TanithT
First Post
You could always add a bit of Mythos flavor - who knows what manner of cthonian horrors might be found there - or just pure horror by bringing in something ominous and/or truly vile that the PC's have never seen before.
"Accounts of these creatures are rare, and of dubious worth, as they have only been taken from the mouths of babbling madmen. Still, I shall include them in the Librarian's notes for curiosity's sake. Tall and shrouded in bleeding black tatters, these female spectres shriek dire imprecations that are unspeakably personal to each one who hears them. Slowly they drift closer, until at last their faces are revealed to be that of the victim's own relatives - sister, aunt or grandmother, most commonly, though one will invariably appear as the hapless victim's mother.
"It seems of no consequence whether the actual relations are alive or dead, or whether they even exist at all. Though after being driven mad by their screams, the victim is quite likely to become convinced that they are indeed the genuine article, and that their horrible fate is the direct result of his or her choice to abandon them in favor of selfish adventure.
"But this is merely the beginning of the unfortunate victim's nightmarish encounter. Chief amongst these spectres, the Dark Mothers - I have no other name for them - will drift close enough to embrace the victim, and tear open their bleeding shrouds to reveal deeply slashed and ravaged bellies swollen with child. Pitiably, the writhing fetus is clearly visible through her savage wounds.
"A closer examination reveals the monster that lies within, and perhaps the true mastermind of the encounter. Red-eyed and sharp of tooth and claw, the fetal creature slithers out of its erstwhile host, as horribly agile as a deformed monkey, and seizes upon its victim. To what true end I can not say, for the sole accounts we have of the Dark Mothers and their demonic Childer come from those who survived.
"Or have they? That is a question I must leave future generations of scholars to ponder. "
- Leshaar Destriel, Preservationist, Order of Knights Templar
After your PC's manage to kill the Childer, who are evil little fast-moving buggers with a paralytic poison claw/claw/bite attack, they get to find out even more about how these particularly nasty piecemeal undead are animated. They won't like it much.
The Dark Mothers aren't very good melee combatants; pretty much all they do well is mess with the PC's minds and cast intermittent darkness. You can hack them apart easily, and in fact they'll even help you by hacking at themselves, howling that if you don't love your mother, you should go ahead and kill her. PC's who fail their save vs. mind-affecting spells are going to be convinced that this is actually their mother, and may not be able to strike at her. That's fine; they'll grab your weapon or find one of their own, and slash wildly at themselves while screaming despair and guilt-laden imprecations.
The fun part begins when they've been hacked down to half their hit points and their flesh becomes as tattered as their shrouds, exposing their internal organs. At that point they rip out their own thick, wetly beating hearts and attempt to shove them down your throat, shrieking about giving you their mother's love for all eternity. Except the hearts aren't the weapon. They're the second wave of serious melee combatants.
Now picture the lights going out, leaving just enough dim flashes for you to occasionally see the hearts scurrying around the room and making faint chittering sounds. Periodically they will leap out from some dark corner and attempt to force themselves down a PC's throat. They are very hard to hit, and they can do some serious damage. Listening carefully to the high-pitched chittering allows you to hear it crying mournfully, "I love you - I love you - I love you" in the PC's native tongue. In the background, your mother is still screaming in agony and weeping into her tattered shroud. And it's all your fault.
In case the party hasn't learned their lesson and keeps whacking on the Dark Mothers after they've taken care of the chittering hearts, they get to enjoy wave three. When the Mothers reach 10% of their hit points, their intestines burst out of their bellies as horrible attacking tentacles to grapple and choke, attempting to draw the PC's headfirst back into their mother's torn-open womb. The Dark Mothers themselves aren't very fast, and don't do any real melee damage, so once they've expended their illusion-based spells and hacked themselves (or gotten hacked) down to 50% of their hit points to release the weeping hearts, it's quite possible to run away from them without further issue. Except your PC's probably won't, and then they'll be sorry. The final encounter isn't likely to be fatal, just unutterably vile and mentally traumatizing.
SAN loss, anyone? I know D&D characters don't have that stat. I mean your players. Mine had nightmares.
I statted these things up for a 2.5 campaign years ago, but have no idea where my notes are. I'm sure they can be creatively number-crunched for whatever version you're currently playing. I would recommend scaling the encounter to the PC's level by adjusting the number of these creatures; a more powerful party can probably handle one of the spectres going Dark Mother on each PC and producing one Childe, one heart and (if the PC's continue attacking) one set of tentacles. Drop that down a ways for lower level parties, so they can focus their fire on fewer of them, or on just one.
You have the option of leaving a few more of them in the background as quiet spectres, who activate as Dark Mothers on a party member only if directly attacked. This can lead to TPK if your PC's don't figure out the gimmick early enough, however. Dropping AoE on the group of them is a very bad idea. The much tougher Childer can drop and separate immediately, and if a Mother is taken below 10% of her hit points without engaging in melee, she will tear her heart out and hurl it as a dying action. At that point the tentacles explode out, having nothing left to hold them in.
Rapidly reducing a Dark Mother to 0% or less does not affect the "nested" undead inside of her; it just releases them from her destroyed flesh all at once in a way that is likely to be real trouble for the PC's. Being entangled by intestine tentacles while the hearts and the Childer are both active is not likely to end well for the party. Ideally these guys are statted to be a challenge for the party at each stage, which makes having to deal with more than one of the stages at once a pretty serious PC problem.
