Creepiest monsters

For me, the spookiest part of the DnD wendigo was always how it runs until its feet burn away and leave behind charred stumps.

For me it's just that fucking picture. I mean, holy shit. Look at its eyes.

Gibbering Mouther for me.

Not only is it incredibly disturbing to look at, but it produces terrible noises that can drive you into a fit of fear.

Also if it kills you, it absorbs your body and soul, and traps you in an endless prison of madness until its killed.

That's real wendigo too man. It's what happens when a human turns.

Folk lore had it that you could hear them howling in the sky as their legs burned to cinders.

North American folklore can fuck right off.

Stirges, my DM made the con drain permanent

Banshees always got to me. Something about a creature that can kill you with it's own pain in the form of a scream creeps me out.

Also, dat ability drain/damage.

Native American's have some scary shit. Don't get me started on skin walkers.

Can someone explain to me what an Atropal is? Looks like some kind of space fetus, the concept is really cool

A god abortion that keeps itself unliving in an undead state through its fledgling godly powers.

forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Atropal

Nah m8. The screaming is from victims. Wendigo drags them across ice sheets and plains so fast they become a big ol miles long smear. If you're close enough to hear Wendigo then you all best pile in one tent, stamp out the fire, and pray.

Damn, that's fucking cool, thanks!
Just got into roleplay recently, I have to discover all this neat stuff

Jesus.

Camping and fishing trips were...fun.

There's an elder evil that is the ayropal, but soooo much worse. Look up Atropus, the World Born Dead.

Wasn't there one about a gelatinous blob made of evil undead unborn baby semen? I've googled it but I fear i'm on some sort of watchlist now or google will start sending me adverts for equine husbandry.

Holy shit, a fucking corrupted fetus planet god thing, this is awesome

Yup. It also kills must of the Divine spellcasters in a very, very large area.

Elder Evils is the best 3.5 book. Ever. It also has a secret tie in book; examplars of evil. I don't really care for 3.5, but I've ported those books more than once. Pandorym is my personal favorite. His mind is an unbelievably powerful psionic beast from the places between the planes, but his body? An indestructible body that's basically a giant orb of annihilation. It's sole goal is to destroy ALL the gods.

In some settings Pandoyrm sounds like he'd be a decent sort.

>Pandorym seeks, above all else, the reunion of its potent mind with its unstoppable form. From those whose minds held up—at least for a time—to the impossible might of its psyche, the terrible weapon has learned of the destruction of its betrayers. It suspects that descendants might yet exist of those who lured and snared it, and once it achieves freedom, Pandorym will seek revenge on those innocents for the crimes of their ancestors. After it slakes its thirst for vengeance, Pandorym intends to complete its end of the bargain it struck millennia ago. Although Pandorym’s summoners didn’t respect that binding covenant, the quasi-living weapon possesses an unremitting sense of honor. It will fulfill its contract by obliterating every deity it finds in this reality. It knows that gods can’t easily die, but it plans to rip them from existence. Once it has finished these tasks, Pandorym will return to its home reality—if it can. If it is prevented from leaving the multiverse, whether through a conscious act or because the rift created to summon it cannot be remade, Pandorym will end the Material Plane, one world at a time.
Nah, not really.

Yeah. Just make sure he can get back to his home dimension and everything is fine.

All the people that knew how to do that... Were killed by the gods, actually. So...

What a bunch of shits. All the more reason why the gods deserve it.

Cordyceps but for orcs
The yellow musk creeper is a hideous plant that grows in haunted graveyards, grisly battlefields, and other places where death hangs heavy in the air and thick in the soil. The yellow musk creeper’s method of procreation is singularly frightful—it slays the living, infests them with its seeds and pollen, then animates them as zombies. These zombies serve the plant as a guardian for several days, but when new zombies are created, older ones wander off into the surrounding wild, collapsing and breaking apart within 2d6 days to give seed to a new yellow musk creeper.

So, how it goes is this. Bunch of hubristic wizards found ways to look at the worlds between dimensions. Gods were like, "oh shit we should stop this." Then the wizards were like, "oh, we just pulled an indestructible god killer from there. Whatchu gon do bout it?" Gods were like, "fuck." Wizards were like, "Aight pandorym, you're too dangerous to keep like this, so we'll separate your body and mind for now, but you'll get to kill the gods, promise." Then the gods smote the shit out of them.

>We did not think our brilliant plan through.

Does it work on half-orcs?

Full fucking retard. How can you be that stupid?

>Guys the gods want to smite us but won't because we have a god-killing weapon.
>So let's fucking cripple it!

