Recent Reapers

I've invested pretty heavily in the Reaper Bones 5 Kickstarter, but still have a fair amount I picked up as part of Bones 4 to complete.  Here's a couple pieces I've completed this past week:

First up is the Fertility Idol, released as part of the "Lost Valley" expansion.  Obviously based on prehistoric Venus figurines (especially the Willendorf Venus), she's surrounded by terracotta bowls filled with offerings.  I mounted her on a 3" round base and flocked with Gale Force 9 "Meadow Flock", leaving a bare patch in front where I imagine most supplicants would approach from. 

Next up is the Burrowing Behemoth, a hulking insect-like brute that I'm guessing is based on Dungeons & Dragons' iconic "Umber Hulk" monster.  I've seen some pretty garish color schemes done on this fellow online - including a vibrant purple-pink tone, but decided I wanted something a little more muted.  I decided to think about this monster as an ambush predator, something that sits motionless pretending to be a mossy boulder before striking; the underbelly and arms were done using Reaper's "Uniform Brown," highlighted with "Green Ochre," "Faded Khaki" and a final light brush of "Yellowed Bone." The back and shoulders were basecoated in Reaper's "Jungle Moss," and highlighted with successive drybrushings of "Highland Moss" and "Pale Lichen."

To break things up I basecoated the eyes with Vallejo Fire Orange, and then went over each eye with Vallejo Golden Yellow, leaving a little bit of orange visible around the rim of the eye.  Each eye was then glazed with a couple coats of GW Lamenter's Yellow.  Overall I'm super pleased with how he turned out; he'll be making appearances as an alien monster, post-apocalyptic horror or prehistoric nightmare from the Earth's core as needed in various Fistful of Lead games. 

Converted Cyclops

I'm really proud of this piece.  This began life as Reaper's "Kagunk, Ogre Chieftain" from their Bones line, which I decided to convert into a cyclops for use with Broken Legions or Dragon Rampant.

I shaved down the brows of Kagunk and filled in the eye sockets with Green Stuff before building up a central socket, bulging eye and heavy brow ridge.  I've never done any sort of sculpting like this before - the only things I've ever made out of Green Stuff before are stalagmites, which are pretty easy.

Kagunk painted up nicely: I really like the blue of the kilt and the leather straps came out especially.  His skin tone came out a little lighter than I'd originally intended; I had originally been trying for closer to James Earl Jones' complexion, since I do have a figure of Thulsa Doom to paint down the line, but the highlights kept coming out very chalky-looking, and I ended up having to go a shade lighter to smooth them out; this may have been down to the brush I was using or the broader expanse of muscle I was painting; the original combination might look better on a 28mm human figure than it does on this hulking slab of muscle.

The camera also makes this look lighter than it is.  I might go back and redo his eye - it's hard to tell here because of the shade of blue I used, but he does have a defined iris and pupil.  Redoing it with a lighter blue might look better and make this more noticeable.

All in all, I'm really happy with how he came out and I'm looking forward to seeing him in action on the tabletop.

Additions to my Frostgrave Bestiary

I just got a few figures finished, additions to my bestiary of Frostgrave monsters - specifically, a couple skeletons, some armored skeletons, and a Frost Giant (as represented by a Hill Giant, as I've wanted this specific figure since it was first released in metal, and I'm not super keen on any of the currently available Reaper Bones Frost Giants).  I apologize for the lousy lighting - I'm taking pictures in my kitchen (the backdrop is actually my refrigerator), and I think I need the early afternoon sun filtering in combined with the overhead lights to really bring out the colors of the figures.

very basic color scheme, since these are mooks that'll go down easy in a fight.

debating going back and adding a patina wash to the bronze armor on these guys.

can't be read from here, but I wrote some rude messages in runes on his armor.
His shoulder pad reads "SONS OF YMIR" and his belly plate is just plain vulgar.

I was originally going to do runic tattoos with a "viking biker gang" theme - LOVE and HATE
on his knuckles, for example, and SONS OF YMIR was originally going to be done across
his shoulders, but I was nervous about messing it up.

I'm really pleased with how this bunch came out, and I'm even more pleased to report I'm finally getting to play Frostgrave this week; my friend Tom bought a copy of the book from our FLGS and will be borrowing one of my warbands to test it out with.  I will be posting an after-action report Wednesday night or Thursday!

