Gothic Earth Monsters

[Hobbo Jim]

Hey everyone, I am planning on DMing a Masque of the Red Death campaign setting. If you don't know what that is, it's essentially a gothic earth type area, has evil things like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Anyways, I need another monster type; so far I have Vampires, Werewolves, Undead/ghosts, and Witches. Any ideas would be appreciated! I've been thinking that perhaps an outsiders of some sort, but I can't come up with a reason for them to be on gothic earth and serving the red death. What do you guys think?

[weckar]

My closest experience is playing a bit of Lamordia in Ravenloft... Would Creatures of Science fit in this setting at all?

[John Longarrow]

Gargoyles.

Effegy Creatures.

Evil Fey.

[Benthesquid]

Flesh golems are pretty much directly intended to be Frankenstein's Monster, so I'd give those a look. Gargoyles, are also handy- especially if you play their Freeze ability up and intersperse them with actual statues. Morlocks in a castle's dungeons or the catacombs of a thriving metropolis work well too.

Of course, Gothic Horror is much about mood as it is about the specific creature. A human barbarian is not by default particularly Gothic, but a man who due to some deformity has been locked up in a windowless room high in his family's castle, his rage slowly growing inside him, until he escapes one day and flees to the moors, stalking and murdering his family one by one in his resentment against them? Perfect. Give him a template (fiendish, half-whatever) to make him a little more threatening and explain the exact nature of the deformity.

So keep that in mind, and an awful lot of monsters can fit into a Gothic world. Your Water Elemental isn't just a Water Elemental, it's the spirit of the mountain spring on which an ancient crumbling castle stands. Its growing madness and cruelty mirrors the corruption of the once noble family that dwells in the castle.

The duke's pet owlbear, horribly mistreated for years, lashes out at anyone who steps into its filthy hole, retreating only from the bullroarer its learned by hard experience to fear.

The duke's predecessor, his aunt Duchess Barovia, who 'died' mysteriously in order for the Duke to take leadership of the family, was never buried. This is because she never truly died at all- the Duke, fearing she would rise as a vengeful undead, instead poisoned her with Myceloid spores. Now, her mind near gone, she serves the eerie fungal creatures in their cavernous abodes.

And so on and so forth. I'm sure there are creatures that wouldn't fit a Gothic setting, but for an awful lot, it's just a matter of flavoring them correctly.

[Deadline]

Expanding on Benthesquid:

The Duke's neice, who drowned in the courtyard fountain, haunts the castle halls as an Allip.

Shapeless, chthulu-esque abominations? Chaos beasts and gibbering mouthers.

A former budding singer now turned monstrous? Harpy.

Creepy hounds? Yeth Hounds and Krenshars.

[Lord of Shadows]

Not to veer too far off-topic, but a good source for all things Gothic is the blog Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque (http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.ca/). Jack has been putting together a Gothic Earth campaign setting, and has several free downloads of Gothic material. Check out the "Books and Free PDF's" over on the right side of the page.

As to the question at hand, what about Shapeshifters? Shadow Creatures? Abominations? (that could include things like Golems... if you take the dictionary definition and not the RAW one)

I am not familiar with Mask of the Red Death, any particular reason for only 5 creature types?

[BWR]

Just about any undead can work if flavored correctly. You'll want to avoid the kind that could easily end the world, but otherwise mostly it's just flavoring. Just remember that there is no such thing as 'just another allip', or 'just another vampire' - they are singular, perhaps unique creatures with unusual powers and dreadful stories.

If you want to go down the Lovecraftian route, illithids, intellect devourers, brain collectors and similar beasts are perfect. Aliens from distant stars here for our precious bodily fluids and other nefarious purposes. The yuan-ti are pretty much exactly the various snake-people out of Howard's stories: ancient, malevolent beings that once ruled the Earth but are mostly extinct but for some few shadowy cults that spread their insidious influence into the very highest reaches of human power structures. Goblins, orcs etc. are perfect for the Lovecraftian degenerate human. The kind that at one point in the distant past was human but split apart from humanity and through in-breeding and the influence of dark magic developed into something fierce and foul.

If you want more adventure-y stuff, in the vein of Rider Haggard, Doyle, ER Burroughs and perhaps Solomon Kane:
Lots of the odd creatures in D&D might be found in the lost world - the jungles of Africa, the hear of the Amazon or in the Andes, the distant Himalayas, Antarctica, etc. You can run the classic racist, sexist stories of the day - degenerate natives kidnapping pure white women to sacrifice to some dark god (Gojira, King Kong, the tarrasque or similar), requiring the bold white men to brave dark terrors and save her.

[Talar]

Gargoyles are the way to go I feel. They are often associated with gothic elements, and can be really cool if fluffed/used correctly. Other than that malicious fey could be cool though 3.5 does not have a huge plethora of options for it so it would require some extra work fluffing them correctly. Nothing else is jumping out at me that screams gothic off the top of my head.