Give me your best old-timey folklore and gothic monsters. I'm running a campaign set in the backwoods of a superstitious nation. I've got the big bad spooks all set up but I've found Victorian era literature to be rather lacking when it comes to mook-tier monsters. Yes I am aware this sort of genre focuses a lot on the human element and treats monsters (typically) as unique aberrations but come on they had to have some not!goblins or owlbears or what have you floating around somewhere. I am also open to accepting appropriately themed monsters that exist in modern splatbooks as well (I'm really liking the dream vestige for example). Any franchise will do.
Also feel free to use this as a general folklore discussion thread I guess.
There's Frankenstein's monster and all the derivatives you can think up. Which probably includes things like owlbears or even goblins/ any other humanoid but decidedly not human creatures.
There was a whole lot of medical experimentation going on in 19th century, where doctors and universities (and mad scientists...) would requisition fresh cadavers for educational and scientific needs. Some of these cadavers were procured through less than ethical means, and plenty were definitely put to less than ethical uses.
Just Frankenstein experimentation times 100 basically.
That's more along the line of a unique creature like I mentioned. I have an assortment of named boogeymen but what I have very little of is weak, numerous, and possibly animalistic monsters that can be dealt with by a low level party as either a short sidequest or an encounter leading up to the main battle or some other similar thing.
Liam Cox
If you want to add a more human element (or perhaps tie it into a Frankenstein corpse-messing overarching plot), consider en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders TLDR: somewhat infamous 19th century serial killers that lured and asphyxiated people by sitting on their chests and then selling their pristine (i.e. no stab wounds, no bruised necks, no poisons) cadavers for medical uses.
Hudson Perry
That does seem neat, yeah. Maybe something with the fae as well, like redcaps and shit. I could see them being an equivalent to goblins.
John Allen
Fairies
The Del Toro kind, that steal your kid & eat your face
Luke White
Sounds like a good idea. I'm imagining the PCs getting mobbed by a pack of feral children.
Lucas Williams
If you want some historical inspiration, consider how IRL towards the late 19th century there was a huge craze about ghosts, mediums and that sort of spiritualism. Inclusion of ghosts and similar paranormal creatures sounds like a natural fit, and you can play around with possession too.
If you ever played Pillars of Eternity, while not a victorian setting, it's got a pretty cool common monster in the setting. TLDR: due to some event, children were being born without souls in the setting so some parents contracted mages who transplanted the souls of animals into their children's bodies. It typically worked for a few years but then they just went batshit crazy and became feral monsters.
Lucas Green
This seems like it could tie neatly in with
Brayden Williams
A way europeans combined pagan and christian beliefs was the thinking that fairies in general were the "middle angels": angels that didn't take a side in Lucifer's rebellion, so they fell only as far as Earth. This belief was still ongoing at the 19th century.
What have you actually read as far as this stuff is concerned, OP? A large amount of evil forces in Gothic fiction were ghosts, humans in disguise (most obviously present in Ann Radcliffe), and various curses and dooms laid on families due to some past iniquity. The monster in flesh typically took the form of something vampiric, especially after Polidori inaugurated the vampire genre with Lord Ruthven, and the idea of other non-ghostly monsters really only took off in the 1890s, well into the twilight of the Victorian/Late Gothic period. The work typically touted as the first, though it really isn't, to feature such a monster is The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford. Werewolves were a pretty common staple, too, now that I'm thinking about it. The ghost stories of M. R. James might be a good place to look for simple monsters to populate the world with. I'll respond more fully later with some more specific ideas.
Connor Harris
Oh I understand don't worry, which is why I am having a problem. Like you said the majority of monsters in gothic fiction do not lend themselves to being level 2 goons living in a cave and serving as PC-fodder. So I am looking to see if some obscure gothic monster actually fits the bill so I can shamelessly rip it off.
Josiah Fisher
honestly I think almost any monster will work if you're willing to tinker with them
James Nelson
I'm definitely willing to tinker, but I just don't know how exactly one could do so and keep the flavor of the setting. I giving the standard abhuman goons a black and white paintjob and some night-themed abilities/weaknesses would do the job on a very shallow level but of course I want to try and go deeper than that.
Leo Cruz
Don't suppose you have the spirits one?
Lucas Mitchell
Taking inspiration from the Van Helsing movie, you could use dwarves/duergi, who serve as basic lab grunts that provide minimal threat. Maybe some escaped from Mad Scientist #41 and set up a camp out in the woods? And what about their brothers who, unable to escape from their master, fell victim to his less-than-tender ministrations and became twisted versions of their former selves? Extra arms, heads, or just plain stitched together. You could even put the failed experiments at the lowest tier, pitiable things that have varying degrees of functionality.
That could work. I could whip up a pack of frankenstein dwarves pretty easily. I guess a bunch of them got loose and bred true and now the hills are swarming with them.
Jason Jones
I suspect you'd probably do best to have the fodder enemies themed around the big one. Mindless vampire-revenant types in servitude to the more Draculaesque mayor or baron; small, corpse-white elfin things and will-o-the-wisps around the Magna Mater cultists; plague-stricken madman or lepers outside of the locked down castle full of antic royalty in denial; bone- and hide-wearing worshipers of the cannibal-spirit wendigo. The next logical suggestion is cat-people but I'll spare you that. For a strange route: Automata like Moxon's Master or the seemingly steam-powered arm of the military veteran in The Mysterious Stranger, both likely inspired by the chess-playing 'automaton' the Turk.
Mindless Frankenstein-like monsters are probably the best general goon but I think you could strike a balance with the un-dead, resurrection men, and an assortment of lycanthropes and vampires pretty easily.
Nathan Rodriguez
That's a good idea as well. Lepers especially seem like they could be fun.
Elijah Sullivan
On the same track I've hit upon the idea of electric pygmies, which are midgets with lightening powers and tesla coils in their heads. Might be a bit too advanced but I feel it has potential.
Grayson Butler
Reminds me of the Tonitrus in Bloodborne. I don't think anything could really be 'too' advanced as long as you couch the concept in archaic enough terms. Or not. Look at War of the Worlds or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. High-falutin science abounds in those and one of them was written in the same year Dracula was.
Lucas Jackson
I'll probably stick them in there then.
Nathaniel Rivera
You having pistols and other guns in the setting? Consider how your creatures might use them. I’m imagining zombies with blunderbuss.
Connor Russell
I have a vague idea of a nation of skeletons based on colonial America so that's not out of the question.