Paint Table Saturday: Aboleth finished

Finished my Reaper "Goroloth" (aka a D&D Aboleth) today; I sculpted a coral base to glue him to a couple days ago and painted that in a dark purple, added the basing grit, glued the big guy down and added a bit of foliage trimmed from an aquarium plant and given a heavy drybrush of citron green, to match to Deep Sea Divers I did during the  Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge at the end of last year/beginning of this year.  So now, in addition to a D&D monster, I've got a big fish to menace those two unlucky fellows!

Aboleth Progress

"Goroloth," excuse me.  It's an Aboleth to me!

I got a lot of progress in on this figure, not least by keeping the color scheme simple.  A deep turquoise body (basecoat of Reaper Deep Ocean, highlighted Marine Teal, final highlight Aqua Surf) with fleshy undersides to the tentacles (Dusty Rose Red, drybrushed Fair Highlight) and around the mouth, and bright orange membranes to the pectoral and pelvic fins (basecoat Phoenix Red, highlighted Fire Orange) - similar, though brighter, than the 3.5 edition illustration that is the default Aboleth in my mind.   There's still a little bit of work to be done on this figure - picking out the claws on the fins and some touch-up work mostly - and then I need to figure out what I want to do about a base for him.  I would love to not have to buy an entire bag of Games Workshop flying bases to have one to mount him on for a "swimming" display; I might sculpt some coral or a strange obelisk on to a base and prop him on top of that.

I also remembered to actually take step-by-step photos this time, so here we go!

The first round of body highlights - Reaper Marine Teal brushed over the Deep Ocean basecoat.

Second round of body highlights - Aqua Surf brushed lightly over, to pick up the detail.

Basecoat of Phoenix Red applied to the fins.

Dusty Rose Red applied to the tentacles and mouth.

Fins highlighted with Fire Orange.

Picked out the eyes (all 11 of them!) in Pale Green.

Detailing the mouth and suckers with Fair Highlight.

There's a chance I'll finish him today and be able to begin work on the base; I also treated myself at the game store last night (and I left the Aboleth on the table while I was gone to prove how well-behaved Atticus is!) and picked up Reaper's Jabberwock, from their Pathfinder miniatures line, as my next project.  I just need a beamish boy to oppose him...

Resuming Painting...

Atticus has been a very good boy lately about not jumping on the table or countertops, so I decided it was okay for me to start painting again.  I decided my first project would be a larger Bones figure I purchased an assembled a month or so back - a "Goroloth" by Reaper Miniatures' terminology, but a respectable stand-in for one of my favorite monsters from Dungeons & Dragons, the Aboleth.  The assembled figure is about 7 inches long.

Aboleths in D&D are giant, psychic, ancient fish who hate the gods (being old enough, and having a racial-memory stretching back far enough, to remember a time before the gods, when the Aboleths were the most powerful beings in the multiverse) and act as sinister manipulators from behind the scenes, using cults of surface-worlders and (in later editions) menacing fish-men called "Skum," to exert their will beyond their flooded cavern homes.  More grotesquely, the Aboleths produce a disgusting slime, exposure to which causes mutation in surface-worlders, robbing them of their ability to breathe out of water and making them reliant on the Aboleth to survive.  Even moreso than the more famous "Mind Flayers," the Aboleths are the big success at introducing a Lovecraftian entity in D&D.

They first appeared in 1st edition AD&D, in Module I1, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, released in 1981, and appeared in Monster Manual 2 shortly thereafter.  Truth be told, as much as I love the Aboleth, I haven't had an opportunity to use one as a DM yet.  This didn't stop me from buying the figure.

Here's the "Goroloth," fully assembled, and basecoated in Reaper "Deep Ocean."

The Modern Prometheus

Here's a Reaper Flesh Golem I recently finished, and as we all know, the Flesh Golems we've become familiar with thanks to decades of fantasy RPGs are literary descendants of the original creation of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, so you'll forgive me for going with that reference instead of the Monster Manual.  I gave him a snowy base to represent the alpine setting of much of the novel, as well as to make him suitable for use in Frostgrave.

Cthuesday: The Xotl'mi-go

Last week I alluded to T.E.D. Klein's ghastly humanoid horrors, the Xotl'mi-go, from the short story "The Children of the Kingdom," published in the 1980s in the collection Dark Gods.  I read the story years ago, having gotten the book for a dollar at a used book sale - would that I still had it! While much of the plot of the story has faded from my memory, much of the story's imagery, and of course the creatures themselves, remain fresh in my mind.  I decided it'd be worthwhile to devote this week's Cthuesday Creature entry to these grotesques.

