Macabre races/species

[Grim Portent]

So I've got a few ideas for macabre fantasy races/creatures, and I figured I'd share them and also ask in anyone has any ideas of their own? Undead, magical experiments, mutants, the scorned and the outcast, anything of that sort is welcome here.


First idea I have is Poppets, also called scarecrows, sack-men, bagfolk, skinwalkers and wereskins. Poppets are a type of sapient undead, fashioned from the skin and bones of a person with the space in between filled with straw, wood shavings or cloth scraps, animated by the light of the full moon and folk magic. Poppets are mostly created by the bereaved in hopes of regaining a lost loved one. They retain most of their memories from life, but don't identify with them, viewing themselves as seperate from the living person they were created from. When fully clothed, and preferably in poor lighting, a poppet can pass for a disfigured but living person. Close inspection reveals stitch marks, hollow eyes, the absence of a nose or any tongue or gums, and the fact that the sagging skin of their face doesn't align properly with the skull beneath.

Some poppets learn to step into the life they once had, though fully redeveloping emotional connections takes time. Assuming their loved ones don't reject what they created as a monster upon seeing it lurch back to life. Most however find themselves confused and irritated by the people they once loved, not empathising with their desire to have the person the poppet used to be back, and will simply leave to seek a new life elsewhere.

Finding a new life is not easy for a poppet though, few are inclined to look upon them with anything other than disgust, and their skin and stuffing rot over time, especially in damp climates. As such poppets tend to be ostracised, slowly mouldering away amongst the dregs of society while scrounging for scraps of fabric or clean straw to stitch their rotting skin or replace their rancid innards.



Shambles, rattlebones, bogmen, rotwalkers. All names for what is believed to be a form of natural golem. Shambles arise in bogs, swamps and wetlands, any place where water stagnates and wood and corpses decay submerged in foul water and cloying mud. Physically they vary greatly, the one commonality is that all shambles are formed around a ribcage and skull from something that perished in the bogs, the rest of their body can be composed of just about anything organic. More bones, rotting wood, living plants, insect hives and other detritus. Thick black mud oozes from their skull, and they speak in a slow and guttural voice.

Shambles possess scattered, fragmented memories from animal and man alike. These memories seem to bear no correlation to the bodyparts found in the creature, instead being scraps from any and all creatures that have ever perished in the wetlands that gave birth to the shamble. This leads them to wander in confusion, sometimes for years, before they manage to fully understand what they are.

Shambles have no physical needs, other than to remain at least somewhat damp. Drying out completely causes a shamble to break and fall apart when it tries to move. Their unsettling appearance leads most others to attack them on sight, but some find a life among isolated communities or in wandering herds of their own kind. The majority simply wander forever, chasing figments of their jumbled memories until they fall afoul of circumstance.



Wretches, verminkin, ratfolk. The products of magical experimentation, the wretches were created in an attempt to produce a caste of slaves. Requiring little food, breeding rapidly and maturing in just a few years, they would make a supply of soldiers and unskilled labour in times of need. That was the theory at least.

In practice the experiments only managed to create a race of gangly, scuttling things. Akin to humans in general appearance, they are hairless, have long, thin limbs, long fingers and toes, walk on all fours and have a short tail. Wretches normally live in colonies, ruled by the females of breeding age, but when their population grows unmanageable it is common for excess males to be banished to find their own way in the world.

These outcasts often find their way to cities, feeling uncomfortable in smaller settlements. Here they find themselves working as what they were originally intended to be, cheap labour. Wretches work as gravediggers, mudlarks, ratcatchers, nightsoil men and other unsavory menial tasks. Dark rumours surround the these poor souls, and they are often accused, justly or not, of stealing children, murdering vagrants or eating corpses.

[Dienekes]

How macabre we going?

