Dungeons & Dragons/Nightmare Fuel: Difference between revisions

** Mind flayers, who refer to themselves as illithids, are lavender-skinned, slimy [[Cthulhumanoid|Cthulhumanoids]] that eat brains. They are refugees from the end of time. They are ruled over by giant psychic brains with tentacles, formed out of their own corpses. Aboleths consider them terrifying because they don't have memories of Mind Flayers' origin.

* With the possible exception of [[Narm|Atropus]] (''possible'', as even with Narm, he's pretty scary), most of ''Elder Evils'' qualifies. Pandorym? It's an [[Eldritch Abomination]] from a reality perpendicular to the game world, and it's going to kill the gods and a fair number of planets too -- and Obligatum VIII, one of the representatives of universal law, [[Lawful Stupid|wants to release it to fulfill]] '''[[Lawful Stupid|a freaking contract]]'''. [[Fluffy the Terrible|Father Llymic]]? He's a monster from the Far Realm who will transform the entire world into [[Single Biome Planet|ice]], [[The Virus|transforming most of its inhabitants into hybrids of themselves and insects]]. [[Body Horror|Ragnorra]]? She's a giant wormlike sack of flesh that transforms into an ([[Uncanny Valley|arguably even scarier]]) [[One-Winged Angel|True Mother form]], and she not only spawns an infinite stream of crimes against nature that make beholders and mind flayers look pleasant, but [[The Dragon]] is a maddened ''zenythri'' (for the uninitiated, these are the descendants of humans and beings of ''pure law'') who has cut his lips off and replaced them with wriggling flukelike critters. [[Sealed Evil in a Can|Serthos?]] He's not so bad by himself, but his manifestation [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|flooding the world with serpents]], and he can [[As Long as There Is Evil|can never really be defeated]], as he's ''already dead''. Kyuss, [[The Worm That Walks]]? Let's just say you may never look at a worm in the same way again. It's strongly advised you only read this book in dark rooms, so that you don't have to look at some of the pictures. Especially the [http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ElderEvils_Gallery/111203.jpg golothoma], an eyeball-spider that eats you with its shadow.

* All of this D&D stuff and no mention of ''[[Ravenloft]]''? The campaign setting that *is* [[Ironic Hell]]?

** The ''Wishing Imp'' is a magical statue-slash-[[Jackass Genie]] that follows you around and twists your wishes. And eats your soul if you don't make any-- or if you do.

** The Bleak House. Every room in the place is designed to unsettle the characters (and players) from a room made in shadowless monochrome with a permanent echoing spell to torches that give off monstrous shadowy. Every patient, orderly (and the characters) are made to dress in Grey robes, with ugly masks they can't take off, so you can't tell friend from foe, can't even recognize yourself. The kicker? Every night, when the characters are asleep, they're subjected to several different types of "Psychological Experiments" ranging from inducing new Phobias to purposely inducing Split Personalities and two words: ''Psychic Amputation''. Not to mention the Warden has a nasty habit of letting you ''think'' you're getting away with a clever escape plan, before he swoops in at the very last second, and did I mention the Orderlies are dressed exactly like the patients and they're a type of vampire that drinks cerebral fluid.

** One adventure features a trapped coffin that if some unfortunate victim gets stuck in it, but manages to escape before ten rounds, that they start acting and suffering the effects of Vampirism for the next several days (but not actually turning into one). Which leads to the idea that the poor victim might end up 'being staked for the better of sapient-being-kind' before his friends realize the ruse. Or worse, imagine being the Paladin or Cleric (or a Ranger with special enemy Undead) - imagine their horror.

** The Husk Of Infinite Worlds, a magical device used by the [[Cosmic Horror]] Daelkyr to create new species of creatures by horribly mutating others. Think of it like a DNA washing machine: creature goes in, gets put on the spin cycle, and if it doesn't immediately dissolve into primordal ooze it pops out in a new, horribly mutated state. Even then, there's only a 1% chance that the new form will be able to survive for longer than fifteen seconds. And if it ''does'' survive, the daelkyr in charge will likely just put it in ''again'' to see if it can mutate into a more interesting form.

** Everything the Daelkyr do qualifies as [[Nightmare Fuel]]. These are people whose main slave race was created by ''fusing two goblins together''. These are people who bred a variety of abominations to use as clothing, including a suit of armour that's actually a limbless crab. These are the inventors of the beholder -- and frankly, anyone who could develop a creature whose reproduction consists of vomiting up <s> your young</s> and then biting off your uterus presumably ''runs'' on [[Nightmare Fuel]]. (Important memo to whoever at TSR or Wizards Of The Coast who came up with that one: you are one sick, sick puppy).

