What do you find in a city of aberrations?

[shilsen]

I THINK you mean David Bowie.

No, the inventor of the Bowie knife, as a mind flayer. Even more creepy.

As for other creatures, how about incorporeal things that have no ability to affect the real world- they are used to scare the locals without knocking down the city and as watchdogs. When the daelkyr is threatened, it snaps its fingers and they all become corporeal.

Nice idea. I think I'll tie that into the idea of parts of the city being sentient. What better way to have a city full of guards than have the city actually be one of the guards?

 

[shilsen]

I agree about the Lovecraftiain approach. Anything with slimes, tentacles, eyestalks and non-euclidian geometry should work well.

Just thought of something. WotC released a few aspects of various demon lords as a web enhancement, which included ones for Juiblex and Zuggtmoy. Since those are about CR 7-10, I could just use them with a little modification.

As far as monsters, if you're a monster manual fan (like me) have you thought about cracking open all your books and just tagging every "abberation" entry? You'll end up with a hundred cool monsters that will have story-material written all over them. You could have an entire section of the city populated by just one kind of abberation, and work in thematically why that is.

I'm actually not that big on monster books, but I do have MM2 and 3 on me right now, so I have been doing exactly that. There are some very interesting options in there and, as you said, they practically write story material for you.

An old adventure i ran once had a man they found dead in an alley. Wrapped around his wrists were twin gold serpent bracelets with ruby eyes. When someone tried to remove the "treasure" the snake lashed out, they failed a save, and the thing bit into his wrists and wrapped around the forearm. It wouldn't come off no matter what, and sapped a point of Con from intravenous feeding. But his Strength was boosted as an offset.

Yoink!

You could adapt weird semi-living entities that parasitically create a disadvantage while offering an advantage. I think the Fiend Folio has good rules for Grafts too, which abberations are typically fond of.

Ooohhh... great thing... reminds me of Chaositech by Malhavoc - also contains some stuff for an aberrant city. The mutant template could fit on several creatures, that were mutated by chaotic energies within the city.
Plus: There are very much creepy equipment.

I don't have the Fiend Folio or Chaositech, but the Eberron book has symbionts, which are living creatures that attach to a host and provide certain benefits. Since they are intelligent, they function a lot like intelligent magic items and can take over an inappropriate host. And I can use the same or similar mechanics for various things, some being symbiont/grafts and others being simply things mutated by the energies of the place/aberrations/daelkyr.

 

[Kesh]

Borrow heavily from any weird TV show or movie you can find. The snake-bracelet reminds me of something they pulled on the most recent Stargate: SG-1 season, so you could have fun that way.

Stargate: Atlantis has the wraith, a race of human-insect hybrids that feed of the life energy of humans. A form of vampire-aberration could be fun, especially the classic Vampire Illithid.

The Hellraiser movies are always a good inspiration for Dragon Below worshippers, who are often involved in the affairs of aberrations. They could meet a small group of cultists, heavily self-mutilated and with aberration grafts. (See Lords of Madness... actually that whole book is perfect for what you want. )

Any sci-fi show involving "organic technology" can be modified into aberrant items. Living ships (Farscape), implanted weapons, etc.

If you involve mind flayers, you can always use intellect devourers. Play up how they resemble all kinds of nasty little things: headcrabs from Half-Life, facehuggers from Alien, etc. Touches like that can help creep out the players.

That's going to be the biggest challenge: keeping the players on their toes. After a while, they start to get used to non-Euclidean geometry and weird walls... but throw something they semi-recognize at them, and it becomes scary again. It needs to be weird, but something they can still relate to.

 

[Rolzup]

First, a visual aid....

...where, to put it in scale, each of the squares in the grate is about 2 1/2 feet across. I happen to have this printed out as a tile, along with a couple with just plain grating, if you want to borrow them.....

Agin's Inn has a lot of these things, by the way, although most of them aren't nearly so...aberrant.

Another thought? A wall of crystal. As the PCs approach, they can see their own relfection...and as they get even closer, they can see those reflections are twisted, and just...wrong. Weird growths, tentacles, eyes in odd places.

Except for the alienist, who looks entirely normal.

One more, shamelessly stolen from Clive Barker's Imagica. A rivulet of water, flowing from an unseen source, that's running uphillp. Actually flowing up a stiarcase, running into the distant darkness.

As to treasure..... An IOUN stone that gives alertness, and darkvision. And is actually a living eye, floating silently around the user's head.

A glove, made of some strange skin, that has a mouth set into the center of its palm. When worn, it provides a nasty meele attack, and allows the wearer to drain hit points from those it strikes three times a day. But it can't be removed, and at night the hand...speaks. It mumbles things, too quietly and too indistinctly to properly make them out, that are terribly, terribly disturbing. And god help you if you go more than a day or two witout letting it feed.

And finally, a sword. From the hilt, it looks normal enough. Old, and worn...well used, to say the least. But the blade! It twists, and warps. It doesn't actually move, per se, but it's not entirely set within this reality. It hurts to look at the damn thing for any length of time, but the longer you look the harder it is to look away. Could find it in the hands of some poor bastard who starved to death as he stared at the blade, sitting forgotten in some dark corner....