The Devourers. It is the nature of things that the strong consume the weak, and by the weak they are transformed. A devourer at first appears much as a normal man or woman, with perhaps slightly too wide a mouth. They will suffer pangs of hunger that cannot be ignored. But what they eat shapes them, the more they devour the larger they become taking on the aspect of what it is they've feasted upon. Turning themselves into jumbled masses of arms and legs, scales and skin and feather. Their minds warp as they are flooded with the instincts of cows or boars, or for those who wish to keep some semblance of their wits, the dying thoughts of people. Some try to cause as little damage as they can, eating plants as best they can, and their skin turns to bark, and their toes turn to vine and their minds congeal into a crying wood. And when there is nothing nearby and the hunger strikes them, a devourer will shovel dirt and stone into their wide wide mouths, and though they feel their bodies solidifying as they eat, they cannot stop until they are finally full.

The Plaguebearers. A type of homunculus, created in the early days of magic where virus and disease was not well understood. Instead of destroying the disease, healers would sift it from a body, create a Plaguebearer, and put the sickness within them. But should they ever die, the disease would flow right back to where it began. So these foul creatures were given everlasting life to rot away, warped forever as the diseases feast upon them and they remain powerless and miserable, centuries after the initial diseased have passed on. But since they still carried the disease, they placed in great vats thrown in on top of each other. Each of them spreading whatever sickness they had to the others. Most went mad. Some few escaped and dwell off in the wilderness hiding their decaying form and spreading plague to those who come close. Even now, centuries later, it is not impossible for excavators of ancient ruins to open up a vat thinking to find grain storage, only to be met with the writhing pits of deaths.

The Unwanted. Parents are supposed to care for their children, to love them, nurture them. But what happens to those cursed, unwanted children mistreated and left to die? The Unwanted are spirits of lost children, killed through their families neglect. They are doomed to wander the world, searching for what they did not have in life. But wherever they go, they will not find it. For to behold the Unwanted is to see the face of that which you most revile, for the specter is stuck believing it is unloveable, and doomed to make that true. And yet they always search, growing more and more desperate for that missing connection. Perhaps, if they could only remove a child and take its place they could finally find a caring home?

[Grim Portent]

How macabre we going?

As macabre as the mood takes you.


The Plaguebearers. A type of homunculus, created in the early days of magic where virus and disease was not well understood. Instead of destroying the disease, healers would sift it from a body, create a Plaguebearer, and put the sickness within them. But should they ever die, the disease would flow right back to where it began. So these foul creatures were given everlasting life to rot away, warped forever as the diseases feast upon them and they remain powerless and miserable, centuries after the initial diseased have passed on. But since they still carried the disease, they placed in great vats thrown in on top of each other. Each of them spreading whatever sickness they had to the others. Most went mad. Some few escaped and dwell off in the wilderness hiding their decaying form and spreading plague to those who come close. Even now, centuries later, it is not impossible for excavators of ancient ruins to open up a vat thinking to find grain storage, only to be met with the writhing pits of deaths.

Ooh, I like this one a lot. They'd fit in great as part of a magocracy with a bit of tweaking. I could see wizards wandering around with these little disfigured sacks of cancerous flesh being carried along by a servant, siphoning away the ravages of ill health from their master. Though the idea of finding an abandoned pit full of these things, rotting and putrifying into a still living slurry of rancid fluids still clinging to misshapen bones is a very striking one.


Another idea; The Children of Elias Gough, also known simply as the Children, Abominations, Stitched and the Twisted. No two Children look exactly alike, being the creations of the brilliant and mad alchemist Elias Gough, who's muse is fickle, or being imperfect creations made by deviants and lunatics trying to follow the example of Gough. Each Child is made of at least two living beings, merged into a single creature through sugery and alchemy in a truly horrifying procedure, with a brain that can be composed partly of each of the consituent creatures, or only one.

Gough himself has created a great many creatures in the form of beings of legend and myth, viewing them as some sort of sordid art project. Centaurs, treants, manticores, chimeras, minotaurs and many other such creatures formed the inspiration for his earliest works, but as time passed and his skill matured his creations became increasingly bizarre. Modern examples of the Children are often impractical, insane creatures, a whirlwind of limbs, lidless eyes and mouths that endlessly chant the instructions to translate the code Gough used to write his instructional texts, though the instructions are so disjointed that actually following them is nearly impossible.

