Friday, January 13, 2012

Negamorph (Mythos Future)


Ancient beings composed of oily, black matter, the Negamorphs arrived on Earth millennia ago and have bided their time in the deep, dark places beneath the more populous regions of the crust and especially in the lightless caverns of N'Kai, part of the emanatory underworld unique to this planet.

Negamorphs shapechange at will. They can assume any shape that they can imagine, but are always glossy, slick, black and seamless. As a default, Negamorphs will assume a spherical form that hovers just above the surface of the dark, loathsome pools of sathlic-matter and other forms of proto-effluvia in their chosen caverns, though others, especially the immature specimens will slop and slosh around the various channels and shallow canals cut through-out the transterrestrial underworld realm of N'Kai by some unknown previous species. (Indexed Yaddithian databases hint that it might have been a splinter-group of Polyps who carved the various narrow, winding gouges in the artificially-flattened floors of this place, possibly for obscure religious observances or worse.)

They are immune to vacuum, hard-space, and can hibernate/go dormant for centuries. Their telekinetic levitation capability can be focused and used to travel through space at sub-luminal speeds, and it is also capable of being used to propel crude missile weapons at opponents, but they rarely need to resort to that sort of thing. All Negamorphs possess the knowledge and means to formulate a N'Kai Drive from within themselves, giving them personal-level starflight capability. But it is a demanding, dedicated effort to form a functional and internalized N'Kai Drive, and they can only attempt this highly intricate effort while focusing entirely and completely on just this one task for 1d6 months..

Spaceborne Negamorphs are violently opposed to Shoggoths and Polyps both, and they will attack either of these sorts of entities upon noticing them. No one is certain how Negamorphs sense or perceive anything as it has yet to be discovered and documented.

Negamorphs have explored the Sol system extensively, and have long-standing religio-political affiliation with various Tsathic entities.

It is alleged and suspected that the Negamorph originated on Kythamil / Kythanil, a double-planet orbiting Arcturus.

Negamorph
(Predatory Preformative Polymorphs)
No. Enc.: 1d2 (1d4)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 120' (Psychic Levitation)
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 8
Attacks: 1 (Extended Glob, Psychic Power or Spell)
Damage: 2d8 or see note
Save: L10
Morale: 10 (-8 penalty when confronted with Elder Sign Variant 1)
Hoard Class: n/a


Special: Natural Spell-Use at level equal to HD, Telepathy (range 100 miles) at will, Shapechange at will, Levitate at will, Telekinesis twice per day per HD, Form N'Kai Drive once per hundred years. Gain 1 random Psychic Power or spell per HD.



Mythos Source: Negamorphs were inspired by the Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua as mentioned in The Mound, a short story ghost-written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1929-30 based on a one-sentence premise by Zealia Bishop: "There is an Indian mound near here, which is haunted by a headless ghost. Sometimes it is a woman." HPL did NOT like Bishop's premise, so he went to town and drafted a nearly 30,000-word story that delivered quite a lot more than Zealia Bishop ever expected. You can read The Mound at the H. P. Lovecraft Archives. It was also serialized at the Space Westerns site. It remains one of our personal favorite Top Five Mythos Tales...and an essential source of inspiration for our Mythos Future projects. The Formless Spawn also appeared in Clark Ashton Smith's excellent The Tale of Satampra Zeiros in 1931, which you can read at The Eldritch Dark.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, awesome creature! This creature can bring down no small amount of unholy hell on a group of players. Bad ass, great monster!

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  2. Thanks! The Negamorphs make a ferocious contrast to the Shoggoths in particular. Both are shape-changers, but where the Shoggs will sometimes mimic humanity, the Negamorphs have no interest in lower order species--unless constrained or bound by spells or tech-objects to serve...and that's just a wicked disaster waiting to happen...

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