So we've been hearing a lot about slimy, tentacled creatures from beyond the veil. But what about the lovely monsters from the Victorian period like the Wolfman, Vampires, The Invisible Man, and Frankenstein? I find these monsters interesting as most of them could easily blend in with the colonists (in the case of the invisible man, be invisible) and strike at random, which makes them scary in their own right. Unlike Quag'garoth who is a giant air squid that shoots eye lasers and causes people to catch fire if they look at him, he's not good at blending in I suppose. Frankenstein and the Invisible Man could be caused by mad scientist types. The wolfman would be caused by being bitten by another werewolf and vampires would sneak in with colonists and a citizen could become one by drinking the blood of another vampire. Anyways yes, non-eldritched monsters thread go.
Horrors are made in people's unconscious, from things that scare them and their uncertainties. It would make sense that the imperialist settlers of Her Majesty's Fine Provence Of The Gloomy Bunch Of Mountains would make up their own 'pulsating mountain people' folklore, and the settlers of The Empire's Finest Murky Grass Plains would make up myths about the roaming sheep that looks like it's in the distance but when you come closer it isn't and when you want to go back to the colony you've lost the way and are doomed to serve the sheep's demonic herding gods till the end of time. I'd like there to be no conventional horrors from this time and age, if their existence can't be explained with the inside lore. Fishmen, Cannibals, Mad Tribesmen, Practitioners In The Way Of Electrickery, Eight-Legged Steamy Cogbots, Smokey Furnace Fiends, etc. would make sense to me, but I'd say an invisible man or wolfman would be kinda meh. But I guess that's just my opinion.
Well as far as far as conventional monsters there will be things like undead skeletons and stuff as seen from a preview picture, unless they removed it since then. Also I do kind of agree with you on the invisible man thing, as that would be utter hell trying to pick out and eliminate in a colony. The wolfman maybe not so much? There are ways they could make a werewolf pretty threatening and interesting as can a vampire. The reason I was asking about those was because they would keep a player on toes and could be an interesting part to creating stories. They can always connect vampires and werebeasts to followers of a specific eldritch thing also. Also who wouldn't want to see a colonial militia storm an aristocrat's manor and do battle with two or three super-human incorporeal, blood sucking undead?
This is a really neat idea. I mean, the classic movie monsters are so overdone in their movie form that we'd stay the heck away from playing them straight. One can imagine Gaslampian re-interpretations ...
I'm quite fond of the idea of showing classic movie monsters as actual threats, I'm also a bit of a zombie fan
Maybe even Frankensteam's monster? I think it was confirmed that your scientists could create an abomination of their own, though I'm not certain to what extent. It would be pretty fun to have rampaging steam-powered robots in your settlement. In my opinion, a Jekyll and Hyde kind of monster might be a better fit in the game than a wolfman.
I think we're forgetting a few key creatures; the brassilisk, the manticog, the gearyon. I'm sure there are many still missing from our codices
While I'm not adverse to the idea, I wonder... this game doesn;t actually take place on Earth, does it?
This is a cool idea; those naturists that had an awful fright from some local badger gets haunted by a ghoul feeding on their greatest fear the common badger; this could be hilarious based on the various fears characters might have!!
I don't think so? It takes place on some sort of alternate universe earth I guess. So there could be vampires and stuff, they would be, as DB above said, have "Gaslampian re-interpretations ..."
I'm not exactly sure if this is sarcasm or not, but these types of monsters could exist elsewhere. However my point was the classic monsters such as The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, Dracula, etc... wouldn't exist anywhere else but Earth.
I remember my first big colony in dwarf fortress being infested by a vampire. O the FUN trying to hammer the right one, only to discover more drysucked corpses later again. I still remember this even years later. Never got that sucker (pun intented). Still was one of my more memorable gaming experiences. So I am totaly in favor of infection-like monsters. If not vampires, then maybe some kind of parasite (there surely are some in the eldritch universe, right?) that alters the behavior of the human. Or maybe the human gets killed and replaced by a double or shapeshifter (I´m thinking something like body snatchers here).
I remember my vampire: after sucking two or three dwarven, it sucked the lifeblood of his fiancee: a legendary warrior. After that, I gave it warrior orders, it get a scratch from fighting some kind of wild beasts, and then when he went to hospital to be hospitalized (and maybe to suck my doctor's blood) I walled he. Alive. He survived many years just sleeping in his prison of stone walls and his bed. Until I got annoyed by him, then I channeled a magma river down his head. End of vampire in my fortress.
I think gorbax hit the nail on the head. Monsters should have a subtle or not so subtle naming scheme because everything in the empire is seen through 'cog-colored' glasses.