16 November 2024

Deep Time Monster Groups - Adversary design notes from Hexcrawloween

Background to the hexcrawloween region that I cooked up was twists on classic monsters - taking the 'niche' of certain monsters and imagining their equivalents for other species and times.

I had a notion of what this patch of the world was - Land of the Dead, ruled by Theocracy of Kirianshalee, currently being invaded by dragon-blooded orcs from the north. After using the Wilderness Generator from Izirions Enchirdion of the West Marches to put some finer texture over that I got a patch of reality where clearly the veil had worn thin - lots of planar, fey and afterlife bleed through - souls not going where they ought to one way or another.

All this following on from the 'epochs' reading I had been doing for GLoGtober got me thinking of how this is the age of humans - or human-like things - but certainly there have been other ages dominated by other beings - and thus there must have been an ecosystem of predators, mimics and suchlike for those other times.

Hiver-bugs

I know this realm had a couple of prior ages - one where insectoids dominated - and while spiders are the obvious candidates for 'vampires' in that era, I thought of 'carapace crunchers' - things like dragonflies with dunkleosteus-like crusher-jaws. These are adapted to a (for them) harsher time and more dangerous prey and so find themselves living in a perpetual slow-zombie world - disgusting, swarming things that they can easily outwit or outfight but have to be constantly on guard against being swarmed. Adaptable pheremone developed to allow them to walk safely among insectoids hunting them, now in this age grants them powers to dominate mere vertebrates with trivial effort. These have survived in subterranean hives through the long aeons and have developed a near-beholder sense of personal-supremacy. Their most dangerous strength is that they cooperate and perceive each other as the last real people left alive, harming one is likely to bring bitter vengeance down upon you.

For the hexcrawloween region I took 'stats as mindflayer' as a reasonable approximation - with more thought that should have been 'as vampire' with the vulnerabilities, shapechanging and damage resistances removed. They ought to be tough, keep the 'charm' power and be dangerous in melee but do not have the shape shifting or gas-form. They keep flight abilities and general attitude, though with more of a sense of every meal these days is a disappointment.

These things were contained in the underdark for a long, long time until the fall of a god shattered the local region, wearing thin the planar boundaries and jolting them out of their place in time. They were recognised as a threat and contained in the underdark by the Church of Kirianshalee for most of the time since until the dragonblood-orc invasion drew off the Kirianshalee templars. With the way to the surface open these hiver-bugs as they are called have emerged and are wreaking havoc around the edges of other peoples wars.

Fey-devourers

Another survivor from the long-distant past are the fey-devourers, things that devour the 'feyness' of creatures from planar interstices - Feywild and the Shadowfell being the two most famous. These hail from a time before the planes solidified into their current configuration and they are themselves utterly maleable shards of proto-reality, forming into whatever they seek to be. Dungeon molluscs like mimics are a far-fallen kin to these; these fey-devourers spring from the same root as illithids but instead of becoming parasitic they became filter feeders. In those shifting time they were ethereal drifters, with plenty of stray energies to sate them. As the multiverse crystalised and stray planar energies became harder to find, they were forced to adapt. Now they are perfect chameleons, able to replicate anything they can touch, from a rock to a god. They can survive on the thin fare of ley-lines and the elemental incursions but to be nourished means consuming the planar aspects of whatever they can catch. It is unclear how they leach away the planar connection but none who have seen the shivering husk of an un-feyed sprite or displacer beast can doubt the vitality of whatever it is they take.

In the hexcrawloween region these were supposed to be high-powered doppelganger/mimic types - appearing as whatever you were expecting to find. Stats wise I would have them be a mirror to one of the PCs they run into. You could lean into the eldritch horror with these of having them *actually* become you and displace you from the timeline if you give them time. It will become that they have always been the one in your position.

In world they are a bunch that rode in atop the huge 'fey filter feeder' that appears in mid top of the map and have been supplementing their diet with the local population - a significant population of which is seelie heritage or elven influences animal hybrids. Nowhere near as unified as the Hiver-bugs, there are rebels among the fey devourers who seek to see the greed of their fellows curbed and sentients left alone.

Other groups

Other known 'deep time' groups who could well be around are:
The Seelie Court who once held much of this world as their dominion.
Aboleths - who are a deep time group by their very nature.
Mindflayers - whether a surviving splinter of the original Empire or refugees from a crash since.
Beetlescale insectoids - the contemporary prey of the Hiver-bugs

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