Steampunk Horror Creatures

[Blackhawk748]

Im gonna be running a Steampunk campaign in the near future and i was wondering if anyone knew of a good creature to use for a horror style encounter in the sewers. I have the set up basically done and i just need the creature.

The set up is basically this. The PCs work for the Sewerjack guild, a guild that keeps beasts and other things out of the sewers, and they have been sent into the Lower District sewers in response to a rash of gruesome murders that The Watch believes are being perpetrated by a creature living in the sewers as the crimes are "to gruesome to be human". The victims so far have been, a goblin shopkeep, a dwarven carpenter, a kobold barkeep, and a half elf barmaid. All were killed in their beds presumably while they slept.

So any ideas? FYI the party will be big, anywhere from 6-8 PCs all level 3.

[Piggy Knowles]

Rats. Hundreds and hundreds of rats, operating in a hivemind (BoVD for details). If you want to add a little bit of steampunk flavor to it, make the hivemind due to mechanical alterations to the rats, rather than dark speech or magic.

But hivemind swarms can be surprisingly nasty. A swarm of 1,000 rats would have in Intelligence of 27, Charisma of 22, 5 levels in sorcerer, 8 feats and quite a few bonus skill points.

Let's say that the rats were created by a mad tinkerer living in the sewers who experimented on rats with a crude electrical generator. He ended up inadvertently allowing the rats to form a hivemind, and as they grew in numbers, they also grew smarter and smarter. Finally the completely overwhelmed the tinkerer, and lived in the sewers for a long time, growing in size (and hence intelligence).

Now they have been occasionally bursting out of the sewers, attacking en masse and retreating before anyone knows what the heck is going on. Because they all work perfectly in tandem, the attacks don't look like regular rat attacks. Entire limbs are gnawed off, eyes are chewed out, etc, and it's done in a way that makes it seem like a single entity is doing this.

Regular rats start off with Stealthy and Weapon Finesse, so let's keep that. For the eight bonus feats, you'll definitely want to pick up Darkstalker, because these rats are good at hiding. Improved Initiative never hurts. It may not even be crazy to pick up some martial maneuvers via Martial Study for fun. Oh, hey, why not Hidden Talent (PMC) for poison creation? The rats are totally smart enough for that sort of thing.

For spells, spells that confuse and confound are probably your best choice. Things like Summon Swarm to summon additional rat swarms can really confuse the heck out of your enemies. Pyrotechnics gets some cool points - if the PCs bring torches down into the sewers with them, target it with Pyrotechnics for some huge BFC.

Don't show the swarm's full power for a long time. Have groups of hiveminded rats hide and skirmish and harry, popping out of tiny holes in the sewer to deliver poison, disease and maybe a disabling spell or two, then retreat. Rats can swim or climb just as easily as they can walk, they have scent, they have huge boosts to Hide/MS, and the PCs will be fighting them on their terms, and not even know what the heck they are fighting. Let them think, when they do see rats, tons and tons of rats, that it's an environmental hazard of the sewers, not the main enemy. And be ready for a really gross and explicit description of seeing hundreds of rats an a big, writhing pile, pulsating like some weird giant brain.

[Blackhawk748]

Sir that is...... BRILLIANT!!! This works even better because there is precedent for things in the sewers being "mutated and strange" mainly because of industrial pollution. This will work perfectly.

[drew2u]

An automated sewer cleaner / giant drill of spinny deathness could be a good mechanical/trap/mindless encounter as it patrols the sewers for blockages or obstructions.

[Toy Killer]

You could also go Moon rats for an extra level of mystery.

[White_Drake]

Wererats are an obvious addition, especially since werewolves are a very Victorian monster.

[Bloodgruve]

Horror.. a good way to horrify your PC's is to start eating their stats. -2 constitution, -2 wisdom... this stuff is scary as hell. Also something recurring that they almost kill but gets away and the effects linger :P

I created a 'Swarmforged' which uses the Swarm****er template from Libris Mortis glued to a warforged. Give him Rogue Evasion and he's almost impossible to kill against lower level PC'. Basically a swarm of bugs that form up to a humanoid shape with an outer shell floating on the mass. You could go clockwork with it.

Wereratswarm could be fun too ;)

Oozes and molds are creepy also.

GL
Blood~

[GolemsVoice]

Yeah, the rats are classic, good idea. Another idea is a rattling, whirring aparatus of bronze and steam, with no obvious purpose but to dismember people horribly. Throw in some human parts for bonus points.

[Blackhawk748]

All sweet ideas. Right now im going with this: A gnome scientist lives in an old storage area in the sewers so that he can do his experiments in peace. He is attempting to find out how the brain works, so he operates on rats in an attempt to understand. One day a larger than normal rat comes into his workshop and he befriends it. He names it Xenos and it essentially becomes his pet. He continues his experiments and gets close to understanding how the mind works. While this goes on for some inexplicable reason Xenos grows to the size of a large cat. Eventually he can learn no more form normal rats, he realizes that he must operate on Xenos, as the rat appears to be incredibly intelligent. He does so and the operation is a success, and as a side effect Xenos is now about as smart as a human toddler and capable of simple communication. The two continue on happily for some time.

One day as the gnome is returning from gathering supplies he is attacked by a ghoul. He manages to slay it but not before he is infected by Ghoul Rot. Xenos is forced to watch as his friend slowly succumbs to the disease. Before the gnome finally succumbs and turns into a ghoul several Sewerjacks patrolling the sewer find him and realizing that no matter what they do he is going to die, put him down gently. Xenos sees this and, not knowing that even if they had cured the gnome he would have died anyway, swears revenge on humanoids.

By this time Xenos is about the size of a dog and he calls rats to him. This is when he becomes Xenos the Rat King, and he develops the ability to speak telepathically. Several days later he finds the Sewerjacks who killed his friend and kill them. He then goes about wreaking his revenge on the surface dwellers.

Most of this info the players will discover in the gnomes journal written by him. The rest they will either infer or discover in another journal written by Xenos who uses Mage Hand to write.

[Lonely Tylenol]

One of my villains, a lesser villain who is more horror-themed, replaced a reputed doctor within the city, Doppelganger-style, and then, after harvesting the doctor's hospital for knowledge and resources, began performing experiments on some of his in-patients. Unfortunately, the villain was stark-raving mad, and had a very tenuous grip on reality, so his experiments were hardly the stuff of reason. The result was the creation of a homunculus, which basically has a human hand for a foot, two sets of eyes in horribly mismatched places, an ear where a normal creature's shoulder might be--basically, a horrifically mismatched set of limbs thrown together Play-Doh style--as well as a modified (and enhanced, if need be) Half-Golem (flesh) who has been broken of his humanity, has become incredibly bulky and corpulent (he has literally had bulk grafted onto him), and a number of other grafts. His attack form is to basically grab creatures with his three arms (one coming out of his hip or his neck, haven't decided which is more terrifying) and then force them into the gaping--and fully functioning--maw carved vertically into his torso, from collar bone to belly button, with three rows of jagged teeth built into it, and try to devour them completely.

This is all set in a secret ward of a hospital (the other two encounters are a group of animated zombies, and the mad surgeon himself, who has a few still-living patients attached to the Armor of the Dread Emperor (BoVD 111), which he still wears, acting doubly as a combat and hostage situation. But you can feel free to let these creatures loose in the sewers instead. :smallsmile:

[Tokuhara]

Oh no. The Hive Mind Rat Swarm is brilliant, but I've got something truly scary...

Assassin Jelly. It's an ooze that can get class levels. So make an Assassin Jelly with levels in say Sneak Attack Fighter (base attack bonus here + Sneak Attack), Totemist (More Natural Weapons) and Soul Eater (Book of Vile Darkness), and say it is an ooze who became self-aware and occasionally drags unsuspecting victims to the sewers below so it can feed on not just their bodies, but on their very souls.

[hamishspence]

Fiendish template upgrades Int to 3, and might fit.

[Tokuhara]

Hang on....

To combine a few ideas here:

Let's say a cult of Wererats want to blot out the sun and make the Full Moon a constant. When the cult began to set their plan into motion, the evil magic seeped into the sewers and corrupted thousands of Moon Rats who formed a hivemind and tainted their souls with infernal energy. Let's use the thousand odd Rats mentioned above.

Fiendish Moon Rat Hivemind Swarm: Much greater intellect at night, far more dangerous, and rather terrifying. Think the rats from Dishonored. Vengeful, hungry, and dangerous to the lone person on an evening stroll. And on a full moon, ONE of the rats has a 10 Intelligence and Strength, meaning that as a Hive Mind, they are SMARTER than a 20th level wizard/archivist/factotum

With say 5 of these swarms, the emperor fears for the population and sends the PCs out to end this cult

[Blackhawk748]

That is horrifying, i think i might use that idea when their a little higher level.

[Tokuhara]

That is horrifying, i think i might use that idea when their a little higher level.

What I'm saying is this:

At low levels, you hint the greater "horde" with fights with smaller swarms at lesser intellect levels. When the PCs "kill" the monsters, they disperse and head back into the sewers. Later on, they face larger hiveminds (say 1,000 individuals) which again disperse when defeated. Then, near the BBEG, they face a "Miniboss" who is all of the hiveminds they fought before in one large hivemind (say 5,000 or so individuals) where they actually get to kill the hivemind.

What I also suggest is give the hivemind(s) personality. My suggestion is much like Legion from Mass Effect: Many lesser intellects that form sentient beings with the personality of many. As the quote goes, "We are Legion, for we are many." Treat the hivemind(s) as a cross between Star Trek's Borg and the Geth, assimilate or die. They don't want world domination. They simply want to make the world a better place where there is no war, no famine, no persecusion, and no hatred. To do so, non-rats must be exterminated (wererats, rat collectives, ratlings, etc.) and the rest must assimilate.