Small mechanical insects, hex stingers exist to inject humans with a nanotech, molecular rearrangement “virus” called the Hex. Transformed people become hexons and work with others likewise transformed toward the Hex’s goal of conquest.
Rumor has it that long ago, the Hex was designed to affect creatures other than humans, but it has now adapted. Hex stingers still ignore any nonhuman target.
Motive: Spreading the Hex
Environment: Always with a member of the Hex Health: 5
Damage Inflicted: 3 points Armor: 2
Movement: Short
Modifications: Speed defense as level 4 due to size and speed
Combat: A hex stinger’s injection carries a transformative venom. Humans stung must immediately make a Might defense roll. Failure means that they move one step down the damage track. On the next round, a victim who failed the first roll must make another Might defense roll with the same consequence. On the third round, someone who has failed both prior rolls must make yet another Might defense roll. This time, however, if she
HONTRI
5 (15)
The hontri is a massive bird of prey that has been altered by nanomachines to become a true winged nightmare. These avians, with their white and black plumage, are known to and feared by the people who live in their hunting grounds, who sometimes call them “winged devils” or “twilight slayers.” The latter nickname refers to the creatures’ preferred hunting time, for they see as well in dim light as in bright daylight.
Interestingly, the nanites within a hontri’s flesh self-replicate so that when young hontris hatch, they have their own technological “allies.”
Motive: Hungers for flesh
Environment: Hilly or mountainous regions, hunting alone or in pairs Health: 22
Damage Inflicted: 5 points Armor: 1
Movement: Long (short on the ground) Modifications: Perception as level 7
Combat: As raptors, hontris spy prey from high above and swoop down at incredible speeds, raking with their powerful talons. When using this swoop attack, they deal 2 additional points of
damage. (Usually, a hontri can swoop only once in an encounter, as its first attack, but sometimes circumstances might allow a second swooping attack.)
The nanites in their flesh and blood primarily exist as repairing machines. A living hontri regenerates 2 points of damage each round.
A hontri hunting pair is particularly dangerous, as the machines in their systems allow them to communicate mentally with each other. If acting in concert, the hunting pair operates as level 6 creatures in all tasks.
The microscopic machines laced in a hontri’s flesh allow it to build up a powerful electrical charge. Once per hour (usually on its first attack), it can inflict an additional 4 points of damage.
Interaction: Despite their telepathic communication with each other, hontris are animals and act as such. Use: A legend says that people once bonded with and rode hontris as mounts. The PCs are
commissioned to find a hontri nest high in the mountains and bring back the eggs. If they succeed, their employer may have her hands full when she discovers that the old legends are false (or that the hontri has evolved into a stage where bonding and riding are no longer possible).
GM Intrusion: The
character is picked up by the hontri and carried high into the sky. Perhaps the hontri intends to drop him or use him as food for young hatchlings back at the nest. Either way, the PC must figure out how to get free safely.
CREATURES: HONTRI - ISHENIZAR
ISHENIZAR
6 (18)
An ishenizar is composed of faceted crystal. Each facet reflects an eye, hundreds in all, every one different. Some of the eyes are human, some animal, some machine, and a few obviously extraterrestrial. An ishenizar’s crystal body usually flickers like an ember, but sometimes it seems to blaze as bright as a star.
An ishenizar’s overall shape is difficult to describe—maybe impossible to describe. Most people who’ve seen one remember only the variegated eyes within their crystal facets, the starlike glow, and sometimes, the burning white light of an ishenizar focusing on something that has earned its enmity. That means judging the creature’s size is also problematic. On the other hand, they’re small enough to fit inside structures and homes where humans live.
Motive: Unknown
Environment: Ishenizars appear alone or in groups of two or three, usually in places that have seen much death or are rich in stored energy, knowledge, or art.
