Another quick question.
In Gazetteer II, when detailing Delagia, "S" tell us about the monster in the water.
What do you think it is?
I was thinking about something like...
- An elasmosaurus?
- A FIENDISH elsmosaurus?
- A very young styx dragon (from the Draconomicon) caught inside Ravenloft in the wake of the Great Conjunction?
- A second avanc, tied to a bloody story in the peaceful fishing village?
Do you have any more ideas? Any suggestion?
I coloni rovinavano la foresta costruendo il capolavoro dell'uomo civilizzato: il deserto.
- Luis Sepúlveda
if you have ever seen a movie called creepshow 2 or read The Raft by Steven King a cool Loveraftian monster could be used. Its kind of like a advanced ooze that slides just under the surface of the water and can only attack/consume things that are touching the water(ie. a boat without leaks is safe). it could keep your players guessing for weeks. Many missing people and a shortage of fish. and no evidence(ie. bodies dissolved).
I would suggest a Fiend. Wassirlith or something like that. Maybe banished from its plane, because of a lost battle or some severe injury in the Blood War. ( this way you tone down its power)...
Its kind of like a advanced ooze that slides just under the surface of the water and can only attack/consume things that are touching the water
Honestly, it would be quite a challenge.
In spite of all my efforts, my players were NEVER afraid of oozes... Even if they were about to be dissolved.
Wassirlith or something like that
It was in the Fiend Folio, right?
Wasn't it quite powerful (and intelligent)? Why should it be attacking random swimmers and eating fish?
For all I remember it was CR 16+... He could even be a challenge for Azalin!
I coloni rovinavano la foresta costruendo il capolavoro dell'uomo civilizzato: il deserto.
- Luis Sepúlveda
It was in the Fiend Folio, right?
Wasn't it quite powerful (and intelligent)? Why should it be attacking random swimmers and eating fish?
For all I remember it was CR 16+... He could even be a challenge for Azalin!
Yup, it's in the Fiend Folio. Page 54, to be exact. And it's CR 17. As for why it's just swimming around eating fish, I suppose one way to explain it is by making it insane. Perhaps a botched summoning or a transpossession with a lunatic? Another good critter from that book is the sea drake (page 147). It's a very classic serpentine sea monster which could work well. You'd have to make it evil and perhaps remove some HD, and you have the intelligence problem with this one too, but I think something this traditional could work well.
Other possibilities from that book could be an ahuizotl (page 14), a flotsam or reekmurk ooze (pages 17 and 18, respectively), a kelpie (page 114), or a terlen (page 174).
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream
Who's to say there's only *one* monster...? There could be something in the lake that's intelligent (evil water-fey? human transformed to slimy horror by a curse and/or failed Powers checks? bizarre new lycanthrope?) and has supernatural control over the lake's unintelligent inhabitants. If you did it right, you could keep the players guessing for ages what's down there, as each witness report or killing would provide contradictory clues (because different creatures would be responsible). Even mundane fishes and so on could become a threat, in the end, as the controlling monster sics them on the PCs in massive swarms to defend itself.
If you realy want to mix it up and throw something unexpected at your players have it be nothing sinister at all. The lake is over serveral large limestone caverns filled with naturaly occuring halucinigenic gasses.
Every so offten one of these caverns colapeses releasing a huge bubble of gas. The bubble is large enough to capsise any boat smaller then a sailboat and isably shake any others. Once the gas reaches the serface all those who breath it have horrable visions of monsters and the like even to the point of attacking and killing other crew members. As these visions seem quite real the servivors have spread legends of a huge lake monster that capsizes boats and feeds the crew to its manfish children.
"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
Anais Nin
I even thought of a TENTACLE of a really huge monster with a tentacle in every major bodies of water of Darkon...
Another good critter from that book is the sea drake (page 147).
Hmmm... Again, that would be a LAKE drake...
If you realy want to mix it up and throw something unexpected at your players have it be nothing sinister at all. The lake is over serveral large limestone caverns filled with naturaly occuring halucinigenic gasses.
This is something REALLY good!
...
...
But to add some spice, imagine that, after the PC do the SOMETHING-THAT-STOPS-THE-GASSES, they accidentally wake up the REAL monster...
I coloni rovinavano la foresta costruendo il capolavoro dell'uomo civilizzato: il deserto.
- Luis Sepúlveda
