Little Fears Game Tools: NEW MONSTERS

[Jason L Blair]

This thread is where people post monsters they've created/used in their Little Fears games. If you post, please just post the description of the monster, its history, and any special rules you think apply to it. Please do not just respond with a "Hey! Cool!" no matter how cool someone's monster may be. I would like this to become a list that GMs can refer to when they're stuck for ideas.

Have at it!

[peteramthor]

Mannequins.
These animate objects brought to life have the ability to be a nightmare to any child. Children often see them watching them in stores while their parents are blissfully unaware of them while shopping. This leads to the child’s fear of going to large department stores, even when with their family. They also see them walking the mall among the crowds, disguised as security officers or janitors, but again only the child seems to notice them for what they really are.

Sometimes they come after the child during the nights, leaving the dept stores behind in search of that which they thrive off of. Soul. These creatures can absorb a point of soul from a child simply by holding on it for a minute or so. However a mannequin may only do this once per child per night. Soul lost this way may never be recovered.

System Stats.
Attacks: Fist: 2 (if a child is hit by rolling a six then they are knocked down)

The mannequins main attack strategy is to knock the child down with its fist or to knock them off balance. Then it will attempt to grab the child who will have to make a successful feet quiz to escape, if the child is knocked down then they will have to roll an extra die and keep the lowest. Of course an attribute that would give you a bonus die to help the child is negated along with the extra for being knocked down. To break free once a mannequin grabs a child they must make successful quizzes under their muscle. When the child breaks free the GM rolls for the mannequin, on a roll of one it loses an arm in the struggle. If the child his held by the grab for a minute the child must make a Spirit quizzes or lose a point of Soul permanently.

These constructs also tend to be a little on the fragile side. Whenever one is hit the GM will need to roll to see if something was knocked off. On a roll of one it loses a piece, decided by the chart below. If the child hits with a natural one then one piece is automatically knocked off.

1 Head
2 Right Arm
3 Left Arm
4 Right Leg
5 Left Leg
6 Separates at torso.

With pieces missing it is up to the GM to decide how effective they are. But once the head is gone the mannequin ceases to function. Also mannequins may be put back together simply by placing the limb back. This works with whatever limb is placed in the section. This can create some odd creations of four legged things that walk like spiders and four armed climbing creatures of bad dreams.

[Mike Holmes]

The Monster in the Leaf Pile

These servants of the boogeyman live in leaf piles made by people raking leaves in the autumn. They are completely camoflagued, their skin looking much like leaves. How they get into leaf piles is a mystery, they seem to just appear every fall. They wait for unsuspecting kids to jump into their pile, and then grab at the children to momentarily terrorize them. No inspection of a leaf pile by an adult will reveal the creature, but that does not mean that the creature is gone. It will reamin in the pile, shaking the leaves about whenever the child looks at it. A reminder that the creature is still there. Such a monster's leaf pile will always somehow be in the errie light of a streetlight if a child looks out his window at it at night, for example, in enough light for the child to see it move menacingly.

In some cases where the leaf piles are in the street, they pull the children down into storm sewers beneath the pile where they will hold them in order to terrorize them.

In either case, there is a simple method to dispelling a Monster in the Leaf Pile. All one has to do is to disperse the leaves of it's pile about so there is not enough room to hide. At which point the creature will disappear. Adults will often thwart this, however, by raking the leaves back up into a pile again, at which point the creature will return. Burning the leaves is a dangerous but effective solution. And one can always wait for the vaccuum truck to come, but somehow the Monsters in the Leaf Piles have arranged it so that the streets on which their piles are located get done last every year. So in some cases the child may have to live with the menace for a couple of months if they wait.By which time the Boogeyman is very satisfied with the bounty of fear produced by these minor henchmen.


Filth

Filth is an independent creature that survives on causing compulsive cleaning behaviors in children. Filth appears as a big ugly bug about two feet long. It moves silently, and, being jet black, it is difficult to see in the dark. It uses these abilities sneak up and get right on children who are sleeping. It injects the child with a substance that wakes them, but in a paralyzed and drugged state that leaves them thinking that they are dreaming. It then secretes a substance onto the child that is foul when it comes out, but nearly undetectable after the effects of the paralysis wear off (certainly no adult can detect it). When the child wakes they will feel dirty and try to get the substance off, despite most likley thinking that it was only a dream. Washing works superficially, making the child feel clean in the short run. But in actuality this just rubs the substance deeper into the child's skin.

