The sound of sandpaper on sandpaper scratches the air when a kanthid moves. Most kanthids are multilimbed creatures shaped vaguely like other animals found in the Ninth World. Whatever its underlying shape, the rough skin of a kanthid is a stony mineral whorled and studded with short spines. Here and there, openings in the stone reveal mouths ringed in writhing cilia.
Kanthids with biped, humanoid shapes sometimes speak, though they don’t make much sense. Streams of nonsense, rhymes, names, stories, and even snippets of song might emerge from two or three different cilia-ringed mouths at once.
Motive: Hungers for flesh, reproduction
Environment: Desolate places throughout the Beyond, in groups of three or four Health: 12
Damage Inflicted: 5 points Armor: 3
Movement: Short
Modifications: Speed defense and all Speed-related tasks as level 3
Combat: A kanthid bashes prey with its spine-studded limbs. Each time a victim is hit by a kanthid and takes damage, poisoned spines break off in the wound. At first, all the victim feels is an unpleasant tingle. But if he takes damage from a kanthid three times
in the same fight, his extremities go numb and he must succeed on a difficulty 5 Might defense roll or drop limply to the ground, paralyzed for one minute.
If allowed to do so without interruption, a kanthid lowers its body across a paralyzed (or recently slain) creature, allowing its many ciliated mouths to feed. Each round a kanthid feeds in this fashion automatically inflicts damage. A kanthid that completely consumes a meal leaves behind a skeleton chunked with gore and several hard nodules of kanthid eggs fused to the bone.
Interaction: Kanthids are no smarter than clever animals, even the ones that babble things once known by an intelligent creature that it ate and whose bones it colonized.
Though a talking kanthid seems to make little sense, there is a theme to its babble: everything a given kanthid says or sings were things once said or sang by a particular individual, one who’s been dead for a while.
Breaking open a defeated kanthid reveals it to be a composite creature made of hundreds of smaller “polyps” (essentially, tentacles surrounding a mouth and digestive sac) built on the skeleton of a dead animal.
GM Intrusion: In addition
to the kanthid’s bash attack, one of the ciliated mouths on the attacking limb bites down on the PC, inflicting additional damage and holding him in place until he succeeds on a Might defense roll. While the attachment lasts, the attached kanthid makes attacks against the PC as a level 6 creature.
KILLIST
3 (9)
Clawed, greasy fingers. Smacking lips. Chattering, pointed teeth. Tiny, beady eyes. Shrill voice. A penchant for thievery, murder, traps, and deception. It is difficult to find some aspect of a killist that isn’t annoying, off-putting, or downright abhorrent.
Killisti are diminutive abhumans. Their oily flesh is pale, their eyes are dark, and they have slits on the sides of their torso that are frequently mistaken for gills. These, in fact, provide access to their poison sacs, which are positioned perfectly for killisti to slide their claws into as a part of an attack.
Like most abhumans, they hate humanity with a passion and delight in murder and sadistic acts against the targets of their malice.
Killisti leaders are typically older females who may be the mother or grandmother of their entire band. They are even more devious and cruel than the others and thus retain their positions of authority. Motive: Hatred for humans; hunger for flesh
Environment: Temperate and hot regions in bands of six to twelve Health: 9
Damage Inflicted: 3 points Movement: Short
Modifications: Stealth as level 4
Combat: Killisti hate and fear a fair fight. They set ambushes and traps whenever possible. Traps usually consist of spiked pits, tripwires, or spine-filled nets. Any sharp points in their traps are poisoned. Most killisti carry long knives and crude bows. These weapons are always freshly venomed—it is not an
action for a killist to poison a weapon or its own claws.
Killisti poison inflicts an additional 3 points of Speed damage if the victim fails a Might defense roll. A killist leader is level 4, and level 6 in stealth actions. She has 12 points of health and level 5 poison. Interaction: There is a saying: “If a killist is speaking, you are listening to lies.” Killisti can be intimidated
by shows of obvious force and threats to their lives, but even as they are cowed, they are plotting a way to trick and betray you. They speak their own language, but about half know a few words of the Truth.
Use: A band of killisti might set up an ambush at a bridge or along a road. They might even “bait” that trap with one of their number pretending to be hurt or dead at the center of the ambush. Other killisti live on the edges of human society, stealing what they need and preying upon those weaker than themselves. For example, a town with an infestation of killisti might start to experience disappearances among children or the elderly.
Loot: The killisti leader usually has all the valuables, but that rarely amounts to more than 1d6 + 2 shins and a cypher. Any dead killist is the source of 1d6 doses of their poison as well.
GM Intrusion: The dose
of the killist’s poison is particularly virulent, and the affected character experiences serious vertigo and disorientation. For the next minute, she must make a Speed- based roll each round or fall down. The difficulty of this task is increased by two steps if she moves a short distance or more during the round.
CREATURES: KILLIST - THE KIPRUS