More disturbing are Gough's 'masterpieces.' Creations given life in the womb itself. It is unclear how exactly Gough has achieved this feat, but newborn children across the land are infrequently found to be Children, their bodies showing clear signs of Gough's tampering, right down to his personal seal appearing as a birthmark on their body. These children can be born with any number of bizarre features, eyes lining the interior of their skull, venomous serpents for arms and legs, swarms of rodent like creatures in place of internal organs, necks that end in lamprey like mouths rather than heads and many more. A rare few are not even born as a living child, instead transforming entirely into something so unnatural that it often kills it's mother, buildups of gas so great that they rupture the stomach, nests of writhing eels that eat their way into the world, balls of fire that never go out and other such foul things.

The more humanlike Children are somewhat sane, though they almost never reach the same level of intelligence as a normal human adult. The majority are inherently dangerous and must be put to death, a mercy for them and those around them, but the rare few that are safe can sometimes be found living a rather tragic life, usually hidden away from prying eyes by family members, isolated and fed scraps. by those who can't bring themselves to love the creature, but also can't bring themselves to kill or abandon it. It is not unheard of for surgeons and alchemists to buy Children, living or dead, in order to study Gough's work. This is fine in theory, for understanding Gough may be the key to finding him and putting an end to his work, but close examination of his creations seems to induce a form of mania in most who study it, inflicting them with a desire to replicate his craft.`

[Bohandas]

Homeopsychopaths - Drowned undead spellcasters of the Elemental Evil temple of water who were diluted in water to increase their potency

[oogaboogagoblin]

this idea is really stupid
rat kings:
a huge colony of rats given sentience through magic, alchemy, or sheer coincidence, this shambling mound of rats want just one thing:to eat, trash, animals, people, there's no difference. it often burrows into the corpses of its victims and controls them from within to temporarily appear human and draw in more victims, these rats can breed so long as it lives sometimes reaching millions of rats, all telepathically linked.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

The Curse Eaters, aka Uncursed. In this dark world, curses, maledictions, and supernatural diseases abound. Mostly, they kill their hosts, or make their lives miserable, or simply transform them, depending on their design or nature. But every now and then, there's something about the host that resonates with the curse they are afflicted with, and instead of being consumed by their curse, they form a kind of symbiosis with it, using its power on their own behalf. A man hit by a killing spell, who instead of dying, spreads entropy and decay to all he touches; a woman who has learned to command her familial curse of bad luck, a zombie-bitten boy whose ravenous jaws can take a bite out of anything that moves. These people are known as Curse Eaters, able to twist the negative effects of their malady to their benefit. Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and Curse Eaters are always plagued with side effects both physical and mental. The man's body slowly crumbles away, to be restored only by killing a living thing. The woman's cloud of ill fortune can never be completely withdrawn; to come too close is to invite calamity on yourself. The boy's hunger is mind-numbing and nearly insatiable.

It's a rare Curse Eater that can turn their curse to peaceful ends. Those that learn to control it are warriors, adventurers, or serial killers; most simply languish in isolation, unable to safely mingle with society. Some Curse Eaters are actually enamored with their transformation, seeking out similar curses to absorb, and thus growing their power. Such individuals can be formidable, and are the source of the name for this 'race'.

[Grim Portent]

this idea is really stupid
rat kings:
a huge colony of rats given sentience through magic, alchemy, or sheer coincidence, this shambling mound of rats want just one thing:to eat, trash, animals, people, there's no difference. it often burrows into the corpses of its victims and controls them from within to temporarily appear human and draw in more victims, these rats can breed so long as it lives sometimes reaching millions of rats, all telepathically linked.

Hey, rat kings are a good basis for horror or creepiness, the idea might just need some polish.

I actually know of two separate stories that had telepathic rat kings that controlled a larger swarm of dangerous rats, one of which was an outright horror, the other a more child friendly version of the same horror premise.


