With Tentacles and Things!

Dangersaurus · Post by **Dangersaurus** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 5:57 am

serleran wrote:
Heh, see... proof that it just takes the want to do this. Have you created any of your own unique monsters? Those are always more interesting to me.

Okay, it seems like every DM just has to make one of these, get it out of the system. It's got tentacles, it's got seafood for a face, and an eye in an inappropriate place.

Gentlemen, without further ado, I present the Asut:

ASUT

NO. ENCOUNTERED: 1-10 or 40-400

SIZE: Medium

HD: 3 (d8)

MOVE: 15 ft.

AC: 15

ATTACKS: 2 slams (1d6)

SPECIAL Immune to aural and visual attacks; aura sense, tremorsense, ego whip, psionics, SR 10

SAVES: M, P

INT: Average

ALIGNMENT: Neutral Evil

TYPE: Aberration

TREASURE: 3

XP: 90+3

Red: 110+3

ASUT ELDER

NO. ENCOUNTERED: 1-3 or 10-100

SIZE: Large

HD: 6 (d8)

MOVE: 15 ft.

AC: 16

ATTACKS: 2 slams (1d8)

SPECIAL: Immune to aural and visual attacks; aura sense, tremorsense, ego whip, psionics, SR 10

SAVES: M, P

INT: Average

ALIGNMENT: Neutral Evil

TYPE: Aberration

TREASURE: 3

XP: 540+6

Red: 720+6

Black: 2,100+9

This creature looks like nothing that should be suffered to live under natural laws. Two sinewy arms branch from a glistening green trunk, each ending in a trio of long grasping tentacles. Its long muscular trunk ends in three similar - but larger - suckered appendages. Dominating the center of the trunk is a lazy, searching eye. Atop the whole muscled mass is a quivering starfish where a head might otherwise be.

The asut dwell deep beneath the ground in large colonies consisting of hundreds of individuals. Driven out of their homes by an even more unspeakable evil, they are a constant danger to other underground dwellers. Asut will generally slay all captives, but they will occasionally spare a dwarf or verm. Dwarves are subjected to torture and interrogation, while verm are enslaved. Most asut are just under 6 feet tall, and weigh about 250 pounds. Elder asut generally stand about 10 feet tall, and weigh over 600 pounds.

Asut speak their own language, made up of shrill cries punctuated by rapid clicks of their beaks. They also understand, but do not speak, undercommon, dwarf and verm. The Asut are known to have fighting priests, although what god they worship is not apparent.

Aura Sense: Although the asut are blind, they are aware of all living things around them within 60'. They suffer no penalties when targeting living creatures.

Ego Whip: An asut can launch a mental assault against a single target at will. If the victim fails a charisma save he is stunned for 1d4 rounds.

Psionics: An asut can use the following powers at will: cure light wounds, dimension door, levitate, regenerate, and telekinesis (25 lbs./HD). The caster level for all spells is the same as the asut's hit dice.

Red Asut: Red asut are identical those presented above, but also possess the ability to use heat metal and produce flame once each day. Red asut seem the most likely asut to be clerics.

Black Asut: The rarest of the asut, these are also identical to normal asut, except that they have 9 hit dice, AC 19, they may assume or return from ectoplasmic form at will, and they may cast time stop once each day (as a 20th level wizard).

Julian Grimm · Post by **Julian Grimm** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:24 pm

Very nice. Were you going for Lovecraftain?
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Jungger · Post by **Jungger** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:59 pm

Cool stuff! I like the drawing as well.

Post by **Breakdaddy** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:34 pm

I'll go ahead and shake my stick at your Asut. Niiiiiice.

Dangersaurus · Post by **Dangersaurus** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:50 pm

Julian Grimm wrote:
Very nice. Were you going for Lovecraftain?

Probably. HPL and CAS are always a big inspiration, even if it's unconscious. But when you have mind-reading tentacled aberrations, there's no denying it.

These were from a campaign six or so years back that went through the 2e to 3e conversion. A major cataclysm had wiped everything above sea level. The force that caused the cataclysm remained, so the only survivors took to dwelling in a place called Dungeonmeet, located near a xenophobic dwarven citadel. The dwarves needed a reason for their xenophobia, and so the Asut were born. There are a couple other "teleport, destroy, escape" monsters that plagued the dwarves as well, which led to a pretty paranoid view on life.

