BONUS MONSTER 17:

Abominable Iceghast
FHTAGUIN

CLASS: VAMPIRE (Desiccator)

Free, additional supplementary monsters for the Mortasheen Tabletop RPG Core Rulebook, created by Jonathan Wojcik, additional writing and all gameplay stats by Bonnie Saucier. For use with the gameplay system by Morgan Mullins!






"Day 3,917. We've finally secured a willing donor and patron for our experiment. A Greef count in the Sluckways calling themselves the Rook has taken an interest in the study of archaeoanthropology and believes that our project to reach the vaults in the great northern tundra could be of assistance to them. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a fruitful partnership. We begin drafting tomorrow."
-Project Safecracker Logs, "Pivotal Moment"

Description:
This monster is a huge, white, eyeless penguin with a radial body. Long, shaggy down hides its legs. It has four wings arranged around its body and lined with long, spiny feathers. Its head points skyward with four serrated black beaks.

BIOLOGY:
The creation of engineered Vampires is nearly unheard of, due to not only the delicate complexity of their virally augmented genome, but the violent reaction it triggers in "natural" vampires, which may even coerce, sabotage, derail, or exterminate those who would experiment with their dna; a territorial revulsion seemingly born from their drive to maintain delicate balance with their prey sources. Nevertheless, on occasion an individual madman will slip under the radar or, even more rarely, a single powerful Vampire will grant its permission for experimentation and cow other, weaker Vampires into noninterference. Even with all these factors accounted for, these experiments are rarely successful. The unstable results only further discourage the creation of artificial Vampires, and less than a dozen distinct artifical Vampire species exist today. Even with all these factors accounted for, the delicate nature of the genome makes these experiments rarely successful. The unstable results only further discourage the creation of artificial Vampires, and less than a dozen distinct artifical Vampire species exist today.



  The Fhtaguin is one such case, derived from the voracious flesh-eating penguins of the Northern tundra, combining their physiology with a variety of marine organisms from echinoderms to polychaetes in an effort to engineer the perfect bioweapon for frozen semiaquatic environments. Lacking an esophagus altogether, it drains blood through the needle-tipped papillae lining its beaks, and as a desiccator vampire it vents most moisture content almost immediately. Its ambient psychokinetic field sustains a gravitational vortex that steadily dissipates thermal energy, resulting in a perpetual flurry of often red-stained ice crystals that whirl around its body like a localized blizzard.

  The monster reproduces by splitting in two, but exhibits strong maternal instincts in the presence of retronatural penguins, which in turn flock to and defer to it. It resists feeding on the diminutive dinosaurs at all costs, instead hunting marine life such as cetaceans or subaquatic monsters, leaving the blood-drained flesh for its "family" to swarm over.

BEHAVIOR:
Remaining records indicate that the Fhtaguin was intended to neutralize the flesh-eating penguin swarms that render much of the Northern tundra impenetrable to exploration, but exhibited psychological instability unfortunately typical of engineered or modified Vampiric life. The first known specimens seem to have quickly turned on their creators as they "adopted" feral retropenguins, and have since only rendered the tundra more hazardous than ever before.

  A Fhtaguin is more than intelligent enough to communicate fluently, but shows no interest in doing so, and mental communication reveals a bizarre mentality alien to even its fellow vampires. It can be familiarized with enough care, but should be kept away from the Tundra or any other hypothetical populations of its retrofaunal ancestors, as it will interpret feral penguins as "calling" upon it and always prioritize their well being over all other lifeforms.

Concept Notes:

This replaces the old "Ithaguin," a bioconstruct that just looked too ordinary; a design that would now have been statted as mutated wildlife rather than a full fledged monster. I usually heavily avoid references to Lovecraft since they're so played out, but the "albino penguins" are one of my favorite things in Lovecraft; especially how something innately so cute is presented as something so eerie and uncanny in At the Mountains of Madness. This new design even borrows the radiating symmetry of the Elder Things from the same story, though its nature as an uncontrollable, renegade biocreation reflects the Shoggoths they created.

As I begin to run thinner on time and energy, the artwork for this one is the quickest and sloppiest yet, and most of the month's remaining entries may even be drawn with plain old paper and pencil before they're digitally colored!

Additional note from Bonnie: Note from Bonnie for origins: This iteration of Ithaguin is heavily inspired by old old documents wherein in the hypothetical videogame Mortasheen, Vampires condensed their HP and MP bar into a single blood bar that was damaged, spent, and recovered so that it fluctuated throughout the battle. The Desiccators originally had a core feature that was also inspired by this ability, but that core feature eventually became the [SPOUT] block and was replaced with Suck Em Dry.


GAMEPLAY BLOCK:

WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT THIS SITE!

MORE: