Mongrel
2013-03-10, 01:29 PM
I'm DMing a game where the villains are a very secretive group of human, gnome, zern, and doppleganger/changeling Vecna worshippers. My inspiration for this group comes mostly from the zern, a monster in the Monster Manual IV that basically thinks that its race is the only truly sentient one, and is obsessed with experimenting on other "lesser" creatures in order to create the perfect life form.
There are some examples of the Zern's creations, horrible abberations mainly, but there are only like two of them and I'd like to really have fun with the whole "evil biomancers" kind of thing. So I'm looking for good monsters (or templates, or other suggestions) that could be used to give an idea of a group of people with tons of experimental slaves/servants. To help get started with ideas, here are the four main players of the organization:
1) a human lich who is fascinated by souls and the energy one can harness from them. He's the shadowy leader of the cell the PCs will mostly be dealing with, and his experiments tend towards magic items, or constructs, that can make use of souls as a power/fuel source.
2) A Zern transmuter who loves conducting experiments that "improve" creatures, usually by turning them into abberations. Certainly the most enthusiastic experimenter of the four, his labs will be filled with horrible experiments, some of which are failed, some of which are quite powerful. Examples would include things like Gibbering Mouthers or Otyughs.
3) a Zern druid who is seeking perfection of the natural order. She has a clan of lycanthropes at her command, and is conducting experiments involving cocoons to "evolve" her minions, as well as experiments in manipulating various plant life to do her bidding.
4) a gnomish cleric whose specialty is undead. The weakest of the four, he has taken over an embalming site of a good aligned kingdom and is using the various rare reagents there to experiment with different types of undead.
These four are well equipped and well funded with plenty of lesser servants of their organization to assist them in their exploits (mostly rogues, wizards, and clerics). There is also a network of deep cover changeling/doppleganger agents that have infiltrated the various kingdoms and other powers that be of the areas and can support these four in their tasks (for example, the good kingdom still hasn't discovered that their embalming facility has been taken over due to the efforts of the spies).
There are some examples of the Zern's creations, horrible abberations mainly, but there are only like two of them and I'd like to really have fun with the whole "evil biomancers" kind of thing. So I'm looking for good monsters (or templates, or other suggestions) that could be used to give an idea of a group of people with tons of experimental slaves/servants. To help get started with ideas, here are the four main players of the organization:
1) a human lich who is fascinated by souls and the energy one can harness from them. He's the shadowy leader of the cell the PCs will mostly be dealing with, and his experiments tend towards magic items, or constructs, that can make use of souls as a power/fuel source.
2) A Zern transmuter who loves conducting experiments that "improve" creatures, usually by turning them into abberations. Certainly the most enthusiastic experimenter of the four, his labs will be filled with horrible experiments, some of which are failed, some of which are quite powerful. Examples would include things like Gibbering Mouthers or Otyughs.
3) a Zern druid who is seeking perfection of the natural order. She has a clan of lycanthropes at her command, and is conducting experiments involving cocoons to "evolve" her minions, as well as experiments in manipulating various plant life to do her bidding.
4) a gnomish cleric whose specialty is undead. The weakest of the four, he has taken over an embalming site of a good aligned kingdom and is using the various rare reagents there to experiment with different types of undead.
These four are well equipped and well funded with plenty of lesser servants of their organization to assist them in their exploits (mostly rogues, wizards, and clerics). There is also a network of deep cover changeling/doppleganger agents that have infiltrated the various kingdoms and other powers that be of the areas and can support these four in their tasks (for example, the good kingdom still hasn't discovered that their embalming facility has been taken over due to the efforts of the spies).