*** The beholder was a bit of an evolutionary thing. You start with a monster that's basically a sphere that's mostly mouth and eyes, and eventually somebody asks where little beholders come from, and at that point the thing really has only one body cavity, which is the inside of its mouth. [[Squick|You are now imagining eyeballs erupting into tiny little baby beholders.]]

** The Lords of Dust have devices that can turn any creature into a willing slave by pumping them full of magical sand. Here's how the process works: the subject is placed into the device- which resembles a sarcophagus- which is then sealed shut. Suckers emerge from the inside of the device, attach themselves to the victim, then proceed to ''suck out their soul''. Once the body is completely drained, those same suckers pump the empty husk full of magical sand that turns the body into a willing servant of the Lords of Dust. Finally, the victim has a key installed ''in their eye socket'' that, when turned, will stir up the sand and grant increased strength and speed. The passage mentions that the Lords of Dust particularly love to inflict this fate on their worst enemies. Looks like whomever put these things into Eberron canon [[Shout-Out|liked to watch and/or read]] [http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs16/i/2007/201/e/9/Karl_Ruprecht_Kroenen_by_psonha.jpg Hellboy], doesn't it?

** The Roach Thralls. To ''start'', they're giant ''cockroaches''. That walk around wearing people's ''skin''. But that's not the [[Sarcasm Mode|best part]]: no, that is the way they get inside the skin in the first place: adult roach thralls [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong|inject their eggs into a human DURING SEX]]. Not only are you dead, you're dead from being ''devoured internally'' after a night of '''sex with a giant cockroach WEARING A DEAD BODY'''. [[It Got Worse|Now think back before any of them had skin to wear, and how the first ones managed to get those empty bodies. It probably worked in exactly the same way, but the giant roach wasn't wearing a dead body at the time.]]

** The ''Menace Manual'' has a monster called the Star Doppelganger. An alien with [[Voluntary Shapeshifting]]? Okay. Its picture is scary for some, no doubt, but likely to be [[Narm|goofy as hell]] for others. But then you read its description: an Antarctic outpost is found destroyed, the only survivor is a single dog, which gets on board the rescue ship an-''holy shit [[The Thing (film)|I recognize this monster!]]''

** It really says something about a setting when the city ruled by (admittedly largely non-evil) ''necromancers'' is one of the better places to live. Oh sure, there's Nightmare Fuel aplenty in Hollowfaust, but if you're a resident the skeleton street cleaners and whatnot are on your side.

** The fact that up until 200 years ago the campaign setting was ruled by completely unkillable [[Complete Monster|Complete Monsters]] who would torture or kill people by the thousands because they were bored. Hrinruuk is especially frightening (and evil). Imagine a seemingly nice guy walks into your town, gets friendly with the locals, and then demands the lord's daughter (or something else he wants) or he'll wipe out the entire city. And maybe he'll do it anyway, just for kicks, and sic a bunch of monsters on whoever survives to see how deadly they are. Then he'll kill the monsters. The worst part? He is considered the most likely to have created humans.

** 4th edition does it better. In 4e? Item-mimics are the juvenile stage. Adults? Pretend to be ''people''.

* The d20 sourcebook ''[[Dragonmech]]''. A D&D type world where the moon has been moved closer and almost all life lives either deep underground or within truly [[Humongous Mecha]] , the City-Mechs up to 2000 feet tall, powered by magic, steam, clockwork...slavery or necromancy. One of the undead 'mechs' is described as being thousands of bodies melded together... but some of the smaller ones are creepier. A meatrack is a metal skeleton with sharpened fingers as its weapons, that is powered by bare muscles attached to the frame. But even the undead ones aren't the worst... one of the character classes is a steampunk cyborg... that modified himself. Break a leg, why wait for it to heal? Hack it off and replace it with some metal... well, now you're lopsided, so you might as well do the other side too... Man, this would be easier if I could change out my hands, why not replace the arms too? Until you're left with a head on a robot body... and the steampunk cyborg did all of the work himself, aside from the implantation of the original small steam engine, was forgotten. The amputation of limbs and replacement with metal, with no mention of any sort of anaesthetic.

* The Derro were always a race of batshit insane lunatics, but 4th Edition has brought their insanity, and their scariness, [[Up to Eleven]]. Pale, blank-eyed dwarf-like creatures that always cackle and drool no matter what they do, their link to the Far Realm allows them to "warp" their slaves into tentacled monstrosities who barely retain any of their past features or memories. So malicious and mad are they that [[Even Evil Has Standards|even the Drow]] will drop everything and work together to fight the Derro, because they know that if they even so much as let them get a foothold, it could mean the end for them.