Tank · Post by **Tank** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 1:08 pm

Cool!! I always love your work, Mr. Saurus. One question: how do you pronounce Asut?

Nelzie · Post by **Nelzie** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 1:14 pm

I've just taken an existing monster, retooled it and made it far more hideous, disgusting and something the players have grown to despise.

The adventurers call these monstrosities by what they do, they are called "Facestealers" plain and simple. The players never bothered to find out more about these fiendish creatures, what they called themselves, how they reproduce or much of anything else.

All they know is that for a while they had to be almost regularly on their guard and pay VERY close attention to NPCs, looking for any kind of change in NPC behavior.

I don't have the stats in front of me, but I can give you the gist of what they are and do.

The "Facestealers" are my game world's 'Dopplegangers'. They have human appearing bodies, that they can marginally reshape to match the body of another person, skin tone, weight, basic shape. They have no "face" as would be common to a humanoid.

What they do have is a slimy writhing mass of black tentacles that surround two pitch black pits of eyes. These tentacles have a contact poison that will paralyze a victim, which allows these fiends to do their work. Their standard mode of attack, when they lack a face or have removed one they were wearing, is to grapple with two successful hand attacks and then bring their face into the victim's face.

The victim is then forced to make a save versus paralyzation, if they fail, it's pretty much over for them, at least their face is over. If they succeed, their facial muscles become all relaxed, leaving their face a droopy mess, making communication difficult and sight also difficult. (Effect lasts for 1d4 turns.) (-2 to hit for partial blindness and even close friends need to pass a basic SIEGE check to understand what the victim tries to say while their face is droopy.)

If the victim has lost his/her face, the ordeal may still be far from over. The Facestealer has only taken a face, it knows nothing of the victim. However, if just the face is needed, then the Facestealer will kill the victim and make its escape. If more is needed, the Facestealer will keep the victim alive (the paralytic venom acts as a potent coagulant, which keeps the victim from bleeding to death.) and then use some of its tendrils to stroke the temples and forehead of the victim, grabbing memories, mannerisms, speech patterns and secrets.

This is not a perfect mimicry and the mannerisms, speech patterns and even some memories will fade. However, it is possible for a Facestealer to keep a victim alive for a month or two and transition between who the victim was and who the Facestealer now is.

However, even this is but a fleeting fancy to a Facestealer. Even if one takes the face of a very wealthy merchant, eventually the charade begins to feel cold and empty. The Facestealer must move on, take another face, live another life. Which is all part of their curse. (They were once human, ages ago, cursed to never have a face for long.)

Some Facestealers never settle for more than a few days and carry around a sack of faces that they can swap as suits their fancy. Being collectors of "fine" faces, like someone may collect fine wines. Facestealers are compulsive in nature. One may compulsively collect faces while another may be a terrible gambler, they all have some compulsive trait, aside from stealing faces, that is.

It's kind of a mixture between an Illithid(Mind Flayer) and the Doppleganger.
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Jyrdan Fairblade · Post by **Jyrdan Fairblade** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 2:11 pm

That's a nice monster, and from the sound of it a very cool campaign that spawned it.

Dangersaurus wrote:
These were from a campaign six or so years back that went through the 2e to 3e conversion. A major cataclysm had wiped everything above sea level. The force that caused the cataclysm remained, so the only survivors took to dwelling in a place called Dungeonmeet, located near a xenophobic dwarven citadel. The dwarves needed a reason for their xenophobia, and so the Asut were born. There are a couple other "teleport, destroy, escape" monsters that plagued the dwarves as well, which led to a pretty paranoid view on life.

Dangersaurus · Post by **Dangersaurus** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:12 pm

Jyrdan Fairblade wrote:
That's a nice monster, and from the sound of it a very cool campaign that spawned it.

It was fun, but it ended up strangling to death on the 3E rules around 15-16th level (in other words, after 8 months of playing).

Julian Grimm · Post by **Julian Grimm** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 1:10 am

I haven't done any Lovecraftian beasties yet. I may have to work on a couple things I have been kicking around though...
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