Dero [playing fast and loose with the Shaver Mystery]

Discussion of existing creatures, and original ones you create. Natural or fantastical, all are welcome to go under the microscope for science.
Tore
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Dero [playing fast and loose with the Shaver Mystery]

Post by Tore » Mon Jan 22, 2018 8:57 pm

Dero, unfit inheritors

“His face was of a pale, whitish color. His short, twisted body was covered with thick, bristly hair. His eyes? piggish, insensitive to any emotion, and gleaming with evil lust. The creature was fat, almost bloated. There were terrible scars and running sores over most of his body. He had no neck, so his head was placed squarely atop his muscular shoulders. The face was the most horrible portion of his terrible features. It was much too large for his body, totally devoid of hair. The skin was scarred and wrinkled. His nose was fashioned more like a snout. It was at least seven inches in length, a terrible thing hanging down over his lipless mouth. His nose ended about the middle of his chest. He was nude. His body looked as if he had never worn garments. ”
account by unnamed French woman

The Dero are a race of cave-dwelling hominids. In some distant past they may have been human or near-human. At some point in the Pleistocene they came upon a Yithian outpost which had been abandoned as the Great Race fled to the future. The technology had a great impact on the crafty creatures, and as centuries passed they learned to operate many of these marvels.
They have not mastered time, nor do the Dero have the ability to transfer their minds. They did however manage to kit-bash the technology into a working mind control ray. Dero culture has deformed around this discovery, and they have used the ray for increasingly cruel pleasures, abductions and mayhem. The rest of their culture has atrophied to the point where they have no real concept of art, beauty or social mores. Their language is underdeveloped, and their culture centers around sadistic, brute-force mind control, and constant paranoid suspicions that they themselves are being manipulated. Physically, they have grown shorter and stouter in their dark underground home. Their snouts hand down past their lipless mouths, and their naked bodies are covered with sores, and stink of sweat and excrement.

Image

STR 3D6x5 (55)
CON 3D6x5 (55)
SIZ 1D6+5x5 (40)
INT 2D10x5 (50)
POW 3D6+6 (80)
DEX 2D6+6 (65)

Average Hit Points: 10
Average Damage Bonus: none. Average Build: 0 Average Magic Points: 16 Move: 9

Fighting 50% (25/10), damage 1D3 + damage bonus
Cruel melee weapon 45% (23/9) damage 1D8+1+damage bonus
Lightning gun 25% (18/7) damage 1D10/charge. 32 charges (every time they use more than one charge at a time, there is a cumulative 5% chance of burnout).
Stun rod 35% (18/7) damage: Stun (CON roll or become physically paralyzed for 80 – CON minutes). 10 charges.

Skills: Listen 40%, Operate Esoteric Machine 65%, Stealth 45%

Armor: 1 point.

SAN loss: 1/1D4 to see a Dero

Mental Suggestion Device (a Dero device based on early Yithian technology)

Cost: variable magic points (and Sanity points)
Activation time: 3 rounds

The device enables the user to command any being with human blood in its veins. The user rolls to use the device, and is able to relate the suggestion to the target telepathically. For the device to be effective, the user must succeed in an opposed POW roll with the target. Extreme suggestions involving death or great harm require a second opposed POW roll just before the suggestion is implemented. The cost for the user varies with the suggestion. For ordinary unthreatening suggestions (drop your sword, hand over your money and leave, etc.), the cost is 5 magic points and 1D3 Sanity points. Riskier suggestions, but not ones antithetical to the target (go to Dunwich, set fire to a building, etc.), cost 10 magic points and 2D3 Sanity points. Dangerous or suicidal suggestions (kill a companion, kidnap the President, etc.) cost 15 magic points and 3D3 Sanity points.
If used on an investigator the effects lasts for 1 round for each point of INT the user possesses. If the INT of the investigator is higher than that of the user, the caster must win another POW roll every 10 rounds. When the user fails the connection is broken.
The device has a SIZ of 200, and as such isn't portable. It's range is the user's POW in kilometers.

For a Pulp Cthulhu hero, using the device might simply be a matter of a Hard Electrical Repair roll (or just a normal one for a hero with the Weird Science Talent). For a standard Call of Cthulhu investigator, some about of Cthulhu Mythos might be necessary to even make the attempt.
Where Yig doth tread no man treads tomorrow.
Reeking death, harvest of humans in hatred.
Suck on the shitbag of what you created, what we created.
Yig now incoming, Yig now is here.
Yig he makes everything impossibly queer.

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