We are happy to announce the winners of our community creature creation competition. The following three creatures you'll see in the Acheron Core Rulebook!
We had a lot of amazing submissions and just narrowing them down to the top five was hard enough. A huge thank you to everyone who participated, it was a ton of fun! I can't wait to see the images of the winning submissions.
Morphices are often the result of botched rituals in which the Mystic was attempting to summon a greater being from the Spirit realm. The Morphisces has a body of amorphous, watery, levitating fluid five cubic feet in volume, with five small, fishlike bodies suspended inside of it. A mindless manifestation without malice it will seek out and engulf random, small objects which possess emotional significance to humans, gradually transmogrifying the object into another one of its internal fish-bodies and growing more fluid mass allowing consumption of larger objects. Depending on the emotional state of its observers, the spirit’s fluid body may gain additional properties, and the size and species of the fish-like bodies inside may change.
The Morphisces is an emotional mirror to those around it, responding to outside influence in kind. People who both understand the Morphisces and can control their emotions have the ability to manipulate them quite easily. However, the Morphisces incredible sense of emotional undercurrents makes this quite difficult for all but the most stoic individuals. The only way to kill this Spirit is to destroy each of the individual fishlike bodies inside of it. Upon doing so the fluid evaporates, and each fish-body inside will transmogrify back into the object it originally was.
At a young age the Corvus-Carnem appears as an adolescent crow. However, a purple hue at the base of their feathers and rows of canine like teeth set them apart upon close inspection. As they feed and age the Corvus-Carnem becomes easily recognized as it integrates features of what it consumes into itself. Slowly it transforms into either an unrecognizable monstrosity, or a highly efficient hunting machine, until full maturity where the creature gains a semblance of sentience and intelligence, whereupon it learns to morph and hide most of its diverse features until they are needed.
The intelligence of the Corvus-Carnem should not be underestimated and is its greatest strength, even beyond its ability to easily adapt to most situations. Often, the environment of the Corvus-Carnem defines its features and typical prey. However, they will generally choose a new type of prey over typical fare. This is likely to absorb the preys' features for a greater wealth of transformative options in the future. Luckily the strength of the Corvus-Carnem is also its weakness. Being so intelligent seems to keep it from integrating fully with any pack, flock, or herd. It also never hides all its various transformative features, allowing a keen-eyed hunter to pick them out from a group.
The Hivemind is an experiment gone either very wrong or very right. These spider-like automatons are controlled by brains in vats of saline, linked by some sort of seismograph-like “vibrometer” on the front of the creature. Ultimately a fusion of physical minds, Soulmender memory bank, and a Neuromancer controller, it seems as if these constructs were originally designed to be observers of the supernatural as they had no direct consciousness, with only the Neuromancer controller brain retaining some sort of conscious thought. However, it is unknown if this is a single person’s mind resolving above the noise of the others, or a hive-mind consciousness brought about due to the fusion of Soulmender memories, many brains, and a Neuromancy-capable mind linking them all. Most believe the second hypothesis, leading to the Hivemind’s name. There are two forms of these creatures, the multi-node which is directly linked to a Neuromancy-capable brain and the uni-node which is a mind wired into a vibrometer directly but still slaved to a Neuromancy-capable brain.
It seems that the Hivemind seeks out sensory input, goading and tormenting humans into fits, killing them in the most painful ways possible, or attempting to integrate them into the Hivemind. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the vibrometer is so sensitive to all input only great tumult can stimulate the minds. Luckily, these creatures seem to be few and are easily killed. The vibrometer can also be overstimulated, most simply with sound, to disrupt the Hivemind for a time. They also seem to avoid electricity, though the reason for this is unknown at this time. While they are easily dealt with singularly, they are not to be underestimated in a group as the multi-node can splice into ones mind and drive them mad.
