Fun on the Velvet Horizon: ABHORRER

More Fun on the Velvet Horizon. Today we get into the heart of the matter with a difficult but rewarding total fucking dick of a monster. I am not going through the book in alphabetical order, these are just the first two monsters from the book that I used in my game.


ABHORRER

These guys are a bit tricky to run. No player likes to be told 'well, you find yourself compelled to be nice... to the slug that you hate.' I started with the 'lawfulness field' and I'll try to make the players hate it over time. If the players can't attack something, they will want to. When the abhorrer starts doing its dick moves, they will gradually dislike it more and more until they start working on a way to wipe it off the map. I can see the players on other adventures, always thinking in the back of their minds: "Hell, we have to go back to goblin town and deal with that big red slug pretty soon." If they take too long, the goblins will be fucked up when they get back!

An abhorrer showing up feels like a handful of adventures in itself, and wherever it arrives will never be the same again, so we can't just put it in a wandering monster table...

Nevermind that! Of course we can: it just raises new questions. What would it be doing strutting a dungeon or wilderness? A dungeon is total anarchy and madness already, which makes it vulnerable, it would have to be on its way to or from somewhere important. 


REASONS THE ABHORRER IS IN THE DUNGEON:

1 - Just escaped death at hands of angry mob, very jumpy
2 - Off to store treasure in numbered underdark bank accounts - heavily mobbed up with bodyguards/cronies
3 - About to turn the underworld market into a Rand-ian capitalist nightmare
4 - Recruiting heavily-armed, psychopathic bodyguards: do the PCs need work?
5 - Prisoner, in a transport on the way to super-jail
6 - Prisoner, on the way to epic ceremonial execution (lava pit, green slime, etc)
7 - Imprisoned. This part of the dungeon already is a prison, and it can't leave.
8 - Actually, there *are* laws and a society in this part of the dungeon. It's lived here for a while.
9 - Just arrived in this area. There are laws, but the abhorrer's control only covers a small area. The situation is tenuous.
10 - Has insinuated itself into a pre-existing dungeon faction, culture or society. Things have only begun to get nasty.


I feel for your players to hate an NPC or villain, you need a name they can latch on to, something weird and memorable. I am notoriously bad at making up names, so let's give this a try:


ABHORRER NAME TABLE

Old Testament figure (d20)

1 - Abimelech
2 - Abraham
3 - Absalom
4 - Ahasuerus
5 - Belshazzar
6 - Cain
7 - Eliazar
8 - Elkanah
9 - Ephraim
10 - Holofernes
11 - Issachar
12 - Jephthah
13 - Lamech
14 - Manaaseh
15 - Melchizedek
16 - Mordecai
17 - Naphtali
18 - Nebucadnezzar
19 - Sennacherib
20 - Zebulon

Nickname / Bad Reputation (d12)

1  - Hangman
2  - Guillotine
3  - Lash
4  - Excruciator
5  - Rectificator
6  - Scourge
7  - Pacifier
8  - Butcher
9  - Torturer
10 - Rack
11 - Hammer
12 - Anvil


Gross Words (d66)

11 - Algae
12 - Amoeba
13 - Bog
14 - Bile
15 - Gorge
16 - Fen
21 - Fungus
22 - Gel
23 - Goop
24 - Gunk
25 - Glop
26 - Gorge
31 - Glut
32 - Lichen
33 - Marsh
34 - Mire
35 - Morass
36 - Moss
41 - Mucus
42 - Mud
43 - Muck
44 - Mold
45 - Ooze
46 - Putrid
51 - Quagmire
52 - Rot
53 - Retch
54 - Scum
55 - Snot
56 - Sludge
61 - Slime
62 - Slough
63 - Slop
64 - Spew
65 - Swale
66 - Vomit

Just roll once on each table to determine your abhorrer's name. Sometimes each type works better as a first or last name - mix it around to your liking. The one my players met in Land's End last weekend is Absalom Glop, the Excruciator!

This gives me another idea: this table would also be a good start for a lich or vampire - you'd only have to swap the 'gross words' section for slavic names, grandiose titles, etc. I will work on this for later.

*****

Ouch, there goes my tinnitus acting up again.
Well, let's make it worse!