[Monster of the Week] Help me come up with some interesting weaknesses for this clade of monsters.

[Faolyn]

I'm starting my very first MotW game tomorrow, and I've created a clade of monsters I'm calling lemures:

All living, eukaryotic organisms have an animating force (animus). When an organism dies, its anima travels to the Marrow [the space behind this universe], where it then recombines with a “primordial soup” of sorts. Some of the animus leaks back to the physical world, where it proceeds to animate new living things. However, creatures called lemures sometimes spontaneously generate from this soup. The boundaries between the Marrow and our world is like a skin, and lemures sometimes emerge from wounds and orifices in the skin. Lemures in the physical world are, for the most part, inimical to “real” life, as they are both very alien in mindset and, as they are cut off from the soup of Marrow, they need to feed on the life (and with it, flesh and blood) of living creatures in order to survive.

Lemures are unique or mostly unique entities that can basically look and act like whatever I want them to be and can be as intelligent (or bestial) as I need. Due to player background stuff, "fae" will be a type of lemure. My inspiration comes from a feature I once watched on a Ghostbusters DVD, where it showed concept art for the movie's ghosts. Some of the ghosts were so bizarrely alien in design that I have kind of latched onto the idea of monsters actually being the highly mutated spirits of the long-dead. Here I just expanded "long dead" to include not just dead humans. Some of that animus may have come from dead aliens.

So, as the title says, I'm looking for some interesting weaknesses. The standard salt or silver doesn't seem quite appropriate. I'm interested in what y'all think might be appropriate.

Lemures don't all have to have the same weakness, either.

As a note, I am not using a lemure for tomorrow's adventure, so this isn't something I need this very second.

Since I tend to like limited numbers of monsters, the other creatures I'll be using for this game are monstra (psychic humanoids who project the illusion of being a mythical creature and feed on fear), fetches (skinless humanoid entities from a Giger-esque nightmare realm that exists behind mirrors, and which need to steal flesh and muscle), werewolves (one of the players is using the Monstrous playbook), and ghosts. And, y'know, whatever else I need for a particular adventure that doesn't fit in any of the above categories. But I wanted to move away from the standard vampires and zombies thing and due to player triggers, I'm avoiding demons and angels.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This all feels very Wraith: The Oblivion. I love it!

I would go with a whole grab bag of weaknesses for ghosts and the residents of the oWoD's Stygia.

Since the lemures were never alive and aren't really "dead," maybe the hunters need to symbolically kill them and lay them to rest. Give them names and identities, and make the lemures realize who it is they refer to, and then hold funerals for them or put coins on their eyes or something.

This would let you explain the origins for these things and also open up the possibility that some of them crave to be part of the normal cycle of life and death.

 

[Faolyn]

This all feels very Wraith: The Oblivion. I love it!

Thanks! I only played a short game once ages ago, but I recall really enjoying it.

I would go with a whole grab bag of weaknesses for ghosts and the residents of the oWoD's Stygia.

Since the lemures were never alive and aren't really "dead," maybe the hunters need to symbolically kill them and lay them to rest. Give them names and identities, and make the lemures realize who it is they refer to, and then hold funerals for them or put coins on their eyes or something.

Heh--knowing my players, they may end up doing that anyway. Or they might just burn them to ashes, just to make sure. Players, amirght?

 

[Tonguez]

Since the lemures were never alive and aren't really "dead," maybe the hunters need to symbolically kill them and lay them to rest. Give them names and identities, and make the lemures realize who it is they refer to, and then hold funerals for them or put coins on their eyes or something.

This would let you explain the origins for these things and also open up the possibility that some of them crave to be part of the normal cycle of life and death.

I like that, in Phillipines folklore the Tianac are vampiric ghost babies who were miscarried or died in childbirth and thus never knew human love. The way to defetat them was to turn your clothes inside out (which made them laugh) and then giving the lost soul a name and lighting a white candle to guide them.

of course being monsters Lemures elicit fear, to stop them requires overcoming the inherent fear and changing their nature

 

[Faolyn]

I like that, in Phillipines folklore the Tianac are vampiric ghost babies who were miscarried or died in childbirth and thus never knew human love. The way to defetat them was to turn your clothes inside out (which made them laugh) and then giving the lost soul a name and lighting a white candle to guide them.

of course being monsters Lemures elicit fear, to stop them requires overcoming the inherent fear and changing their nature

I like the idea of giving them a name. Maybe not as an insta-defeat, but as way to make them "real" enough to be fought (or not, as the players decide--they're the type of party that likes to adopt things).

 

[Faolyn]

Well, my first session went great! I still have to get used to not having people roll for everything, but I'll get there.