On a similar note, I do have an idea for a really messed up character called Ratskin, which I came up with a few years back as an idea for a Dark Heresy NPC. Basically a ratwere, which is to say a rat, or in his* case a swarm of rats that can turn into a human. Problem is he has to eat human brain tissue to transform, and it only lets him stay human for a while. His life sucks, in just about every way. Being born as a swarm of rats by a human mother resulted in him being abandoned, or more accurately chased by a father and midwife trying to kill him the moment he was born. Living on scraps and garbage, taking brief solace in alcohol and narcotics, but unable to interact with people to get his fix while in his natural state. When possible he eats the brains out of homeless people, vagrants and people who die in public places in accidents so he can shuffle about scrounging, begging, doing unsavory things for a pittance in order to buy booze, cigarrettes or drugs in order to forget what he is, or at least ease his constant withdrawal symptoms.


The Curse Eaters, aka Uncursed. In this dark world, curses, maledictions, and supernatural diseases abound. Mostly, they kill their hosts, or make their lives miserable, or simply transform them, depending on their design or nature. But every now and then, there's something about the host that resonates with the curse they are afflicted with, and instead of being consumed by their curse, they form a kind of symbiosis with it, using its power on their own behalf. A man hit by a killing spell, who instead of dying, spreads entropy and decay to all he touches; a woman who has learned to command her familial curse of bad luck, a zombie-bitten boy whose ravenous jaws can take a bite out of anything that moves. These people are known as Curse Eaters, able to twist the negative effects of their malady to their benefit. Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and Curse Eaters are always plagued with side effects both physical and mental. The man's body slowly crumbles away, to be restored only by killing a living thing. The woman's cloud of ill fortune can never be completely withdrawn; to come too close is to invite calamity on yourself. The boy's hunger is mind-numbing and nearly insatiable.

It's a rare Curse Eater that can turn their curse to peaceful ends. Those that learn to control it are warriors, adventurers, or serial killers; most simply languish in isolation, unable to safely mingle with society. Some Curse Eaters are actually enamored with their transformation, seeking out similar curses to absorb, and thus growing their power. Such individuals can be formidable, and are the source of the name for this 'race'.

Something of a sinister take on a sin-eater? I like it, would make for a good group of people horrified by their own powers or actively trying to become malevolent magical doomsdays.




Another idea of mine, the Compleat. Less a race or species, more of a society of like minded individuals. The Compleat are a noble caste who discovered the secret to alchemical immortality, and most have lived for so long now that they have forgotten what they originally were before they first took the elixer of life.

The elixer's effects are not permanent, but temporarily thwart the degradations of age, prevent disease and bestow a limited form of regeneration. It is exorbitantly expensive to create, requiring a lengthy process and rare ingredients to manufacture, and the process of producing the elixer creates numerous toxic by products. The Compleat are of course not inclined to spend their immortal lives toiling in mercury and silver mines, or hunting exotic beasts for their gallbladders in order to fuel the alchemical industry that gives them life, so they instead rely on the mortals they rule over to do such tasks for them, their will enforced by mercenaries hired using the wealth that comes from the Compleats mastery of alchemy.

Though all of them were once human, or human-like at least, the Compleat drift away from the proportions of mankind over their long lives. Their skins range from pallid but still humans hues to the pastel shades caused by metal poisoning, their flesh is usually bloated and puffy, the result of a lavish and fattening diet combined with frequent exposure to caustic fumes. Their skeletons continue to grow so long as they live, slowly but surely lengthening their limbs, widening and deepening their jaws and other similar deformities. An elder Compleat may have teeth the size of a human palm, thick slabs of stained enamel set in a jaw wide enough to engulf a man's head, a hunched obese frame the size of a horse drawn carriage and flabby limbs sagging with curtainlike masses of loose fat and skin.

Despite being ghastly to look at, and possessed of voratious and inhuman appetites born from long years of decadent life, the Compleat do have their own code of conduct. They were once the alchemy obsessed nobles of their lands, and still hold themselves with a measure of twisted pride. Though they may gorge themselves on feasts of the most outlandish meals, made with ingredients gathered and prepared at great expense as their subjects starve, and engage in sexual and artistic deviancies that would make a normal man's stomach turn, the Compleat will close ranks and shun any of their kind who debase themselves through acts such as cannibalism, consorting with demons, outright slavery (de facto slavery is accepted), inbreeding with close family, murder or breaking the expectations of hospitality.

