[Labyrinth Lord] Æthereal Marauder

I recently reread the 3.0 Monster Manual entry for the Ethereal Marauder (and afterwards this post by The Alexandrian) and realized that I really like the idea behind this monster.

I don’t think I ever gave this beast a second thought before, but lately I have been thinking about the Ethereal Plane and ways to use it, and all of a sudden a whole adventure fell into place here.

Imagine… A city, or a large castle, with long narrow hallways or walkways. And all of a sudden people start disappearing. There are horrifying sounds and weird noises at night, blood spatters, but no body left. Something is not right here.

It turns out there is an Æthereal Marauder on the prowl….

(written with an Æ because if you have the chance to use it, why wouldn’t you?)

That’s an amazing idea, a truly frightening monster, especially at low levels. Imagine trying to hunt for whatever you think might be killing people, when all of a sudden something like a three-pronged velociraptor shifts shifts into view and is charging at you. Then, after biting off an arm or something it just disappears into the night and is gone.

You also could do some nice stuff with the properties of the Ethereal Plane, if you wanted to. Maybe the thing is hanging out in the Ethereal Shadow of a building that was destroyed weeks, or maybe years ago. How to even reach it if it hangs out on top of a tower that isn’t there anymore?

Æthereal Marauder
No. Enc.: 1 (1d4)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120′ (40′)
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 1 (bite)
Damage: 1d6+3
Save: F3
Morale: 6
Hoard Class: None

These reptiloid creatures live and hunt on the Ethereal Plane. They generally are colored in blue to violet hues, are about 4 feet tall. While clearly intelligent in their tactics they speak no known language and do not seem to have a discernible culture. Survivors of their attacks report hearing an eerie, high whine before being attacked.
Marauders have the ability to shift between Ethereal and Material Planes at will, but will take 1 round to do so. Their usual method of hunting is to lurk in the Ethereal Plane until appropriate prey shows itself, then quickly shift to the material plane to attack their victim there flat-footed, then to retreat back to the Ethereal Plane. They have darkvision and prefer to hunt at night.

 

What if this is actually just a class of beings? The three-pronged ones are just those that were seen by survivors. I bet the depths of the deep Ethereal could hold dozens of variations of this monster.

d10 Variations on the Æthereal Marauder

1. it’s the three-pronged velociraptor
2. it looks like the lichen covered skeleton of a triceratops man
3. it looks like a clown, but with a vertical mouth that goes all the way down the stomach
4. it’s a gestalt being made up of silver butterflies with razorsharp wings
5. it looks like a human statue, but only parts of it will appear in the Material Plane
6. it looks vaguely humanoid but has no face and elongated limbs
7. an ogre-sized goblin
8. a writhing mass of teethed tentacles
9. a jet-black figure that eyes won’t focus on
10. a neon-green praying mantis

State of the Crocodile

I logged in and WordPress tells me my last post was 9 months ago.

Sigh.

Did I mention we have a toddler now? I plan to rear a fledgling gamer over time, but right now he’s more interested in balloons and tractors. One of his favourite activities is going through the picture books we have, pointing out things, and asking what they are.

Tractors mostly, although he branched out to other vehicles lately, so I was able to learn a lot of names for vehicles I never thought I needed to know before.

Of course that means that gaming fell even more to the wayside than usual. For the last six months our group tried to meet up, but was hamstrung by multiple illnesses. Toddlers collect those like teenagers collect Pokémon I guess.

Even this entry was typed up on my phone one-handed while I was rocking the little one to sleep.

So what was I doing?

* Planned a Shadowrun scenario. Of course then I got sidetracked and decided to set it in the 2050s. And then I decided to make it a one shot. Haven’t gotten that far with it. I did read a few of the novels though

* Decided to make my own monster manual. One that includes roleplaying notes and variety tables for all monsters and clears up some of the unnecessary kludge in other manuals (do we really need half a dozen different entries for fish people?) .

* Decided to get some miniatures for my games. Gathered a variety of miniatures I collected over time. Even though I never used them in games I still accumulated a few dozen of them. Unfortunately my plans to get into painting them so far have also been hamstrung. Also tried to find some cheap ways to bulk out my collection and got way too serious with that.

Oh well. Don’t mind typos. This was written on the phone.