Filth will visit the child regularly, a horrifying nightmare itself. After a couple of weeks Filth's secretions will be so worked into the child that they will never feel clean. Such children will wash constantly, obsessing on getting clean. In some very bad cases, children try to burn the filth from their skin. In any case the child will be scarred for life, whether mentally or physically. At that point Filth is satisfied, and moves on to the next child.

Being rid of Filth before the child becomes compulsive about cleaning their bodies is a task for cleverest children only. Filth can be run off by a child who stands hidden guard over the child being assaulted, but will return until its job is complete. A child may also try to hide from Filth in a locked box or stay up all night or some such, but Filth is patient and will always return. In the end the children will have to be very creative to figure out a way to either destroy Filth or ensure that it never returns. For children that have filth's mark on them it can also be a challenge for children to remove it.


Just a couple of ideas.

Mike

[Grave Boy 13]

The Master of The Mill
Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a Dark Age made of iron, steam, and sooty smoke.  It was an age of pain and suffering all for the luxury and glory of a few.  It was an age of greed founded on the sweat, blood, and mangled bodies of the innocent.  It was an age of horror known as the Industrial Revolution, an age that gave rise to a great and menacing construct of terror, a construct known as The Mill.  And in the deepest smoke stained cinderblock bowels of The Mill lurks a great and terrible beast, a monster that has devoured millions of the innocent.  It is a beast simply referred to as The Master of The Mill.

The Master of the Mill was constructed from the pain and fear of the child laborers of the sweat shops, factories, and mills of the Industrial Age.  It is the sum whole of their nightmares and fear, the face they had given to their tormentor.  It is an industrialized nightmare, an insane construct of iron beams, grinding gears, wires, cables, pipes, valves, and all manner of odd gnashing and whirring parts fused in places with bone and flesh.  It is a behemoth of such size that no single unfortunate child can even see all of its continuance.  So large is it that it spider-webs through most all of The Mill, filling many hallways and corridors with its bulk.  Multitudes of its clawed and cabled arms connect it to tall of the assembly lines, looms, furnaces, and other machinations of The Mill, making it appear as if it were The Mill it self, and in a way, it is.

The main bulk of the Master of The Mill is located deep down in the very heart of The Mill.  A massive furnace that bubbles, boils, and roars with an intense fire serves as the hub from which the rest of the monstrosity grows.  Pipes radiate from the furnace in all directions linking it to all manner of other copper and iron tanks, conveyer belts, massive engines, hydraulic arms, and all manner of huge clockwork creations.  From its continuously turning shafts, gears, and chains, grease, oil, and blood drip down coating the floor of the inner chambers of The Mill in a thick, dark, sludgy mire.  From the millions of pipes which sprout from its monstrous girth foul and oily smoke that smells of fried fat and burnt hair pours, coating most everything in thick, sticky soot.  Steam shoots out of random valves at random times, and foul fluids and waist is ejected routinely from all manner of ducts and pipes.  Large bundles of copper cable lace between everything like strange vines in an iron swamp.  Sprouting from the furnace on a long conduit full of spinning blades and massive gore caked grinders is the massive face of the beast.

The face of the beast is a huge version of one of the most nefarious sweatshop owners and child slavers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  It is the visage of a man once known as Loyd Masters, a man who had inspired such fear and misery in so many children across the globe that the Demagogue had saw it fit to place his face upon the creature he had helped birth.  It is a twisted version of who the man was; a deep reflection of what lurked in his soul.  Its eyes are hollow pits that look strait down into the heart of the furnace, glowing with a fierce red light.  Its flesh and skin is stretched taunt and thin across its skull and riveted onto the metal conduits that attach the head to the long duct work and hydraulics that make up its neck.  Its mouth is a monstrous cavern, continually accepting, by conveyer belt, the broken bodies of the children whose souls had been used up on the assembly lines.  As they are fed into its mouth, the blades and grinders make quick work of the body, turning it to raw materials.  The material is used to build more of the monster, making it larger and larger with each death, or to make or replace a missing Taskmaster.

Sprouting from the massive, maddening bulk of the monster are countless infinitely long bundles of copper wiring.  Each of these bundles of cable is attached to a Taskmaster, the Master of The Mills eyes, ears, and hands.  There are a lot of Task Masters active at any given time, patrolling the mazes of The Mill insuring that the workers continue their soul sucking work with speed and efficiency, and to make sure the Master of the Mill is continually fed.

