Nightmares from Beyond - What would you like to see?


Iron Gods

The Exchange

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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

So lets get scary. What sorts of monsters would you like to see in the adventure? What sort of space/monster/technological nightmare fights would you like to go up again?

Here's a few I daydreamed:

Skeletal Hijackers - Metal skeleton creatures that nap living targets as internal hostages. The construct latches around the subject carrying them around and forcing them to move around attacking friends. Their goal is to get the hostage killed while making their allies less likel to fight back. If the hostage survives it begins guarding the spot until the hostage dies of dehydration/fatigue.

Corpse Harvesters - Large walking tri-pods with carry cages underneath them filled to the brim with dead bodies. They walk around and attack with long metal coils bashing a subject to death if found alive, or till graveyards looking for bodies to be carried back to their dungeon to be deposited. Each coprse inside can be reanimated int a dozen fast zombies if 'full' and attack if the Harvester is at half health.

Laser Elemental - Nothing like fighting a intangible elemental that can burn you and moves via near instant transport from place to place. Hard to spot during the day, but painfully obvious at night when the glowing wormlike being attacks you.

Machine Chimera - A polygot of 3 different robotic/construct forms has rebuilt itself into a mish-mashed walking monstrosity of mangled body parts, gears, wheels, and moving parts. This often four legged/treaded THING tends to attack anyone carrying technology in it's serach for endless new parts.

Cloud Tool Familar - A floating ball of gray microcopic machines that bonds to a user via magical attunement. It follows them around granting a +2 Knowledge: Engineering insight as well as having an ability to transform into any hand tool (including theives tools) of a masterwork quality the user need.

More as I think of them.


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There are some nice ones up there.

What I can think think up woud be the Reversed Cyborg:
Originally an automaton that wasn´t even supposed to be human decided, after an accident, to use organical parts, mostly of humanoids, to repaire and upgrade itself.
This leads to an somewhat unformly mass of fleshy and mechanical parts, that has obscuritys like an hand on top of mechanical neddle, instead of an arm, and an eye sewn on the palm.


Now, lemme dig up some of the beasties from my science fantasy game...

Mannequin Drones - Mannequins are creepy, right? (See also Mannequins from the Codemned series and Autons from Doctor Who.) Well, let's mess them up (have them look horribly worn out) and enable them with warped looking electronics and automated weaponry (kind of like Motorized Patriot from BioShock Infinite.)

Cranium Cams - Modified Drones that consist of a mannequin head with a hover pad at the severed neck, faintly glowing infrared cameras where the eyes should be, and a machine gun that emerges from the mouth.

The Grave Machine - Mix the antagonist from Dead Heart of Xin, the final boss from TimeSplitters Future Perfect, the 'Glom from Deadlands, Gravelord Nito from Dark Souls, and the Gravemind from the Halo series. It's a massive cybernetic undead hive composed of countless corpses fused together by wretched technology and dark magic combined, created with an H.R. Giger aesthetic in mind.

Parasitic Combat Nanomachines- Let's mix nano-technology with the Flood (also from Halo) You get the basic idea. Instead of a fungaloid horror, the victim's body is more or less a shell for this shifting cybernetic zombie machine with an almost alchemical property to it (with the ability to manifest blades and other piercing/slashing weaponry.) The nanobots also have the ability to stabilize the body to prevent rampant decay. However, the nanomachines' knowledge of humanity is pretty weak, so motor skills are awkward and they are completely unable to communicate properly.

Freak Mystic - A mad mutated humanoid able to shoot elemental power from their fist while being able to leap out of time moments after, leaving only traces of something indicating their elemental power such as; burnt leaves, flakes of snow, among other things. (Yes, it's basically the Houdini Splicer from BioShock. But hey, fighting them is always fun.)

Cyber-Rats - Cranium Rats meets the Cybermat (of Doctor Who, again). These nasty beasties are wired up rats; mass bred to engineer into the ultimate surveillance tools! For the most part, they look like mundane rats with tubing jutting from their torsos into a small camera-like devices fused into their back with wires connecting to metallic heads with faintly glowing lights for eyes.


benderalloy wrote:

There are some nice ones up there.

What I can think think up woud be the Reversed Cyborg:
Originally an automaton that wasn´t even supposed to be human decided, after an accident, to use organical parts, mostly of humanoids, to repaire and upgrade itself.
This leads to an somewhat unformly mass of fleshy and mechanical parts, that has obscuritys like an hand on top of mechanical neddle, instead of an arm, and an eye sewn on the palm.