[Eldan]

For rat swarms, D&D has a bit of a tradition for that, in the brain rats. They are Illithid creations to spy on other races, telepathic rat swarms that develop psionic abilities if there's a lot of them. Sigil in Planescape has a few swarms that have escaped the Illithids and become independent. (Might be a basis for stealing a stat block).

You already have natural golems, but how about this:

The Transformed. There is a special wasting disease, that starts in the limbs, but slowly progresses towards the inner organs, where it will kill. There is no cure, only delays. The infected can slow the disease, which usually kills in weeks, by amputation. It never works long term, weeks or months on, it will flare up again, in another limb, or further up the limb you amputated. Some commit suicide, or succumb, or, if they are poor, live their short remaining lives limbless. Those who are rich, or magically talented, though... they replace their limbs with protesthics. You can make those as gruesome as you like, too, from cold metal limbs that are basically cybernetics, to special magical materials (crystal, living wood), to the grafted-on limbs of fresh corpses that need to be regularly replaced. Eventually, they end up as metal containers, containing not much more than a heart, a brain and some other organs, surrounded by increasingly elaborate limbs.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

The Skinless - A monster walks our world. The Nuckelavee, men call it, a horror of plague and poison and brine. And pain, ever of pain. One day, it decided that it's own pain, the pain of the acid in its blood that boiled its skin away faster than even it could heal, was not enough. This was not uncommon, but today it also decided that the solitary travelers that were its normal prey were also insufficient; it wanted a fight, to feel and inflict the agony of battle. And so the Nuckelavee came to a kingdom, and it began to kill. None could stand against it, and the people fled and died without giving battle, but this too was its plan. For when the Flock came to feast upon their corpses, it was them the Nuckelavee challenged. These ancient monsters did battle, and neither could prevail, for while the Flock is innumerable and unstoppable, the Nuckelavee's healing is second to none, and every bite they took out of it was healed almost before the next beak could land. But when the battle was over, and the kingdom was a ruin of half-eaten corpses and blighted land, it was those severed pieces that rose as a new race. Or so the story goes.

The Skinless have inherited much from their progenitor, though fortunately all to a lesser degree. Their blood is poison and plague to any that it spills on, and to themselves. Only their fast healing is enough to keep them intact, and typically it still eats through their skin in places, exposing large areas of their flesh and muscle to the air. Though (unlike the abominations that began their race) they look mostly humanoid, they have an affinity for horses and for crows, and make excellent trainers for these animals. And every Skinless is masochistic and sadistic to at least some degree, gaining pleasure from the pain of others and themselves. Or perhaps the agony of their blood simply kills the ones that can't learn to enjoy it, and hardens their hearts against the pain of others.


The Dochas, aka the Children of Blood, aka the Bloody - Many ages ago, a hero walked the world. Born of a mortal man and a daughter of Oberon, she brought chaos wherever she strode, but also justice. She stopped killers, deposed tyrants, and found the lost and brought them home. Her power was her blood, and it's a rare story about her that doesn't end with her drenched in it. They say she could heal from anything, even death; they say that she could know your shallowest thoughts and deepest secrets from just a taste of a drop of your blood; they say she would slice herself open and grow stronger in body and magic instead of weaker.

Her descendants, the Dochas, still retain the barest fraction of these powers. Get enough of their blood on the outside instead of the inside, and they can empower their spells, or strike a little harder, or heal a little faster. Tasting the blood of the living or the dead will give them a glimpse of the secrets of their lives, typically whatever was most on the owner's mind at the time the blood was spilled. And maybe, just maybe, a little of their ancestor's heroism yet lives on in her blood.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Another idea of mine, the Compleat. Less a race or species, more of a society of like minded individuals. The Compleat are a noble caste who discovered the secret to alchemical immortality, and most have lived for so long now that they have forgotten what they originally were before they first took the elixer of life.

Been playing a lot of Legends of Runeterra, and wanted to come up with a race to represent the Fallen/Risen units from Noxus. I think they'd make a good alchemical warrior caste, created by the alchemical ruling caste of the Compleat.

