Need weird, creepy animal ideas

[Dog Moon]

Okay, so in my campaign, chaos has been set loose into the city. Sort of like raw, chaos energy. Well, the chaos is changing the citizens of the world, but it is especially changing the animals within the city. So what I'm looking for is mainly descriptions of the weirdest, creepiest animals [or people, if you prefer; people are fine too] you've ever read about or imagine in your own head.

This can be something as simple as two-headed rats but each head has only one eye or very descriptive, which I have trouble with, which is why I need your help.

Hopefully, they should be similar enough to the base creature only so that they can identify it to recognize what it is that they're fighting and how it isn't merely a monster, but a horrible change due to the chaos energy.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

This is not wildly creative since it already exists, but I personally find undead rat swarms to be extremely skin-tingly in a non-pleasing way.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Those, and 800-lb dire maggots really wig me out.

<--needs a shiver smiley. Cause I'm shivering.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Lets see;

chromatic/prismatic mice
non-undead animated skeletons (treat them as constructsor as an [animated] object)
far-realm infusions
spriggan animals (can grow a size category or two larger at will)
animated stuffed animals with an uncanny resemblance to real animals

I'll try to think of some other stuff.

EDIT: Fantastic Idea^TM: People are changed into Moreaus (D20 Modern, pg. 247)
Verminoids (Advanced Bestiary, pg. 248)
Uplifted animals (Manimals; Advanced Bestiary, pg. 167)

 

[Heckler]

Creepiest thing I've seen around here was the swarm (or mob?) of undead babies.

:shudder:

 

[NealTS]

There's nothing like non-useful mutations to drive home the wrongness of the situation to the players. Like the dog that's just a writhing mass of fur and teeth, with misshapen limbs sticking out at bizarre angles. All it's able to do is drool and whimper pitifully. Of course it's not a challenge, but it might be worth some token role-playing xp for a swift mercy-killing.

In terms of the less sympathetic and more scary, I still think there should be a handicap to it. If the animals are just bigger, faster, and stronger, that's not really chaos. That's just levelling up. The skin-dude from Pan's Labrynth comes immediately to mind. He wasn't just a big old monster. His difficult gait and inconvenient method of seeing made him weaker than he could have been, but all the scarier for it.

Maybe something like birds of prey with jagged, stabbing bills but with one wing larger than the other, pulling them always to the side in flight. This results in them attacking by swooping around you in awkward circles as the wind whistles through the odd cracks in their beaks.

Or a centaur-like creature that results from a knight being fused with his horse. His legs are gone, his torso juts out of the middle of his mount's back. The horse, mad from constant pain, pays no heed to its 'rider,' except to occasionally roll over and attempt to rid itself of him. The man is battered and broken, and, due to the horse's refusal to bring him within arm's reach of a decent meal, ravenously hungry. So you have a wild horse with arms that will attempt to grapple and eat any source of meat that draws too near.

*shrug* Just some ideas.

 

[awayfarer]

"A bull sits not far away from the party, making a lot of noise as it eats from an overturned garbage can. It turns its head (still chewing) as you approach. A rats tail hangs from its drooling jaw."

Any herbivore thats eating meat is automatically creepy. This is particularly true if they're a little out of place but nothing else seems to be wrong with them

 

[Rechan]

Extremely Intelligent Animals. Like a gathering of horses with their heads bowed before a statue of a man riding a horse, clearly showing religious reverence - possibly with trampled sacrifices at the base of the statue. This is especially true if they're doing overly human things, but not quite right. Like having a tea party, wearing clothes, but they're chewing on the furniture and mating on the tables. Or squirrels bartering fingerbones to ravens in exchange for eyeballs. Simple like mice playing chess.

Animals that are fused together. Like three or four squirrels clumped together, and they still haven't managed to get the same locomotion down so they try to go in different directions.

Vestigal parts. Like a single wing that does nothing, or an extra pair of legs that just hang there.

Springheeled animals; they literally leap twenty feet, bounce off walls, etc.

Birds. Lots and lots of Birds. And they're all quiet, and watching the PCs very, very intently. Especially with the third eye firmly in their chests/stomachs.

 

[Old Drew Id]

You could just about come up with a list of animal features and then just roll randomly to add them to other animals, and most of the stuff would be either creepy or silly. Remove the silly stuff and you would have a good list. For instance:

whip-like tongue (like a frog)
beak
vomits to digest food (like a fly)
wall-crawling ability
distended jaw
pulsating egg-sac ready to burst
a LOT of extra limbs (like a centipede)
chelicerae (like a spider's mouth)
insect eyes
excessive teeth

Fur and claws are less creepy when added to animals that do not start with these features, but tentacles, wrinkled human-like skin, eyeballs, visible veins, and tongues tend to be creepy when added to animals that do not start with these features. Maybe making an animal more mammalian just is less creepy than going in the other direction.

Sound is also important. Replace normal sounds with foreign sounds, like chittering, laughter, wheezing, or moaning/whimpering.

As mentioned above, weaknesses can make something creepy. Good weakness include:

tremors
bleeding, oozing, drooling, or other excessive liquid-generation
loss of balance
slow movement or complete loss of mobility (even planted into the ground)
asymmetry, particularly of the face (if it has one eye, for instance, put that eye off to one side, not in the center. same for the mouth.)
self-injury, like fangs that are so long that the creature's lips are ripped to shreds

and just one specific idea that came to me:
rat-sized flying leeches with cockroach wings (basically stirge rules, but played up for the eeeew factor)

 

[InVinoVeritas]

NealTS's and Old Drew ID's ideas above are excellent. An animal or person with some debilitating deformity is inherently creepy to us. Partly because of the uncanny valley, and partly because it's an instinctive trait to avoid anything that seems diseased. If the deformity does not apparently adversely affect the health of the creature, it's no longer as scary. The OP's two headed rat is scary because neither head is perfect; both are less valuable than a full head. Thus, the rat is worse off--diseased. And if it's diseased, it might be catching.

Silent Hill takes that idea and runs with it. It's why most of the creatures look like grossly deformed and less capable people. It suggests that we could end up like the monster.

Some quick ideas:

An animal with no apparent head.
Replace an animal's back legs with a pair of worm-like tentacles that just drag on the ground.
An animal's limbs are attached to its body only by a section of loose, boneless tissue, so that the limbs have to support the body's weight as if on a stretcher.