The story is set during the New York City blackout of 1977, during which something like 36 blocks of Manhattan were ravaged by fire in under 24 hours, people basically going mad from the heat, the power outage, racial tensions and fears of the "Son of Sam" killer.  Klein took this all-too-human horror and wove a tale of inhuman horror amidst the looting and rioting.  The Xotl'migo, a race of pallid, near-blind, web-fingered humanoids, emerged from the sewers and sub-basements taking advantage of the darkness and chaos to pursue their unwholesome goals.

Much like the Deep Ones, the Xotl'mi-go are driven to perpetuate their race on humankind; mythology suggests that the Xotl'mi-go are a race of men that "God made wrong," and He cursed them with eyelessness and a complete lack of reproductive organs as punishment for their sins.  This lack of genitals has not stopped them from assaulting and trying to forcibly breed with human women, and they are indiscriminate - I recall from the story an infant and an elderly woman being assaulted.

Point blank, I'm going to say this: I'd leave the rape on the cutting room floor in any game I ran featuring the Xotl'mi-go.  I've got both men and women in my games right now, spanning a thirty-year age range, and we play in a public space.  There's no way I feel comfortable presenting the fact that these monsters are rapists at the table, no matter how "real" it makes the horror.  It doesn't have a place in my games.

Let's take a look at the stat block, updated to 7th Edition:

 STR= (2d6+8)x5 = 75
CON = (3d6+6)x5 = 80-85
SIZ = (2d6+6)x5 = 65
INT = (3d6)x5 = 50-55
POW = (3d6+3)x5 = 50
DEX = (3d6)x5 = 50-55
Move: 9
HP: 14-15
Av. Damage Bonus: +1d4
Build: +1
Attacks: 2 Claws, with a chance to bite if a victim is held.

Claws, 30%, dmg 1d6+DB
Bite, 25% if  victim is held, dmg 1d6

Armor: 1 point of rubbery skin
Spells: None, normally
Skills: Jump 55%, Listen 75%, Stealth 80%
Sanity Loss: 0/1d6 for seeing the Xotl'mi-go

While the Xotl'mi-go are not insanely heavy hitters, with these stats they can still be pretty nasty, especially given that they tend to be encountered in gangs of 2-10 individuals.  They're faster than the average man, and stronger as well, and with that 80% chance of being stealthy they're likely to be on a party of unsuspecting investigators faster than they can react.

So how do we want to use these creatures in an adventure? Rather than recycle the C.H.U.D. inspired scenario from last week, I'm going to draw from another horror film from the 80s and tie it into the blackout scenario from the original short story.

Psychiatrists at Oakhaven Sanitarium have been studying an unusual phenomenon - four patients, violent men kept away from the general patient population by electronic locks and armed guards, have begun to correlate their psychoses in an unprecedented fashion, forming a singular, shared obsession.

It began with Jack Cutter, a former POW who served in Vietnam.  He emerged from his captivity paranoid and insomniac, convinced of the existence of "creatures" - not men, but close, with grasping hands and tiny, burning eyes above a mouth like a fanged sphincter - that emerged from the jungle or the tunnels at night, lurching through villages in the darkness of the New Moon, looking for...something.  More than once, he says, inhuman faces were pressed against the bars of his cage, while boneless, rubbery white hands reached for him.  US Army Psychologists suggest that these were hallucinations brought on by the extreme mental strain of his captivity, dehumanizing his captors into loathsome monsters.

In Oakhaven, Cutter found confirmation in Fred "Preacher" Dobbs, a former minister and current pyromaniac who filled Cutter's mind with stories of lost tribes and races of men cursed by God for their sins, made monstrous and driven to the edges of civilization.  Cutter began to rationalize that the creatures he encountered were of such a tribe, while Dobbs found Cutter's stories to prove his own religious mania.

The two of them enlisted Reggie "Lennie" Bruster, a giant of a man judged not guilty of child-murder due to his own simplistic mental state, and Jimmy "Ferret" Skaggs, a rat-faced little man with some fairly antisocial compulsive tendencies and a long history of violence towards women.  Cutter became convinced that Lennie and Ferret were on the verge of being cursed by God to become the creatures he saw, and concluded that he and Preacher had been placed with these men to save them.  The fact that Ferret, in his old job with the sanitation department, claimed to have once seen the hastily-disposed of, waterlogged corpse of a similar creature fished out of the sewer, cemented his usefulness to Cutter.

The four became convinced that they were the only ones who knew for certain of the creatures' existence, and decided that God had ordained them to burn these creatures out of wherever they'd found refuge from the harsh light of day.