Because you don't get more blood? How the fuck does that make sense.

Your GM is a dick.

My votes for the worm that walks. A hive mind of maggots possessed by the soul of a dead wizard, pretending to be people.

I second this. Especially when they "speak" and you can hear the sound of all the worms moving against each other in the back of the thing's voice.

If you're gonna go Worm that Walks, go full Kyus baby.

Huh, didn't post the picture for some reason.

It actually works on all creatures, the old art has a human barbarian infected

paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/yellowMuskCreeper.html

This guy. Imitates the human voice, even down to the individual, while it stalks its prey in the water.

>expedition through the jungle in a forbidding land, waist deep in water. Recurring rains make travel uncomfortable, but the native guide who accompanies you leads on.
>In the distance, through the trees and downpour you think you see a dark shape, dragging something pale and lifeless through the water. Try as you might, you can't catch another glimpse of it, and it is dismissed as a trick the eye. Still, this seems to unnerve the young scribe that accompanies you.
>Night comes, and you camp out in the trees. Some of the foliage takes on ominous shapes in the dark, appearing like corpses hanging from the canopy. There is something out there, you can feel it. Something is stalking you, watching you.
> As the journey continues you begin hear people when they aren't there. People don't recall things that you are certain they said. You suspect you may be going mad, or perhaps it is everyone else. over time, false messages sows confusion, and distrust among the party, mislead and separate them.
>Eventually you are lost and alone, aimlessly running through the jungle, crying out to your companions. They respond with shouts of their own, but every time you isolate the direction of their voice, you hear them call again from somewhere else.
>Finally, by chance you find one of your compatriots, and the two of you stumble upon the body of your guide, face-down in the water. You turn him over and his eyes are bloody sockets, his fingers severed.
>Then from nearby, you hear a horrible scream, followed by cries for help. it sounds just like the voice of the young scribe that accompanied you on your journey. you run to her, rescue but you don't know she is already dead.
>As you lean over her corpse, you realize your companion has fallen silent. You call out to him, and he responds, and you are reassured. But then you feel a warm, moist breath on the back of your neck...

This? Fuck ALL of this.

Somewhat surprised the /d/ monster from Pathfinder hasn't been posted yet.

Which one?

Let's fix that.

That is some magical realm bullshit.

At least you know to quit a campaign if this thing comes up.

under rated post

By the time you run into this, the campaigns basically over already.

>oh noes, body horrors trigger me
I suppose Alien doesn't bother you at all.

your typical wendigo according to a d&d wiki

very scary >_>

Body horror is supposed to trigger you. That negative reaction is intended.

The problem with the Drakainia is that, one, they made it half cute girl, and two, that it can turn your waifu's baby into one of its own.Those two aspects are the main differences from a Xenomorph, and the reason why it's accused of being someone's fetish.

Though you wouldn't entirely be off base calling the original Xenomorphs Giger's magical realm.

>At will: Dimension Door

Fuck that. You just know it's so you can't kill her and the DM can keep impregnating you.

Anyone else feel the opposite of repulsed?

No, because the babies kill you and end up uggo.

>10d6
>kill you

>the DM can keep impregnating you.
Is that unusual for D&D?

Look, I don't find giving birth from my chest to be arousing.

Poison Glands and Favoured Spawn don't seem to have any effect on the child's appearance.

Good luck on that die roll then.

Also they're Neutral Evil so you just know she's a complete cunt and won't pay child support.

Nobody's mentioned that this thing is capable of birthing dragons.

Not full-size ones thankfully.

The difference is that Giger was a genius, while the creep who wrote the drakainia wouldn't stand out on deviantart

>The nethermost caverns...are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.

Quite honestly most of d&d's monsters are pretty fucked up and terrifying once you stop treating them as a stat-block.
Just think about what that monster is, what it's supposed to do and how it would go about doing it and suddenly you get shit like tucker's kobolds.

That being said: both from a player's and a person's perspective i find mindflayers fucking terrifying.
Imagine a predator that is like you, only smarter, stronger, faster and tougher than you. Not only that but he can read your mind, mindrape you even, manipulate you into being a happy slave, and when he is done with you, guess what: you're on the menu.

And in game terms: dude can bypass almost all of your defenses and simply kill your character, all he needs is a couple of grappling rolls wich he is pretty fucking good at.

Not sure if the most terrifying thing in the books, but they are definitely up there.

At epic level that shouldn't even really faze you. Just imagine, maybe she is a loving god of fertility, she takes care of you, protects you, she lavishes all sorts of attention on you, and when she needs to she forcibly face impregnates you.