Creepy!


Octoborg- A weird tentacled cyborg creature with a glowing red eyestalk tentacle, a scorching ray tentacle, and a sleep gas tentacle. It kind of "jumps" around using stored kinetic energy in its adamantine limbs. It can observe both visible and invisible creatures using flashes emitted from its eyestalk.

The Exchange

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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Mutant Blood Spider - Massive Spider with a bloated body that has taken to draining the blood of it's victims to brood more of it's kind in it's abdomen. You can fight it in it's sticky webs but if you kill it, a swarm of it's young errupt from it's bulging red back half, eating their way out!

Leg Eater Worm - A metal coated rock/metal eating machine that look slike a dune work that sneaks up on PC's doing Dex damage to them if it successfully attacks from below. Biting at their legs. It seems to be guarding dropped pieces of ship.

Intellect DevourerQueen - A massively oversized brain eating monster that cracks open the back of the head they crawl into. It walks around as a hollow eyed abomination with a large oversized brain pulsing out of the 'opened' head. The subjects mouth opens to shot out tendrips with pincers on them. Spawns a horde of loyal follwering Devourers.

Scrying Fly - A small insect like metal bug that flies around reporting the PC's activities to the holder of the Fly's control rod. The PC's MIGHT be able to claim one for themselves.

Radioative Shadow Stalker - A seemingly quiet shadow like intangible figure that follows a subject around before trying to strength drain it to death making another talker, however it also radiates a sickening field that slows down subjects and can project blasts of scalding hot energy. Think even GREATER, greater shade.

Soul Shackled - A metal collar that clamps around s slave and slowly extracts their soul drop by drop creating an elixer of rejuvinating oils that the slave owner drink to extend their lives. Once compeltely drained the Shackled are turned into technological wights in the control of their 'drinker'.

Void Form - Sometimes mistakenly called a Void Elemental, this being is actually a planer embodiment of the absolute idea of balance via absence. They travel around corroding reality eating at the very foundtation of being. Found near pieces of the vast engines of the Silver Mountain who draw power from a paradox of planer power.

Inevitable, Progressives - A unique type of Inevitable created by experimetns of the Axiomites representing the idea of progress and invention. Progressives seek out those that would horde and destroy the spread of knowledge and punish them for allowing chaos to stifle creativity and the demand for progress. Drawn to sites of great innovation they act as lawful and tacit protectors. They however are also punisher of creativity gone wrong and just as easily will battle those that use innovation for the sake of chaos.


I think it'd be fun to have critters that aren't supposed to be monsters. Like take your skeleton hijackers - What if it was a nanny-robot that is has malfunctioned and started identifying everything warm-blooded as the kids it's supposed to be looking after? It's armored, shielded, has a CMB of +20, and will stop at nothing to grapple you and put you to bed. It gets scary because the bot won't let you leave the bed, even as you slowly starve to death - It will always catch you and return you and it's very, very capable of disarming anyone who tries to stop it and killing anything that doesn't match its care parameters.

Or make a high-tech rust monster - a dish-washing machine that will stop at nothing to clean, sharpen, and polish your cutlery. I mean your swords, daggers, and other hand held weaponry. Like everything else that comes from the ship its made out of self-repairing alloys and is generally a pain to stop without wiring in an ordering it to shut down.

The Exchange

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Well, a lot of my early ideas are bits of tech gone wrong. Like:

Scrying Fly is a spying device/critter.

Void Form is just a side effect of a planer engine gone wrong.

Leg Eater Worm is a terraforming machine gone bezerk.

The Skeletal Hijackers are power armor gone WRONG.

Corpse Harvesters are medical equipment broken trying to rez the dead and not the living.

Machine Chimeria is a robot trying to survive...but canablizing those around it.

Hell the Reverse Cyborg might be a implant trying to find a new host!


From my side I would love to share these with you all.