When a blackout disables the electronic locks to their cells, the four realize that now is their chance, and set off for nearby New York City, intent on cleansing the Big Apple of the worms at its core.  In hot pursuit are a team of psychiatrists, orderlies and security guards (i.e., the Investigators), eager to return the four madmen to the safety of their cells before they can burn down half the city in their hunt for these imagined "monsters."  But are they so imaginary...?

This scenario takes its set up from my absolute favorite under-known 1980s horror film, 1982's ALONE IN THE DARK, from writer/director Jack Sholder, starring Jack Palance, Walter Matthau and Donald Pleasence.  Using it here, I've made the focus on pursuing the human monsters, which if handled well will lull players into a false sense of security, letting them think that this is a "red herring" sort of scenario where there are no Mythos elements - then BAM, a webbed, slimy hand emerges from the shadows and clamps over an investigator's mouth, dragging them backwards with their friends none the wiser.  Of course, then we have the moral quandary - what do the players do when they realize the lunatics are *right*?

Cthuesday: the Miri Nigri

It seems like Cthuesday comes around faster every week.  This week we've got something a little bit further off the beaten path, unlike most of what we've covered so far, I'm actually unfamiliar with the source material for the Miri Nigri - I've yet to get a hold of and read a copy of Frank Belknap Long's The Horror from the Hills.  So my only familiarity with the Miri Nigri is the entry in the Malleus Monstrorum.

So these are a race of small, ugly humanoids created by the Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn from toads, to serve him and his offspring.  They look human except for their toad-like faces, cannot speak and exist solely to fulfill the will of Chaugnar Faugn, spending much of their time crawling over their god's inert form (picking off parasites, perhaps?).  They are generally encountered in groups of ten or more.

Not having a lot to go on here, I think I have a lot more leeway to make these creatures my own.  First, the stats:

Miri Nigri, Strange Dark Dwarves
STR = (2d6)x5 = 35
CON = (3d6)x5 = 50-55
SIZ = (1d4+4)x5 = 30-35
INT = (2d6)x5 = 35
POW = (3d6)x5 = 50-55
DEX = (3d6+6)x5 = 80-85
APP = (1d6)x5 = 15-20
Move: 8
HP: 8-9
Av. Damage Bonus: -1
Build: -1
Attacks: 1 claw attack per round.

Fighting 35%, damage 1d3+DB

Armor: none
Spells: none
Skills: Stealth 90%, Swim 75%
Sanity Loss: 0/1d2 to see the Miri Nigri

So what do we do with these strange, dark dwarves? Well, how many horror movies have you seen?

Specifically, I'm thinking of some of the early work of Canadian director David Cronenberg, in my opinion the indisputable master of body-horror.  The first thing that came to mind when I read about these weird, sexless, alien dwarves was Cronenberg's film THE BROOD, in which a woman undergoing an unusual psychiatric treatment manifests her rage as grotesque "children" that kill at her command.  The similarities are striking; she is effectively imprisoned in her therapist's office, leaving these dwarves to serve as her hands in the world, much like with Chaugnar Faugn and the Miri Nigri.

The Miri Nigri are referenced in The Malleus Monstrorum as abducting blood sacrifices for the vampiric Chaugnar Faugn.  I love this imagery, of them descending the mountain to remote villages and carrying off young men and women in total silence.  If you wanted to tie this in to Cronenberg's RABID, for example, I'd give the Miri Nigri a blood drain ability similar to a vampire's - they do the actual drinking of the blood, which Chaugnar Faugn "feeds" on vicariously - via a tentacular trunk, similar to Chaugnar Faugn's, that emerges from a concealed pouch on the body.

So let's put these in an adventure, and I'm going to continue the '70s-'80s horror movie theme.

The Investigators get involved when a homeless man turns up, torn to shreds.  Investigating reveals he was one of the city's "mole people," homeless people who had colonized abandoned subway stations and forgotten sub-basements to make living spaces for themselves, away from the eyes of the law.  Getting down there to speak with them will prove difficult as they are elusive and wary, but communicating with them can earn the investigators word of "those little guys," silent, child-sized figures in bulky clothing that are occasionally glimpsed in the distance but never up close.  They've become an urban legend to the already-legendary mole people, a sort of boogey man; whenever one of their own goes missing, well, "those little guys" must have taken them.

Exploring the city's underworld turns up recurring images scrawled and scratched on walls of Ganesha-like figures accompanied by script in no recognizable language.