Health: 18
Damage Inflicted: 6 points Armor: 2
Movement: Long when flying; able to teleport to another part of the world as an action Modifications: Perception as level 10
Combat: Ishenizars rarely fight. When they do, they focus the illumination they naturally emit (or reflect from some unseen location) with crystal facets that act like lenses. The focused beam either can burn up to two targets at long range as a single action, or it can burn any number of selected targets within immediate or short range, inflicting 3 points of damage to each.
Alternatively, an ishenizar can attack a single creature at any range that it can see with a psychic insinuation that inflicts 3 points of Intellect damage.
If an ishenizar is slain, it detonates with a shriek of shattering crystal. A telepathic broadcast of ultimate loss is sensed by most creatures within a mile. All that’s left behind is a shapeless litter of glassy crystals.
Interaction: Ishenizars are telepathic, but they don’t seem to use words. Instead, they communicate via intense surges of emotion: oceanic calm, bubbling glee, humor, grey melancholy, and sometimes, howling rage. When questioned about their purpose or motives, they respond with a complex flash of competing emotions so multifaceted that most people are dazed by the sensation. The best anyone has been able to translate is: we connect life and death.
Use: After a battle, a town’s hospital is filled to capacity with the wounded and dying. Every night an ishenizar appears in a room where the wounded rest. By the next morning, one or more wounded who were looked upon by the creature is dead. The scared, angry locals make plans to attack the “crystal wraith” the next time it appears.
Loot: Amid the litter of crystals of an ishenizar’s remains, a glassy cypher or two can be salvaged.
Those who’ve been in the presence of an ishenizar later have dreams in which a dearly departed friend, family member, lover, or enemy speaks to them. Some messages are of hope, others of love, and sometimes the message is a warning.
GM Intrusion: A PC’s
cypher begins shining with the same starlike brilliance of an enraged ishenizar. On the following round, the cypher explodes with light and possibly shrapnel, plus any energy associated with the cypher. Everything within immediate range (other than ishenizars) takes 6 points of damage.
JESANTHUM
4 (12)
A patch of wildflowers in the distance waves massive blooms of vivid purple in the breeze. The trembling flowers smell of baking bread and honeyed syrup, an odor so potent that many recall their own best memories of eating sweets.
When a bed of jesanthum flowers bend their brilliant heads to reveal a lapping tongue the color of blood, and the thick stems uproot to expose powerful 5-foot (1.5 m) long carnivorous bodies of raking claws and stabbing barbs, those sweet recollections are forever shattered.
A decade ago, no one had ever heard of jesanthums, but now they’re prolific enough to be a common cautionary tale among travelers. Maybe they colonized from a previously isolated island where such growth is rampant, or perhaps an explorer discovered a particularly loathsome ancient seed bank. Or, most worryingly of all, perhaps the sun’s altered energy signature, one that plants seem to respond to, has become even stronger.
Motive: Hungers for sunlight, water, and flesh
Environment: Almost anywhere sunlight reaches, usually in beds of three to five creatures Health: 18
Damage Inflicted: 5 points Armor: 1
Movement: Short
Modifications: Speed defense as level 5 Combat: A jesanthum attacks with its rasping,
cutting tongue. If it inflicts damage, the victim must also succeed on a Might defense roll. On a failed roll, the jesanthum pounces with the aid of its tongue and impales its victim with a massive barb (dealing more damage), which adheres the creature to its prey.
For PCs with an adhered jesanthum, the difficulty of all attacks and Speed defense rolls is increased by one step. On the other hand, all attacks a jesanthum makes on a victim it is stuck to automatically succeed. Removing the jesanthum requires the victim’s (or another creature’s) full turn and gives the jesanthum one free attack as the extraction occurs. In addition, a jesanthum can breathe out a
cloud of spores that fills an intermediate area around it. Any living creature in the area who fails a Might defense roll coughs uncontrollably. Victims cannot act until they successfully make a Might defense roll, which they can attempt once per turn. After the jesanthum uses this ability, it must regenerate new spores before it can do so again, which takes hours.