Attacks: 2/8
Most all of the Master of the Mills actions is taken by his Task Masters, but occasionally it will take action for its self.  In such situations, it has a variable arsenal of nasty things at its disposal, from hot searing steam, to nasty mechanical saws, claws, drills and all manner of large heavy things.  However, on the good side, it is not too terribly accurate with such things and when activating one, is, more or less, swinging blindly unless a Task Master is present to act as its eyes.  To represent its inaccuracy and its likelihood of simply landing a glancing blow as opposed to hitting a child squarely, the damage for its attacks has two numbers.  The first is if there are no task Masters around to whiteness the action.  The second number is if there is at least one Taskmaster who can see the target clearly.  Only one set of numbers is used because most all of his forms of weaponry pretty much do the same amount of damage -a little or a lot.

Killing the Beast:  Killing the Master of The Mill would be a nearly impossible task.  Far too many children have and do live in continual fear of him, constantly feeding the beast.  One child or even a small group of children simply would not have the power to do it.  It would take the concentrated effort of hundreds or even thousands of children to conquer the beast.  However, there are stories that there is a way to destroy the monstrosity that is The Master of The Mill.  As the stories go, if the bones of Loyd Masters last innocent victim, his own grandchild, were to be fed to the beast, then it would be destroyed.  Whether this is true or not is unknown as no child has ever heard of who the beast ever was much less whom the beasts' grandchild was and where its bones might be.


The Taskmasters
The Taskmasters are the part of the Master of The Mill that children are more likely have contact with, that is while they are still in a state where it really maters.  They are very fierce enforcers of the Master of The Mills will, tirelessly patrolling the halls and corridors of The Mill insuring that The Mills production always remains high.  While they are primarily found in The Mill, they have been known, from time to time, to find a way into the real world.  This usually occurs at some sight where The Mill is very close to the really real world such as abandoned factories and warehouses, construction sights, basements containing large furnaces or massive old water heaters, or places where the Master of The Mill has a firm hold on the adult psyches.

The Taskmasters are fairly unnerving to look at.  They appear to be distorted clones of Loyd Masters, again bearing a strange parody of his face.  Their skin appears to severely stretched across their sharp bones and is stitched back together with various colorful threads in areas where it has torn from the stress.  Their faces are continually twisted in expressions of pure hatred and disgust; their lips always pulled back in a snarl.  Instead of teeth, protruding from their stitched and sewn gums are viscous sewing needles which whir as if trying to sew something when ever the monster speaks one of the only two phrases that it can utter: "Work harder! Work faster!" or "Lazy worthless parasite!"  The latter of the two phrases is usually reserved for workers who are not producing as well as they should and is the precursor to a vicious beating.

Their "uniform" of sorts consists of a large shadowy dark long-coat composed of odd pits of dark colored cloth crudely stitched together.  The collar and cuffs are trimmed in multicolored human hair ranging from the lightest yellow to the bluest black.  Underneath, they wear what would appear to be a suit and tie sewn from random scraps of miss-matched cloth, some of which even appears to have come from plush toys.  

From the back of a Taskmasters head protrudes an infinitely long bundle of copper cabling that attaches the Taskmaster to the Master of The Mill.  It slithers and waves behind the monster, holding it up and moving it like a puppet.  The Taskmasters legs simply dangle uselessly, its feet dragging the ground whenever it moves.  From the Taskmasters hands, in place of fingers, are long sharp sewing needles fed by thread drawn from somewhere inside the Taskmasters body.  They are able to do some amazing things with their needle studded hands such as quickly sewing or weaving long thickly braided whips or shooting streamers of thread out to ensnare and entangle struggling children.

Attacks:
Whip 1
The whip that they stitch together is, by far, their favorite tool though it takes a few seconds of stitching and weaving to make on the spot.

Snaring 0
When they attempt to snare a child, they shoot out long lengths of thread from their fingers and, sometimes, their mouth.  This thread quickly wraps its self around the victim, sometimes to the point of cocooning them and prevents them from struggling or running away. Whenever a child is the victim of this attack, he or she must make a Feet Quiz or be ensnared.  The degree to which the child has been ensnared is determined by the difference between their Feet and the number they rolled

[list=1]1 - 2: They are only partially or loosely snared.  They have 1 negative die to all physical actions and a -1 to their Hands Stat (minimum of 1).  They also can not run away as they are now tied to the Tasmaster untill they can strugel lose.  If they succeed in a Hands Quiz including the negative die and -1, then they struggle free.
3: They are entangled.  One of their legs or their arms are completely tied up and are unusable.  The child also receives 2 negative dice for all physical actions and a -3 on to their Hands stat.  A success on the Hands Quiz would mean that the child is only partially or loosely snared.
4: They are almost cocooned.   They are mostly tied up, theough the victem still has some mobility and room to wiggel.  The child receives 3 negative dice for all physical actions and a -4 on to their Hands stat.  A success on the Hands Quiz would mean that the child managed to work some of their body free becoming only entageled.
5 + : The child is hopelessly bound and cocooned, unable to do much of anything except, possibly, scream for help.[/list:o]

The Taskmaster would continue his Snaring attack, each time possibly ensnaring the child even more until the child reaches the cocooned stage or manages to get free.