"Accounts of these creatures are rare, and of dubious worth, as they have only been taken from the mouths of babbling madmen. Still, I shall include them in the Librarian's notes for curiosity's sake. Tall and shrouded in bleeding black tatters, these female spectres shriek dire imprecations that are unspeakably personal to each one who hears them. Slowly they drift closer, until at last their faces are revealed to be that of the victim's own relatives - sister, aunt or grandmother, most commonly, though one will invariably appear as the hapless victim's mother.
"It seems of no consequence whether the actual relations are alive or dead, or whether they even exist at all. Though after being driven mad by their screams, the victim is quite likely to become convinced that they are indeed the genuine article, and that their horrible fate is the direct result of his or her choice to abandon them in favor of selfish adventure.
"But this is merely the beginning of the unfortunate victim's nightmarish encounter. Chief amongst these spectres, the Dark Mothers - I have no other name for them - will drift close enough to embrace the victim, and tear open their bleeding shrouds to reveal deeply slashed and ravaged bellies swollen with child. Pitiably, the writhing fetus is clearly visible through her savage wounds.
"A closer examination reveals the monster that lies within, and perhaps the true mastermind of the encounter. Red-eyed and sharp of tooth and claw, the fetal creature slithers out of its erstwhile host, as horribly agile as a deformed monkey, and seizes upon its victim. To what true end I can not say, for the sole accounts we have of the Dark Mothers and their demonic Childer come from those who survived.
"Or have they? That is a question I must leave future generations of scholars to ponder. "
- Leshaar Destriel, Preservationist, Order of Knights Templar
After your PC's manage to kill the Childer, who are evil little fast-moving buggers with a paralytic poison claw/claw/bite attack, they get to find out even more about how these particularly nasty piecemeal undead are animated. They won't like it much.
The Dark Mothers aren't very good melee combatants; pretty much all they do well is mess with the PC's minds and cast intermittent darkness. You can hack them apart easily, and in fact they'll even help you by hacking at themselves, howling that if you don't love your mother, you should go ahead and kill her. PC's who fail their save vs. mind-affecting spells are going to be convinced that this is actually their mother, and may not be able to strike at her. That's fine; they'll grab your weapon or find one of their own, and slash wildly at themselves while screaming despair and guilt-laden imprecations.
The fun part begins when they've been hacked down to half their hit points and their flesh becomes as tattered as their shrouds, exposing their internal organs. At that point they rip out their own thick, wetly beating hearts and attempt to shove them down your throat, shrieking about giving you their mother's love for all eternity. Except the hearts aren't the weapon. They're the second wave of serious melee combatants.
Now picture the lights going out, leaving just enough dim flashes for you to occasionally see the hearts scurrying around the room and making faint chittering sounds. Periodically they will leap out from some dark corner and attempt to force themselves down a PC's throat. They are very hard to hit, and they can do some serious damage. Listening carefully to the high-pitched chittering allows you to hear it crying mournfully, "I love you - I love you - I love you" in the PC's native tongue. In the background, your mother is still screaming in agony and weeping into her tattered shroud. And it's all your fault.
In case the party hasn't learned their lesson and keeps whacking on the Dark Mothers after they've taken care of the chittering hearts, they get to enjoy wave three. When the Mothers reach 10% of their hit points, their intestines burst out of their bellies as horrible attacking tentacles to grapple and choke, attempting to draw the PC's headfirst back into their mother's torn-open womb. The Dark Mothers themselves aren't very fast, and don't do any real melee damage, so once they've expended their illusion-based spells and hacked themselves (or gotten hacked) down to 50% of their hit points to release the weeping hearts, it's quite possible to run away from them without further issue. Except your PC's probably won't, and then they'll be sorry. The final encounter isn't likely to be fatal, just unutterably vile and mentally traumatizing.
SAN loss, anyone? I know D&D characters don't have that stat. I mean your players. Mine had nightmares.
I statted these things up for a 2.5 campaign years ago, but have no idea where my notes are. I'm sure they can be creatively number-crunched for whatever version you're currently playing. I would recommend scaling the encounter to the PC's level by adjusting the number of these creatures; a more powerful party can probably handle one of the spectres going Dark Mother on each PC and producing one Childe, one heart and (if the PC's continue attacking) one set of tentacles. Drop that down a ways for lower level parties, so they can focus their fire on fewer of them, or on just one.
You have the option of leaving a few more of them in the background as quiet spectres, who activate as Dark Mothers on a party member only if directly attacked. This can lead to TPK if your PC's don't figure out the gimmick early enough, however. Dropping AoE on the group of them is a very bad idea. The much tougher Childer can drop and separate immediately, and if a Mother is taken below 10% of her hit points without engaging in melee, she will tear her heart out and hurl it as a dying action. At that point the tentacles explode out, having nothing left to hold them in.
Rapidly reducing a Dark Mother to 0% or less does not affect the "nested" undead inside of her; it just releases them from her destroyed flesh all at once in a way that is likely to be real trouble for the PC's. Being entangled by intestine tentacles while the hearts and the Childer are both active is not likely to end well for the party. Ideally these guys are statted to be a challenge for the party at each stage, which makes having to deal with more than one of the stages at once a pretty serious PC problem.
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