The Discards, aka the Fallen, aka the Risen - There is no scholarly consensus on whether the Discards are properly classed as living, undead, or constructs. The first Discards were the test subjects for an early version of the Compleat immortality elixer. While deemed a failure due to the quality of life side effects (and the inconsistent survival rate), further research was able to create a highly effective caste of shock troopers, and they now make up the backbone of most Compleat armies.

In day to day life, Discards are listless, tired, and often suffer from memory problems. They also tend to be weaker and slower than they were before their treatment, most likely due to a combination of their lethargy and the patches, stitches, and bolts that keep wounded Discards (i.e., the vast majority) in fighting shape. Once they join battle or other similarly stressful situation, their blood awakens, and these side effects disappear. Even so, they're typically no better than they were before their alchemical treatment. How then did they become the continent's most infamous shock troopers?

Because all that wasted energy gets paid back in full the moment they fall in battle. A mortally wounded Discard becomes massively invigorated, pulsing with red alchemical energy and laying into their foes with the strength of many men. This burst is short lived, typically lasting mere seconds and never more than a minute, but a "risen" Discard will sprint through the enemy ranks, wreaking havoc and clearing a path for their comrades, heedless to the damage and wounds they take (there are tales of Discards managing to slay multiple enemies despite having been decapitated). After this burst expires, they fall to the ground comatose, and may slip into death, recover on their own, or get patched up by their army's healers, depending on the whims of fate.

Most races can become Discards, but most individuals really do not want to. The conversion has often been used by Compleat as an alternative to capital punishment or a method of dealing with prisoners, but some people really are desperate enough to volunteer for the procedure. One can infer that for these individuals, the memory loss is more of a feature than a bug.

Couldn't find a good one for Sion dying and coming back, but this one works well for a berserk Discard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNU_5X9gtmY

[LibraryOgre]

The first 3e Ravenloft book had "Calibans" instead of half-orcs... basically, human children who had been warped by the Dark Powers in utero. Not necessarily evil, but seen that way (sort of like tieflings, in practice)

[Grim Portent]

Have an idea for a variant on harpies, which I feel is in the tone of the thread.

Harpies, vulture-kin, carrion men, no one is entirely sure where they first came from but flocks of harpies have become a common sight across the land over the past few hundred years. Resembling a cross between humans and vultures, harpies are capable of flight, albeit somewhat clumsy flight. They have vestigial fingers on the joints of their wings, allowing for crude manipulation and basic tool use when not in flight. Their feet are grasping talons, suited for gripping onto tree branches, rock faces and small animals. The neck is long and covered in loose sagging skin, their heads are hairless and resemble those of men and women, with a thin-lipped slash of a mouth, sharp teeth and a long, thin tongue. They are frail in comparison to humans, and are averse to actions that involve a risk of injury, especially to their wings, a harpy that can't fly might as well be dead.

Harpies are obligate carnivores, requiring a diet composed solely of animal tissue to survive. Due to their frailty they are disinclined to hunt prey, instead scavenging the kills of wild animals, or using their tongues to probe under tree bark, into insect hives or the burrows of shallow water invertebrates to search for bugs and crustaceans to eat. This is not to say that harpies never attack other creatures, they will happily attack small or weak animals, such as rabbits, juvenile deer, wolf pups and so on. Rumours claim that they will attack the children and elderly of other races, and though such claims are generally unverified tavern gossip they have resulted in harpies being considered vermin by most others.

When harpies are able to co-oexist with others they often find work as messengers, gliding on thermals between cities, forts and watchtowers to ferry information back and forth like an easier to train carrier pigeon. Harpies employed in this manner usually live in a roost built specifically to house them, largely to protect them from attacks by those who fear them or view them as disgusting. It does have the secondary benefit of keeping the unsavory eating habits of harpies out of public view, as well as their unpleasant body odour. In times of war harpies usually continue their normal duties as messengers and scouts, but in times of dire need they are given satchels of weighted war darts to drop onto enemies from above. Wild harpies are known to flock to armies, eager to feed on the corpses left on the battlefield, a bountiful feast that is often followed by an impromptu nesting season and an explosion in the harpy population for the next few years.