Interaction: Jesanthums are pretty, nice- smelling plants—until they’re not, at which point they’re hungry predators that attempt to eat PCs who have come too close. Use: To appease an angry patron or provide
a gift of special significance for someone the characters need a favor from in return,
Some people keep juvenile jesanthum plants in their gardens as crowning specimens of their collection, trusting themselves or their gardener to remain vigilant enough to weed the plants before they become mature and mobile.
GM Intrusion: One
PC fails her defense roll against the jesanthum’s spore breath. In addition to causing uncontrollable coughing, the spores germinate in the PC’s lungs and send a thick stalk up through her mouth and nostrils sometime during the next 28 hours. This tends to asphyxiate and kill the victim unless desperate measures are taken. On the other hand, the process does create a nice moist planter for the new jesanthum seedling to sprout from.
CREATURES: JESANTHUM - JURULISK
JURULISK
7 (21)
The people of the prior worlds, with their strange activities and vast displays of power, tore literal holes in the fabric of the universe. Sometimes, these were very small. Nothing to worry about.
Sometimes.
The jurulisk is an ultraterrestrial being of strange, inconceivable dimensions. When it comes to this world, it is a one-dimensional line, possessing only length (not even width, let alone depth), imperceptible and incapable of interacting in a meaningful way. Eventually, others come to this world. Over the aeons, the jurulisks find each other and bond to form two- and eventually three-dimensional forms in a way that is difficult to comprehend.
Finally able to interact with the three-dimensional world, the jurulisk seeks energy to fuel its new form. Once it has absorbed a great deal of power from living creatures, the sun, or an artificial energy source, a jurulisk attempts to control its environment—usually by eliminating other potential threats, which means all other creatures.
The jurulisk is a living creature, but it is not organic in any traditional sense, and neither is it mechanical. Its form constantly shifts, adapting to its needs at the moment, but always looking like what some have described as “the framework for an ‘actual’ creature.”
Motive: Hungers for energy (and dominion) Environment: Anywhere
Health: 28
Damage Inflicted: 10 points Armor: 1
Movement: Long
Combat: A jurulisk’s cold touch drains the energy of all things around it. In addition, its weird angles and awful protrusions are impossibly sharp. Its strikes inflict 8 points of damage plus 2 more points from the terrible cold.
As an action, a jurulisk might attack a character’s armor, weapon, or other object. If the creature strikes its target, the object—if less than level 7—is destroyed and the character suffers 2 points of cold damage. Thus, in one round, a well-armored character can suddenly be reduced to Armor 0 and far more susceptible to attack.
A jurulisk regenerates 5 points of health each round. However, if it falls to 0 health, it instead
regenerates 1 point of health per hour until it reforms 28 hours later. While it is regenerating in this way, it can’t take any other actions. (If the jurulisk falls to 0 health because its component matter is scattered across a long distance or farther, perhaps due to an explosion, it does not regenerate.) The jurulisk can alter its form in strange non-Euclidean ways, allowing it to pass through solid matter. It
can pass through up to 5 feet (1.5 m) of solid matter in one round. It can stretch so as to extend a “limb” to stab at a foe a short distance away.
A jurulisk fights to the “death,” although it might not be permanently dead or destroyed, for such concepts might not apply. The
creature is far too alien to tell. Interaction: If it is possible to
communicate or interact with a jurulisk, the means have not been discovered yet, even using telepathy.
Use: The jurulisk is a wonderfully
As something utterly alien, a jurulisk often senses— perhaps rightfully so in some cases—that the hard, inorganic matter of a foe is as dangerous and vital as the softer, organic flesh.
GM Intrusion: The jurulisk
disappears into the ground at the character’s feet. Just as suddenly, it comes back up for an attack that is two steps more difficult to defend against. Regardless of whether the attack is successful, the jurulisk immediately bends at impossible angles to get out of the 10-foot (3 m) deep pit it has just created. The character will fall into the pit if she does not succeed at a Speed defense roll (difficulty 6).