The second phase is introduced as the mole people begin to arm themselves; lead pipes, fireplace pokers, anything they can swing like a club gets picked up and carried with them; one of them is caught trying to steal a police officer's pistol, claiming he needed to be able to defend himself against "those little guys." Interrogation reveals that those little guys have been coming closer, lingering longer around human settlements in the underworld.  They never speak, but the mole people pick up..."ideas," for lack of a better term, when those little guys are around.  The ideas are infectious.

First, a mole person begins drawing "the elephant headed fella" and writing the strange runes.  Then they start talking about how the elephant headed fella is the oldest god, the First God, the god that doesn't forget his children and leave them to go homeless and hungry.  They stop blinking so much.  Their bodies hunch and dwindle, their hair falling out.  They stop speaking.  Then eventually, they just slink away into the darkness to join their new family...only coming back to find food for the elephant headed fella.

So that's kind of a blend of THE BROOD, RABID and the 1980s cheeseball classic C.H.U.D., with the Miri Nigri taking the place of the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.  Just about any good Deep One-focused adventure could probably be adapted to use the Miri Nigri as well, while the adventure outlined above would also work with the sinister Xotl'mi-go from T.E.D. Klein's "Children of the Kingdom."

That's it for this week, readers.  I'm running a session at my local gaming store tonight, test-driving a new scenario I've written.  I'll hopefully have the write-up posted Friday.

Cthuesday: Desh, Greater and Lesser

Apologies for the lack of Cthuesday post last week, readers, I spent the weekend in Cleveland at the Cinema Wasteland Movie and Memorabilia Expo with friends, and just didn't have the time or energy to produce content here when I got back.  So this week I'll give you a two-fer, and cover both varieties of Desh, an interdimensional creature that originally appeared in the adventure "The Dark Wood," in Adventures in Arkham County.

Appearing as long, tadpole-like creatures, both varieties of Desh are native to a coterminous dimension that overlaps but does not intersect our own, much like the Terrors from Beyond.  Unlike the Terrors, the Desh are not accessible through the use of an Ultraviolet Projector - Desh come into our dimension when summoned by specific spells known to the Hyperboreans.  When cast, the spell uses the human neural network to draw Desh into our dimension; the process is painful but not otherwise harmful with Lesser Desh, but tends to prove fatal with the Greater Desh, who explode out of a subject's skull, leaving a star-shaped hole behind.  Intriguingly, the Greater Desh's skin flickers with images drawn from the memories of the individual through whose brain it was summoned.

Lesser Desh seem to have only the most tenuous grasp on our reality when summoned; they tend to "unravel" within 1d3 days, and are ineffectual in combat.  They may be of the most use to the Keeper as "warnings" to investigators - signs that their investigation is proceeding in the right direction, and that if they keep going they'll encounter much worse.  Alternately, swarm the PCs with them! They won't take any physical damage (unless the Lesser Desh use their grab and trip ability near a flight of stairs or a cliff, heh heh!) but the feeling of dozens of cold, wriggling alien bodies slithering over and around them is good for some SAN loss for sure.

Lesser Desh
STR = (2d6+1)x5 = 40
CON = 1d6x5 = 15-20
SIZ = 1d6x5 = 15-20
INT = 1d4x5 = 10-15
POW = 1d3x5 = 10
DEX = (3d6+1)x5 = 55-60
Move: 6
HP: 3-4
Av. Damage Bonus:N/A
Build: -2
Attacks: 1 Trip

Grab and Trip 35%, dmg N/A (target must make a Hard DEX roll or fall prone)

Armor: none
Spells: none
SAN: 0/1d3 to see a Lesser Desh

Greater Desh are another story.  They are fast, they are mean, and they can chew your face off.  With a movement value of 30, there's simply no such thing as outrunning them.  They're even likely to have spells, albeit possibly with strange effects in this dimension, which is a double-whammy.  The luck required in killing them is a triple whammy.

Greater Desh
STR = (4d6+3)x5 = 85
CON = 3d6x5 = 50-55
SIZ = 2d6x5 = 35
INT = 2d6x5 = 35
POW = (3d6+2)x5 = 60-65
DEX = (6d6+1)x5 = 110
Move: 30
HP: 3-4
Av. Damage Bonus:N/A
Build: 0
Attacks: Greater Desh Grab and Hold their targets to restrain them for a Bite attack.

