speaking begin to tendancy the. Alien summoning rituals may have some risk of dependancy.

With that aside, I'll keep my third eye open and tell you what I see. I've always liked the "Hand Scorpion" a friend drew for a game I ran way back when. Imagine two human hands, fused at the thumb bone so that its eight fingers were its eight legs. The grotesque arm formed the tail, and the bloody armbones formed the stinger. Its venom dealt wisdom damage. Fun thing, cause it looked like a normal monstrous scorpion until you were wisdom damaged. Good times.

The Campaign Builder's Guild

News:

Help design alien madness!

Matt Larkin (author)

Epic Meepo

Matt Larkin (author)

Matt Larkin (author)

Tybalt

DeeL

SA

Matt Larkin (author)

Tybalt

Matt Larkin (author)

Bill Volk

Matt Larkin (author)

Bill Volk

So-Keher

Xeviat