Stab or Sew 2
When they are feeling particularly viscous or don't have time to make a whip, then this is one of their more unpleasant options.  With it, they either just ruthlessly stab a child with their needle like fingers or, even more ruthless, sew parts of the child together.  One of their favorite tactics is to first ensnare a child, then sew its mouth shut so he or she can't scream.  They also tend to sew limbs together that wouldn't be useful to the child in their appointed task, such as their legs, or all their fingers except their index finger and thumb, etc.

Killing a Taskmaster: Killing a Taskmaster is not too terribly hard as they are susceptible to many things.  The easiest way, however, to get rid of one is to sever the cabling that connects them to the Master of The Mill.  Hacking through the bundle would be a difficult task and would require three successful Muscle Quizzes.  The easier way, though it can be more dangerous, is to simply rip the cables out of their skull.  Once the connection to The Master of The Mill is broken, the cable would snap back to the Master of The Mill like a broken rubber band.  The Taskmaster would collapse to the ground in an odd pile of scrap cloth, pieces of old toys, screws, bolts, rods, and other bits of rusted industry all coated in a thick, dark green or black organic icher similar to swamp sludge and pond scum.  Unfortunately, once one of the Taskmasters is killed, the Master of The Mill simply begins constructing another one, a task that takes a couple of days for the beast to complete.  The Master of The Mill is never happy when one of its Task Masters is destroyed as it is a terrible waist of resources and time, two of the three things the beast can not stand to see wasted.



~GB13

[JimmyB]

I apologise if any of these have been used before, but just a handful of ideas I came up with.

Monster in the toilet
These creatures are a dull, unpleasant brownish green and inhabit toilets, preferring the less sanitary although any will do in a pinch. They travel through the water system of a town, able to appear from any toilet they choose. Their dull eyes are usually all that is visible, occasionally long arms stretch from the toilet as they try to seize a victim to drag under and take back to their closet-land lair. Very rarely they may actually leave their toilets, in which case they are often described as hulking slimy creatures with arms that hang down to their oversized feet.

When they seize a victim they will try to pull them deep into the Sewerage, an area of closetland devoted to such creatures. Massive pipes criss-cross like a labyrinth, and the area is full of putrid, rotting waste. Smaller pipes lead off from each of the larger walkways, each one rising to a different toilet somewhere in the world. These are much too small for any child to fit through.

Each monster has its own lair in the Sewerage, where it will hoard particularly valuable waste such as scraps of clothing, metal, rotting flesh, bones, and similar. They do nothing with their hoards, simply collect the dregs that the world flushes away down toilets and drains.

Penny Brown
A recent manifestation of Closetland this one, apparently spurred from the mind of some internet prankster in an e-mail that made its rounds around the world. Penny Brown is a nine year old red-headed girl. Or at least appears to be. The illusion is close enough that even dogs are rarely completely certain, expressing unease rather than outright fear. Should Penny be encountered she will be wearing a blue velvet dress, and a matching hairband with a bow. She will try to lead other children off from their families and home, and once they are safely away will lead them into Closetland. She is a servant of Rael-schol, envious of the security and safety that children feel at home and desperate to destroy that by making them leave. If a child will not leave of their own free will then she will not force them to, only entreat and beg more desperately.

Pan
The Pan of old magical cults and more modern wiccans is actually a manifestation of Closetland. He has appeared in various forms before, such as the Pied Piper of Hamlin. When he plays his pipes any children listening must make a Smarts quiz in order to avoid being forced to follow along behind, dancing and leaping. They will be lead away to the nearest rock, which will open wide and let them through into a paradise, which quickly turns out to be an extension of Titania's domain. Pan used to be one of the inhabitants of Arcadia, but when Arcadia turned his loyalty to Titania meant that he had no choice but to try and provide her with fresh young blood, for he could not bear to see her die.

Kris Kringle
The original Santa Claus, now usurped by the jollier, brighter coloured and better-marketed newcomer. He was originally Kriskrundle, but his name was mispronounced when he left Germany and he became Kris Kringle. His bitterness at being replaced knows no bounds, but he can only manifest on Christmas eve. As many of his predecessors as well as bringing gifts (usually of a disturbing or dangerous nature, animated barbies, feral teddy bears, that type of thing) he will occasionally beat a child or deliver presents that are downright nasty. Generally he is left to deal with the kids on the 'bad' list, the ones Santa never bothers about. For particularly nasty children he may well spirit them away during the night, taking them back to his grotto where they are forced to make toys for next Christmas.