Grab (Maneuver) 45%, target is restrained and a Bite attack hits automatically.
Bite 55%, dmg 1d10

Armor: none, however Greater Desh do not take damage normally.  On a successful attack against a Greater Desh, the damage is rolled then multipled by five, giving a percentage chance that the creature is destroyed outright by the attack, dissipating from our dimension in a star-shaped burst of light.
Spells: keeper's choice, likely with very bizarre effects in this dimension
SAN: 1/1d4+1 to see a Greater Desh

So what do we do with these creatures in an adventure? I think a good starting point is their
connection to the Hyperboreans, the prehistoric magic-using people of Greenland in the fiction of Clark Ashton Smith and others.  The adventure "The Dark Wood" has an artifact that can be used to summon the Desh, an item that, while not mass-produced, was likely not a one of a kind deal, but, like a Hand of Glory, was created by wizards as needed, and as such would be a useful tool to use in creating adventures.

For example, in a Gaslight or Classic scenario, an expansion of the London Underground might unearth buried Hyperborean ruins - a crypt or, perhaps, a wizard's laboratories.  Hyperborean runes look enough like Elder Futhark at a glance to be mistaken for Viking, and archaeologists descend on the site.  One of them determines that he's looking at relics of an entirely unrecorded civilization, and becomes obsessed with the site, with unlocking its secrets, to make himself famous.  He interprets bas-reliefs of humans "communing" with this bejeweled skull as a form of ancestor worship, and when he finds the skull in a sealed lead box, he can't help but pick it up and touch the gems...activating it.

For a more scientific take on the Desh, I'd tie them in with altered states of consciousness - either on the cusp between waking and dreaming (maybe connecting them to the terrifying experience known as "sleep paralysis") or from hallucinogenic drug use - in which case, could the Desh be the "Self Transforming Machine Elves" associated with DMT usage?

To borrow an idea from an old episode of "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," maybe the subconscious mind of a coma patient has made contact with the Desh-Dimension, and during REM cycles he begins to "leak" Lesser Desh into the facility.  Perhaps at first the Lesser Desh try to swim out into the world to contact his family members with messages (flickering across their quicksilver-like skin) from his trapped personality, or harass people he held grudges against.  Soon these tadpole-like creatures begin to emerge from the heads of those he's "contacted" in this way.  What happens when a Greater Desh follows its lesser brethren into our world?

In the latter case, if we're using DMT/REM Desh, I'd give the Greater Desh access to a lot of the perception-altering spells - things like "Consume Likeness" and (a personal favorite of mine) "Curse of the Putrid Husk." Spells like "Gate" would be completely apropos as well, and I might throw in some nasty stuff with a memetic or genetic memory bent to it, like "Dread Curse of Azathoth" or "Red Sign of Shudde-M'ell" (for more on memetic horror ideas, check out Ken Hite's "The Madness Dossier"!)

I think that'll be it from me for this installment.  Next Tuesday I'm running another one-shot at Just Games Rochester, and I'll have a fresh installment of Cthuesday for you all as well.

Cthuesday: Inhabitants of L'gy'hx

In the fiction of Ramsey Campbell, the L'gy'hxians are squat, cube-shaped creatures of living metal, native to the planet Uranus.  They briefly played host to the Insects of Shaggai following the destruction of their homeworld, but ultimately drove the Insects off-world as a response to their religious rites.  Some L'gy'hxians may have come to Earth with the Insects, possibly as slaves.

I'm kind of surprised at how many times I've seen these creatures pop up in scenarios, given the fact that they're metallic cube-creatures from Uranus.  They appear in the adventure "Death by Misadventure" in the book Terrors from Beyond, in which they are missionaries looking to spread the worship of their bat-like god Lhrogg.  One also appears in the MULA monograph "The Big Book of Cults," associated with an unscrupulous plastic surgery clinic.  I feel like I've seen a third appearance, but I'm not recalling it right now.

So right away we have an interesting dichotomy for these creatures: religious fanatics or consummate scientists? Either way, they don't want anything to do with Azathoth, at least in the form that the Insects from Shaggai worship it, which seems wholly reasonable from both angles - both as a competing religion and as "they're worshiping an atomic explosion.  Maybe we don't want that in our backyard."

Let's take a look at the stats before we go any further:

STR = (6d6)x5 = 105
CON = (3d6+6)x5 = 82
SIZ = (2d6+10)x5 = 85
INT = (2d6+10)x5 = 85
POW = (3d6)x5 = 52
DEX = (2d6+3)x5 = 50
Move:  8
HP: 16-17
Av. Damage Bonus: +1d6
Build: +2
Attacks: 1 attack using an alien weapon (most commonly a thin slashing blade capable of cutting through metal as readily as flesh, or an electrical whip).  Other weapons are possible, even likely.