Atropal WtW That Walks when? that is an Atropal Worm that Walks where the individual worms are Worms that Walk

I like it.

But user wouldt many wtw together just be a single, bigger wtw? You know -more wtw = more worms = bigger wtw

Thought Eaters.

No one in my groups have figured out why entire villages or even sections of kingdoms have fallen silent.

Eats yo Int and is numerous, this mofo will drain what makes you you.

I wish that guy still did articles, but fucking brain cancer man, can't blame him for taking it easy. now.

Think of the individual wtw inside a much larger singular worm, and then pile those worms up together and make wtw out of them.

But she's Neutral Evil.

>NE can't love people
Rude.

It doesn't have to be REAL love, she just wants you to think that.

>remove disease confirmed for abortion option.

Reminder that that thing has a charisma of 30.

Sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it.

It doesn't really mention what Drakainia tend to do in the world bar the obvious. What could their aims and goals be? What do they normally do? Will they work with others, or just be a more squashy Queen Alien?

Psyduck?

kek

I once had a nightmare about that kind of thing. I've been planning to make an old veteran/retired adventurer NPC who had a chunk of their personality torn out by a thought eater-type monster.

whoa now, that's givin me the spooks buddy

Is that part of the plot?

There's a pathfinder monster that looks like some shell with an eye inside it, surrounded by smoking tendrils. A single touch from a tendril instantly deletes you from reality.

I cannot for the life of me remember what that fucker was called.

Also, bonus award to the Ice and Shadow Wights from Dragonlance 5th age. They turn into a dead you, grab you and instantly erase you from all memory. Writing and pictures will still exist of you, but people will dismiss them as fictional and actors and shit. Even your own family will forget you ever were.

>10d6 for having a chestburster explode out of your torso
Oh come on. You can survive getting your entrails getting chewed out by an aberration if you have enough levels and CON and while you are at it you can keep on fighting. Fuck HP.

Gadacro from Monster Manual V. These little bastards are, if you read the text, appearance wise like purple skinned cherubs with bat like wings who wear a necklace of eyes around their necks. And they steal eyes in combat. Literally, they forego their sneak attack damage and instead rip your fucking eyes out of their sockets (for a number of rounds for some reason and not permanently, but still). all the while cackling as demons oft do.

That ain't folklore wendigo mate. That's some /x/-tier wendigo.

Wendigo are corpus spirits of famine and madness. They feed off of dispair and depravity

You almost never directly encounter wendigo, you are just affected by their presence. Weather goes unseasonably bad and nightmares set in. Over time this drives people to a form of madness called wendigo psychosis that causes cannibalistic behaviour despite no immediate need for food. If you give into the urge to feed on others that's when you begin to turn.

Long enough time goes by with you eating people you become a wendigo yourself. The madness takes hold and you howling into the dark, running faster and faster until the muscles give out. Your legs literally burn to charred stumps as you body twists into an emaciated, monstrous form and you take off into the air.
...and this is why even in times of desperation natives would rather starve than resort to cannibalism.

I'm just going by what my tribes lore and my medicine man uncle tells me about them. I could be wrong though.

I remember reading about these and thinking they were retardarded. Why not just run an alien queen?

Also, pathfinder is scum.

What tribe are you? I'm native myself though of mixed blood from Lenape and other Iroquois people.

The cannibalism bit, burnt stubs, and method of transformation however are also present in my tribes lore though people that escape a wendigo after being touched by one are also susceptible.

I should also add Dutch.

Amskapi. Our lore is kinda fucked from what i've gathered due to the boarding school raids so stories are often borrowed or distorted. But you gotta make due with what you got.

Yeah the touch thing I forgot about but such encounters are rare (like once a generation) even in the depths of winter.

Also part salish but i've never had reason to visit or even acknowledge them.

Yeah it's kind of a bummer that the variety of lore and tradition from so many peoples has slowly rolled together into one big ball of "Ingun stories".

On the other hand it's fun having people come to me about skinwalkers despite that being a Navajo thing like the Chindi.

Can you guys give me some choice monsters or concepts from your folklore? You don't have to do detail, I could look up names and do the research.

Running a Witcher like monster hunting campaign and I'm always looking for ideas.

Another issue i've found is the books people write seem to conglomerate things as a whole narrative rather than as individual stories from individual tribes. I've found 5 books so far that have stories on the Little Men and rather than have a small paragraph for each tribe (8 that i know of from up in the northwest territories down into mexico) they just have a big 3 page story that takes the best bits from each one until you have this outlandish story that is only interesting in that its a crazy fucked up story and say its that way for all tribes.