-Metal Liar: Snake like construct which attaches itself to the spine and skull of its victims. During the first week the strange construct shows to be beneficial to its host, granting +4 to all Knowledge checks (except Planes, arcane and religion ones) as well as craft and profession ones. On the second week though, the Metal Liar starts to invade the mind of its host, displaying a very sharp intelligence and obsession to cure its host's "insanity". Each two hours the host must do a Will save or start believing the lies the construct tells her about magic, religion and planes, losing 1d2 points of Wisdom and be unable for cast any kind of spell or use supernatural skills for 1d6 days. The process continues until the host reaches Wisdom 0, point in which the Metal Liar detaches as the therapy has been successful and the subject cured of her insanity.
The Metal Liar is a robotic psychiatrist develop for deal with "cabin fever" similar mental conditions develop by spaceship crews in long term travels trough space. Now stranded in Golarion, the medical A.I.s designed in a world in which magic is practically dead and there is no religion find themselves on a planet which must be the biggest asylum in the universe to them.
The most terrifying thing about the metal liar is they can inject medication to its host, making her docile and unable to take any action in critical moments, or worse as these medicament were develop for the physiology of an alien crew, inducing brief periods of paranoia and schizophrenia in some Golarion "patients".

-The Bloater: Spider like robot which attaches to the torso of a humanoid, usually the belly area. Its original purpose was to feed cattle and increase the meat volume of whatever alien beast it was used on before, now a bloater does the same with humanoids from Golarion, marauding and lurking on rocky places until gets attached to a humanoid for turn its disgraced victim into a Swollen One. The bloater usually acts when there is a corpse or decaying organic matter around its host, from the metallic spider like body comes a prehensile appendage which latches on to the corpse, turning it into a ooze like substance which then administrates to the host. The slime like substance generated by the bloater induces drastic mutations on the host, forcing his body to bloat with tumor like appendages and twisting the mind to the point he becomes a mindless highly aggressive brute, a Swollen One.
Swollen ones can obtain the same dimensions of a fire giant thanks to the Bloater attached to them, there are even tales of one which achieved enough volume to be consider a colossus. The life of a Swollen One is short, as the tumors soon become spawning pools of oozes, from black pudding to even gelatinous cubes (in fact when attacked with piercing or slashing weapons, a Swollen One gives "birth" to an ooze trough its wounds) so when the swollen one body can't take it anymore, burst into a disgusting mess of mindless ooze creatures.

-Walking Vault: Perhaps one of the most strange constructs to come out of the spaceship wreckage, the Walking Vault is a boxy looking robot who is eager to help intelligent humanoids if they show some signs of a develop culture/civilization. If it is not attacked and communication attempts are perform, the Walking Vault would start a learning process for be able to speak the language of the humanoid what began say attempt, following him or her around with it characteristic bonk-bonk like noise. In time the walking vault will develop an attachment to said humanoid and consider it's master, showing how useful can be. The Walking Vault is able to store items in it's inside, protecting them from possible thieves and harm, however and for some reason the walking vaults have a hatred towards portable holes and bags of holding, hiding and destroying them when is possible to do so (not before they had saved all the contents on their insides before doing so). Walking vaults are made of sky metal and extremely hard to damage and is said some even are capable of save their owners in their inside (a life support system working as a ring of sustenance allows the master to survive inside without fear of suffocation nor starvation), however they abhor violence and will flee for combat unless the humanoids its befriended are in great danger, then will over ride its routines and ram its bulk against the enemy and even use its electric aura defense system. Walking vaults are of huge size, capable of communication and move on four mechanical legs, they have tiny retractable arms in their inside for allow them to hand fast an item which is storing.


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Tesla Towers - As there name suggests

Brain rat - rats with psionic potentials

Walking bomb - suicide minions

Liberty's Edge

Gannix-Kellid term for "Lost One" Exceptionally strong barbarian upgraded with technology after being abducted (By what? Who knows?). Has greataxe, switches to claws, rudimentary element control (Shooting out small gouts of fire, creating small sandstorms) as well as a limited supply of medical nanites (it can heal itself)


Giant robot pilot. Just hanging out and relaxing.


I would like to see an Anti-technology inevitable.


For some good ideas of some technological/space/sci-fi horrors, I'd recommend Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series. While the characters and the story in that series is often "meh" for me, Green does an excellent job of world building and creates some really truly bizarre, horrifying and twisted creatures. Several of his stories are very much "horror in space".

I'm trying to think offhand of some of his best:

Half-A-Man comes to mind- a human who was warped by an enigmatic space race so that half of his body is actually an energy construct.

The Espers are a rather bizarre bunch of psychics.

The Grendels which are robotic creatures that are reminiscent of the Shrike from the Hyperion cantos.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Kliks "Klik klik klik klik klik klik klik klik"


Some biomechanical horrors like in the otherwise Meh movie Skyline.

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