The Disoriented Ranger: Mean Monsters (Halloween Edition)

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Mean Monsters (Halloween Edition)

Faceless Spectre (aka The-Girl-You-Only-See-From-Behind)

This encounter could be considered a trap and a mystery. Nobody knows were these dark spirits come from or why they show themselves. Maybe their souls are trapped in a painting, maybe something forced them to see the abyss. Maybe they need help. All this is of secondary importance, because most of all it should scare the players shitless.

This poor little thing needs help...

What happens:

In this case I'd go for a little girl as Faceless Spectre. Stats are not needed* and you can place this encounter whenever you have an empty room conundrum (in a dungeon, an abbandoned house, you know the drill).

Let the girl appear behind the players, just out of melee weapons range and right after they think the room is empty and/or safe. She's uncomfortably close. Obviously alone in the ruins of your choice. She looks like a normal (that is: solid) 10 year old girl with black hair and a white dress. She is turning her back to them and not moving.

They don't even see a glimpse of her face and she won't do anything but appearing out of nowhere and standing there (it is important to emphasize this).

Talking to her will produce no reaction at all. If they ignore her, nothing will happen. If they attack her, she will disappear (but will come back...). If they try to look at her face? Well, that way is madness. It won't happen easily (she moves to avoid this), but if forced or tricked any player trying gets a glimpse at true evil/hell/the abyss. But don't describe anything, just the reaction. If a save versus death works, the characters hair turns white and he will never tell what he saw. If the save fails, you get to roll 1D12 (see below).

If they try to turn her, she will face the group.

Unprepared this could be a very cruel encounter, so ideally the group should find either some results of the table below, a picture of the girl (same clothes , a nice portrait, but a sinister touch to it) or hear some rumors about her.

If an explanation is needed, I'd go for an evil wizard that trapped her soul in a picture for some sinister reason or another (present for a demon; a sequence of 13 pictures like this to achieve immortality; the daughter of a king, doomed forever to see unimaginable evil; you name it...).

Helping this poor soul should be rewarded accordingly.

D12 for looking at her face (and failing the save) you will:

...scratch your eyes out.
...attack your group as brutal as possible.
...go to the next wall and face it till you starved to death.
...be possesed by a demon! go from there...
...die screaming, eyes wide open and with bloody tears.
...kill the next random innocent stranger in public, you won't remember the incident, anybody around you will.
...go to the next stony surface and scratch again and again "I'm sorry" on it, use your fingers, out of fingers, use the stumps, you can't stop.
...commit suicide as soon as convenient.
...run away, when nobody sees you, you'll turn into a Faceless Spectre.
...wake up on a graveyard the next morning (and this will happen often...), all dirty, embracing a freshly unearthed corpse.
...never sleep again, literally, never.
...see and understand, your INT drops to 2, WIS is raised to 18, permanently.