Flare
Flare travels not through shadows or the doors, but through flames. To him anything burning is a portal, from the smallest candle to the greatest bonfire. He can never leave this flame except while in Closetland, and in fact appears as nothing more than a faint impression of a face in the fire. Children hear his whispers encouraging them to light things, to look at the pretty colours of the fire and make them spread. If they do so and the fire reaches them they are instantly whisked through the flames into Closetland, to burn forever in his great pyre in the lair of Lamashtu. Anyone watching this transportation will see it as the child being incinerated. The best way to defeat him would be to come up with some way to put out the fire, although that would merely cut off one of his millions of transitory portals. To do permanent damage they'd need to go through into the kingdom of Lamashtu, and find some way to put out the pyre.

Thief of the Mirror
While mirrors do not lead out of Titania's domain, it seems that they can lead in, of a fashion. The mirror monster is a pale, translucent figure who appears at the edge of a reflection at the edge of a string of reflections produced by opposite mirrors. A child between these mirrors for long enough risks having their reflection gradually stolen, as the creature reaches out and pulls each reflection one at a time into Titania's Hall of Mirrors. Each theft of a reflection requires a Spirit Quiz on the child's part, and each successful theft reduces the child's soul by one. Eventually there will be no reflections left to steal and the child will be an empty husk, merely going through the motions of life.

[neverrob]

This is for a more light hearted campaign
Shawks
(for more insight, visit //www.shawks.com)

Bite 3

They come from the deep and seek to dominate dry land.
They have a fondness for turtle necks.
They wear people suits that allow them to breathe and speak and masquerade as your principal, mailman, or classmates.
When you kill one, another will replace it in a few days...with the same look and voice. However, they will only kill as a last resort.
How can you tell if a person you meet is a shawk?The only way to be sure is to check for gills, baby.

Or you could draw them in with chum. They are powerless to resist its siren call.

[Comte]

The Dream Daemons:

Additions To: How do they Get Here Section:  Bad Dreams: Sometimes the nightmares of a child will be so traumatic that they will bring the child’s mind into closet land for the duration of the dream.  Once they are in closet land they can be affected and abused like any another normal person, except that what happens to them isn’t permanent.  One of the boogieman’s favorite tactics is to snatch the dreaming child and turn them into birds night after night until they are so weak that their physical forms are easy pickings.  There are dangers in doing this however, should a child ever realize that they are dreaming then they can affect closet land in a very real way.  Still the general terror that closet land induces in people makes this occurrence rare indeed.  Ordinarily when something wakes them up in the real world they will wake up from the dream.  The children will be shaken and disoriented and the memories of the nightmare will probley haunt them for the rest of their lives.  If a child dies in the dream it is up to the game master to determine what will happen to the children when they wake up.  

Dream Deamons

Description:  Dream Daemons come in every shape size and form imaginable; sometimes they will look like something they feel is scary.  Other times they will show up as the current thing that the child is most afraid of.  It is entirely up to them as to how they wish to appear; they can even look like several different things to several different people.  A highly convenient ability for those sleep over situations.

Taking the Children Away:  Dream Daemons can only take a child into closet land if something happened to them during the day that put their innocents in danger, and this event causes a nightmare.  Such an event could be as mundane as watching a scary movie before bed time to getting in a fight, to the scary old bum chasseing them down the street for three blocks, to something much worse and horrible.  The worse the event was during the day the stronger the dream daemons are at night.  Once the dream daemons show up they take control of the dream until the dump the children into closet land.  In order to dump the child they have to make them go through a certain hole or opening.  They could do this by starting the dream off like they just woke up and a monster is chasing them, or they could start the dream off in a completely different way and trick the child into their land.  Examples of this are:

The White Rabbit causing Alice to be curious enough to follow him down the hole
Any movie where Freddy Kruger makes them go into that car trunk of his
I can’t remember my third example.

Should the children resist, fight back with belief, or whatnot then have them do all normal quizzes for stuff.  They can only wake up if they drive the daemon away or they realize that they are dreaming.  The children ONLY enter closet land if they go in through the designated door that the daemon chooses at the start of the dream.

The greater the number of children in one area having innocent loosing nightmares the stronger the more likely a dream daemon will strike.  So during a sleep over when they watch some scary movies or see something they shouldn’t and the children go to sleep…they might be fighting off some daemons.  

Alright that’s it…edits more than likely to follow.  Leave comments and suggestions in this link:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5019
Or private message, me it makes me feel important