It's a +3 Longsword that ignores armor, but every turn that its used the wielder needs to make an increasingly difficult Will save to avoid being fascinated by it. If he fails the save he'll just stand there gazing at the blade, until someone helps him.

 

[Nebulous]

As to treasure..... An IOUN stone that gives alertness, and darkvision. And is actually a living eye, floating silently around the user's head.

A glove, made of some strange skin, that has a mouth set into the center of its palm. When worn, it provides a nasty meele attack, and allows the wearer to drain hit points from those it strikes three times a day. But it can't be removed, and at night the hand...speaks. It mumbles things, too quietly and too indistinctly to properly make them out, that are terribly, terribly disturbing. And god help you if you go more than a day or two witout letting it feed.

And finally, a sword. From the hilt, it looks normal enough. Old, and worn...well used, to say the least. But the blade! It twists, and warps. It doesn't actually move, per se, but it's not entirely set within this reality. It hurts to look at the damn thing for any length of time, but the longer you look the harder it is to look away. Could find it in the hands of some poor bastard who starved to death as he stared at the blade, sitting forgotten in some dark corner....

It's a +3 Longsword that ignores armor, but every turn that its used the wielder needs to make an increasingly difficult Will save to avoid being fascinated by it. If he fails the save he'll just stand there gazing at the blade, until someone helps him.

those are all very good creepy treasures. Think i'll use some of those........

 

[Dragonbait]

Dead adventurers

 

[diaglo]

so much chattel...

well not now. but where there used to be. stockyards, slavepens, and such.
piles of bones where they died. starved themselves to death without their masters. or went crazy and drew graffiti on the walls.

whimsical spirits still dancing the last few moments of their life away over and over again. but on an incorporeal plane. visible to those with true seeing or the like.

torture equipment in the homes. old jars filled with pickled brains and other organs. nasty odd looking surgical tools.

 

[Mallus]

As to treasure..... An IOUN stone that gives alertness, and darkvision. And is actually a living eye, floating silently around the user's head.

I believe we've found a replacement for Kenji's dagger. Too good to wear the Hand of Glory around his delicate neck, is he? I'll show him... Oh God, one of Nadir's eyes... perfect.

Good stuff, BTW.

(I'll try to think up something later this afternoon. Perhaps an insect theme. If they can survive the A-bomb, then they can certainly survive some horror from beyond space bleeding into reality. Hmmmm, swarms of diminuitive creatures with some templates applied. Could be icky...)

 

[ajanders]

Other squicky things

Thirty foot tall morbidly obese hobgoblins, so fat they can barely move. With regeneration.
(The aberrations use them for a food source: just chop off a bit and cook it. Or not, I suppose, depending on your tastes and biochemistry.)
Bonus points if the hobgoblins have retained some fragment of sanity and beg the adventurers to kill them.
Double bonus points if the hobgoblins have become masochists and ask the adventurers in for dinner.

Sightless bugbear used as mounts by tiny blue, who dominate them into submission and use them for extra muscle in combat.

A hive of psuedonatural insects with a group mind. Psychic, too. And look! it's recruiting new help! All it has to do is destroy your old minds...

A "bitepike"...a long chitinous shaft with a tiny creature mounted on the end. Whenever the tiny creature touches living flesh, it bites it and hangs on like a terrier.
Bonus points if it drains blood.
Double bonus points if it injects the targets blood into the wielder, healing him...whether he wants it to or not.

Flying aboleth. Aboleth are just freaky.

Wizened fetal blue with enormous, silently floating through the hallways, eyes closed listening to a telepathic beacon only they can hear. Real sounds make them open their eyes.
It's not good when their eyes open.

A psion uncarnate who escaped the aberrations only by reaching 10th level in his PRC. Maybe he's helpful, maybe he's sane...pick one. Only one.

 

[shilsen]

If you involve mind flayers, you can always use intellect devourers. Play up how they resemble all kinds of nasty little things: headcrabs from Half-Life, facehuggers from Alien, etc. Touches like that can help creep out the players.

That's going to be the biggest challenge: keeping the players on their toes. After a while, they start to get used to non-Euclidean geometry and weird walls... but throw something they semi-recognize at them, and it becomes scary again. It needs to be weird, but something they can still relate to.

True. Plus these players have all been gaming for ages and are not easily surprised/shocked (though I've had a few good moments of "He did WHAT to us?!"). I find the things that are truly shocking are those that are mostly mundane, with just one teensy disquieting little difference. That approach worked very well with my other group in the Mournland, where I made at least one player reluctant to go to bed at night We'll see what happens here.

First, a visual aid....

...where, to put it in scale, each of the squares in the grate is about 2 1/2 feet across. I happen to have this printed out as a tile, along with a couple with just plain grating, if you want to borrow them.....

Yes, I think I'd like to borrow it.

Another thought? A wall of crystal. As the PCs approach, they can see their own relfection...and as they get even closer, they can see those reflections are twisted, and just...wrong. Weird growths, tentacles, eyes in odd places.

Except for the alienist, who looks entirely normal.

Very nice. And very, very appropriate, once one knows the character's backstory.

One more, shamelessly stolen from Clive Barker's Imagica. A rivulet of water, flowing from an unseen source, that's running uphillp. Actually flowing up a stiarcase, running into the distant darkness.

As to treasure.....

That's just the kind of treasure I was looking for. Thanks.