Fighting 30%, dmg 1d8+DB (knife) or 1d4+2d10 electrical damage (whip; on an Extreme success, the whip wraps around the target, dealing an automatic 2d10 electrical damage each round thereafter until the target is killed or manages to escape the coil)

Armor: 19 points of metallic "skin."

Spells: On a successful Extreme Intelligence roll, the L'gy'hxian knows as many spells as the number shown on the dice. One of these will always be Contact Lhrogg.

Skills: Electrical Repair 50%, Mechanical Repair 50%

Sanity Loss:0/1d8 to see a L'gy'hxian.

So what do we do with the Inhabitants of L'gy'hx? Well, let's take a look back at that dichotomy I mentioned earlier.  The L'gy'hxians have strong religious beliefs and advanced technology; as noted in the Malleus Monstrorum, they're not necessarily hostile, but they are curious.  

To that end, I'd equip them with spells that tie into these ideas of proselytizing and exploring.  Gate spells are going to be the big one, because this lets you bring the L'gy'hxians to Earth without relying on the Insects.  Spells like Mind Transfer would allow them to wander undetected among humanity, observing and studying, Suggestion lets them plant the seeds of L'gy'hxian ideas into human minds, making people more tractable for the purposes of conversion - either spiritual or physical.  

Another point I'd like to make here is - look at the literature of the UFO world, especially cattle mutilations, abductions and the various Contactee movements that have sprung up here and there since the 1950s.  People tend to only associate flying saucer lore with the Mi-Go, but I think it offers a lot of good, gameable ideas that can be used with any aliens.  The Malleus Monstrorum uses an altered image of Ezekiel's Vision as the image associated with the L'gy'hxians, and the description of "wheels within wheels" described in the Bible is often cited as evidence of a UFO encounter in the Bronze Age Mediterranean by ancient astronaut proponents.  

Here's a quickly-sketched out idea for a scenario that would play off the UFO ideas as well as the religious/scientific dichotomy mentioned earlier:

A ranch in an obscure corner of Utah begins experiencing a series of cattle mutilations over a series of weeks; the cows having been literally taken apart, the pieces neatly arranged around the main part of the carcasses.  The owners of the ranch begin reporting strange lights and nocturnal encounters - noises on the porch or the roof, like something heavy moving around slowly.  UFO investigators begin to investigate the area, interviewing the owners, setting up motion cameras, etc.  

Cuboid being by Michael Bukowski
(Yog-Blogsoth)

Then the owners of the ranch begin claiming to have been contacted by aliens, having been given a message of "perfect peace" to deliver to the world.  The aliens are spiritually superior to Mankind, and are willing to serve as Messiahs to lift us out of our current benighted state.  The ranch metamorphoses into a church, preaching the message of salvation via alien intervention.  The aliens' god, an angelic creature of wings and eyes, is praised and venerated.  The church attracts converts and devotees the way any new religious movement does, drawing in the lonely, the forgotten, the ill and desperate.  

There's an undercurrent to the message, only given to those who have served the church faithfully and done their part to spread the teachings of Lhrogg.  For the chosen, there is a special heaven that awaits - they will be whisked off to the aliens' homeworld, to dwell in beauty and wonder forever.  

The ranchers-turned-preachers are no longer human; their bodies have been taken by L'gy'hxians, their minds consigned to a slow death inside the alien metal bodies of these invaders, kept securely locked in the storm cellar under the ranch, slowly asphyxiating in the thin, oxygen-rich atmosphere of Earth.  Whether they are looking for converts to take to L'gy'hx as slaves (surgically altered and mechanically augmented to survive the pressures and atmosphere of Uranus) or to Uraniform Earth into a colony world for their own kind to inhabit I leave to other Keepers.  

Cthuesday: The Scions of Tsathoggua

Thusfar, Cthuesday has focused on entities that investigators can overcome with brute force and a bit of luck.  I think it's time for a change; there are plenty of monsters in Call of Cthulhu that require a great deal of smarts and specialized tools (i.e., magic) to overcome, and are best dealt with via a good set of running shoes.  One of my favorites, despite its association here with Clark Ashton Smith's toad-god Tsathogua, is a creation of Robert E. Howard, a man best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales.  Never named in the stories but dubbed the "Scions of Tsathoggua" by Chaosium, these giggling, elephantine beasts are also associated with the toadlike entities Gol-Goroth and Ossadagowah, both entities being speculatively identified as an elder member of the species in the Malleus Monstrorum.

