Gehanna's Horror
'You may cage the animal/ But you can't take away the rage'
Shinedown - Heroes
Excerpts from the notes of the late scholar and biomancer Gehanna.
Excerpt 1
After exhaustive study I have found my newest creation to be perfect in all but one respect. It is no physical deformity or deficit that mars it, nor is it lacking in the motivation to live, like some of my others. No, what plagues my creation is an abnormality of it's mind and humors, a curios suppression or out-right non-existence of all the humors but rage, and though I could, no doubt, change this; the results would be messy and chaotic, barely managing what I need while killing various important functions such as that same motivation that I so need.
I believe that it would be the most humane, for both this beast and the human race in general, would be to kill the thing. And, after further research as to it's abilities I will have Emosh smother the thing.
Excerpt 2
In recent days I have been noticing peculiarities occurring all over my labs and various studies. The lights and candles will flicker and die for nary a reason, and many of my own servants are loathe to serve my while I'm down there. I myself have noticed the presence too on occasions and plan on making a thorough investigation into the matter.
Excerpt 3
My latest experiment has been a failure, due in no part to that ever-present feeling of being watched by some malevolent presence that I've had recently. I believe that it started when I went searching for the cause of my servants' fears. Unable to find anything, I went on to assuage their fears in any way I could, only to find myself falling prey to the same irrational dread as them. I barely sleep now, and am thinking about taking a long-needed break from my studies.
Scrawlings found on the wall over the corpse of the same.
The thing, it hunts me. Destroying the light, traps me. Of the most vicious countenance. But it's dead already, Emosh smothered it and I watched. Can't sleep, must fight it. It waits for my weakness like a vulture, feeding off of my terr (The rest of the writing was lost due to the fact that the blood from his death washed of some of the charcoal)
Nature of the Beast
Some things, though long dead, continue to stir and move, and in some cases kill. This thing would have to be one of the lowest of all these self-animated undead, drawn back to this plane not by some duty left uncared for, nor my some wrong done against the tomb of its lord, but by a blasphemous hatred that knew no rest in life, and so it never leaves the body to rest in death. Instead it would still move and kill, because those were the only things it knows how to do, or if you believe in re-incarnation, because it couldn't even fail to complete it duties in life it can't continue on in the cycle of death and rebirth. Instead it is stuck in this semblance of life to continue doing all that it did in before.
The Vicious Countenance
No one knows for sure, besides the scholar and the slave (both of whom are dead,) what the beast looked like in life, but one must assume that in death it couldn't have looked much different, or at least a close enough likeness that it would drive the poor sir insane to look upon it. One might guess that it is somehow twisted in a way that twists mortal minds though, or that it has indeed gained some sort of mystical spark from its death to allow it to do some of the things ascribed to it. What we do know is that the beast must be extremely good at hiding, and from the one first hand account we have, that its eyes are human, though twisted and warped with some perverse desire to inflict the cruelties upon the world that its maker inflicted upon it by bringing it into this world.
Roleplay Notes
The beast is perfect in every way, at least for what he was making it. He seemed to have been, at the time, plotting the assassination of some high ranking official or another, but wouldn't like to dirty his hands by so much as paying a man to do it, so he went about crafting something that could do it for him. As such the beast has excellent eyesight in both night and day, and is more than capable of hiding from anyone searching for it, only to attack them from behind.
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? Responses (10)
4 days late and a dollar short... Well I only got the idea yesterday.
Hate to break it to you, but Shinedown is crap.
But that aside... It seems a bit unfocused, and for all the information here, we learn very little about what the creature actually is, looks like, how it behaves. I suppose it's dead, but I'd still like to know about it.
Shinedown being complete drivel that sold out to a mass movement of 'specialness' aside, me mishearing those lines while I was half asleep helped break a month's worth of writer's block, so I decided that it would be only fitting to put the lyrics in.
*Refrains from saying GM's discresion* I don't know much about my own creation CP, but I'll try to fix your problem. This thing is just senseless rage and sadism personified. It's equiped with an animalistic cunning and a need to torture anything that moves. That cover your question?
A fascinating concept. A little fleshing out and it could be very solid.
A good idea but what does the beast look like?
This would be a 3/5 vote for me, but the presentation gave it an extra point. I found it enthralling. the aspect of the beast is interesting, and since only two people, now dead, know what it looked like, the DM is free to evince an undead horror (humanoid) best tailored to scaring the crap out of his players, but I cannot escape the image of hungry and malevolent eyes left in a half decayed face.
Musical quality aside.....
While I like the language and presentation of the write up, too much is left to 'GM's discression' to be overly useful. Still a fun little idea.
And now the creature might just be hunting those people it was created to destroy, just because.
The thing is now crawling about because it is Evil, killing everyone in a geographic area?
Define what it is doing now, and you will have made big steps to filling out our needs.
I like the presentation and its a fine, though undescored, concept. Could use a little more of what others mentioned.
A little more meat would help :)
In contrast to the other comments, I think this works fine the way it is; the lack of a description fits the way it functions, a malignant and murderous presence, existing as a kind of personification of near-mindless rage and sadistic hatred.