I like the nebulosity this creates; if the investigators are going up against a cult of Gol-Goroth, are they going to ultimately be fighting against the Great Old One, or a Scion misidentified by its worshipers as Gol-Goroth? It makes a big difference and can keep the players on their toes.

The story most strongly associated with the Scions of Tsathoggua is "The Thing on the Roof," in which a Scion follows an adventurer home to retrieve a stolen amulet from an ancient temple.  According to Von Junzt, author of Nameless Cults, the Scion is both the treasure and the god of the ancient temple, furthering the association of these creatures accepting worship on their sire's behalf or being flat-out misidentified as gods themselves.  Personally, and I say this as no dedicated Howard scholar, I identify the creature that appears in "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" as another Scion.  A slightly more controversial, perhaps, identification on my part is to identify Thog, the entity that Conan slays, or at least banishes, in the story "Xuthal of the Dusk" (aka "The Slithering Shadow") as a Scion of Tsathoggua as well.  There is precious little in the story to differentiate Thog from the temple guardians in the other two stories, so I see no reason not to treat them as members of the same species.

The description given in "The Thing on the Roof" is amazing, telling us everything we need to know while also telling us precious little of concrete substance - only hints and insinuations, as is best for Call of Cthulhu:

"Gathering my shattered nerves, I broke down the door. A foul and overpowering stench billowed out like a yellow mist. Gasping in nausea I entered. The room was in ruins, but nothing was missing except that crimson toad-carved jewel Tussmann called the Key, and that was never found. A foul, unspeakable slime smeared the windowsill, and in the center of the room lay Tussmann, his head crushed and flattened; and on the red ruin of skull and face, the plain print of an enormous hoof."

Let's see what these stats would look like in 7th edition:

STR = (6d6+34)x5 = 275
CON = (3d6+6)x5 = 82
SIZ = (6d6+42)x5 = 315
INT = (2d6+6)x5 = 65
POW = (3d6+6)x5 = 82
DEX = (3d6)x5 = 52
Move: 7/10 Flying
HP: 39-40
Av. Damage Bonus: +6d6
Attacks: 2d6 tentacles OR 1 bite OR 1 trample

Fighting 45%, dmg 1d6 (bite), 1/2 damage bonus (tentacle) or 2d10+DB (trample)

Armor: because of the mucus-like makeup of their bodies, Scions of Tsathoggua suffer minimum possible damage from physical, non-enchanted weapons.  Fire, chemicals, electricity and spells and enchanted weapons harm them normally

Spells: all know Contact Tsathoggua, Call Ossadagowah and Contact Formless Spawn spells.  These entities may know 1d6 other spells as well if an Extreme INT roll is made on 1d100.

Sanity Loss: 1d2/1d10 Sanity Points to see a Scion of Tsathoggua.

So now what do we do with one of these? They've got a strong association with being the guardians of sacred sites and the avengers of slights to the Toad God, which I think is a good starting point for pulpy, globe-trotting adventure scenarios, but what if we want something a little darker?

Maybe for a modern (or, I suppose, a classic) era scenario, one of these creatures takes up residence in the sub-basements of a major museum; a globe-trotting adventurer 80 years ago brought home an idol he shouldn't have, the Scion showed up, killed the adventurer -- but decided that leaving the idol here could allow for the formation of a new and revitalized cult.  It has made itself comfortable in a sub-basement among the dusty crates of past expeditions and has begun to call out to the minds of men, summoning the weak-willed to serve it.

First, a janitor or two.  Just as a warm up.  Nobody notices much when these guys start spending their lunches down there, and working extra late.  Then a security guard.  Presented with a living god, driven mad by its presence, what is there to do but to serve? Now the cult has a little muscle; a man with a gun can sometimes accomplish what an alien monster cannot.  One by one, the museum service crew and security are taken under the Scion's guidance before setting sight on the curators and scientists working upstairs.

Eventually, there's a Mistake.  Someone goes mad and flees gibbering from the scene.  They manage to make it up into the museum proper before the cult can stop them.  The madman is seen before they can be dealt with.  This is messy; the cult moves to start covering up the escape.  The madman was working too hard, had a nervous breakdown, they start to say.  If there's a police investigation, they try to deflect it away from where the Scion is hiding, or separate the cops and bring only one at a time into the Scion's presence.  After all, members of law enforcement would be handy for the cult to control.

And then there are those pesky Investigators who start poking around...