write-ups Character Gallery

[Killer Shrike]

This thread is a place to post characters intended for use in the Here There Be Monsters setting. The Here There Be Monsters site has pages for Iconics and NPC's, and individual Vignettes have links to characters particular to that adventure, but as I create new characters for ongoing adventures or when the whim strikes I don't always take the extra time to splice them into the site. 

 

Additionally, other people can use this thread to propose new characters for the setting, which I hope at least a few people will take advantage of. 

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

Neil Fell, Ghoul Wrangler

 

Neil Fell is a well known hunter, particularly in the northeast of the United States. He's known to be especially skilled at killing ghouls and similar lesser undead, but he's got several kills of more significant types of monsters on his resume. He comes from a long line of farmers and mountain folk, practical survivors and salt of the earth, and a heritage of old folk magic handed down from mother to daughter, father to son for generations. While learned wizards and mystics of more academic backgrounds may sneer or scoff at the limited homespun magic of these people, there is power in it all the same. Neil never planned to become a professional Monster Hunter, but a few lean years on the farm and threat of bank repossession forced him to get creative over a decade ago. Neil has survived many a harrowing hunt since then, and made a name for himself. Now he gets called in by several groups of hunters around the country to assist on hunts whenever his particular skills might be helpful.

 

 

* first posted in the Dark Champions forum back in February

[Killer Shrike]

Melissa McBrien...dubbed "old lady Cthulhu face" by a certain player, a creepy possible addition to a party of Monster Hunters.

 

Melissa is descended from one of the various Elder Thing tainted bloodlines. She physically appears normal from the outside (most of the time), but an autopsy would reveal that her physiology is inhuman and disturbing. Those with supernatural senses also recognize her as being of Elder Thing origins. From a practical perspective she is incredibly durable, not invulnerable but very difficult to injure, and her mind and body are resistant to external manipulation. When her true nature is revealed, one or more high-tensile strength tentacles can emerge from her body, primarily from her mouth. This effect is disturbing, and causes psychological damage to many who observe it.

 

 

* first posted in the Dark Champions forum back in May.

[Killer Shrike]

Garrett

 

Garret is a pro at this Hunting thing, and he takes that very seriously. He makes a determined effort to do everything as professionally as possible. He does not tolerate loose cannons or by-the-seat-of-their-pants Hunters on his team, and does not like working with other groups of undisciplined Hunters. Garrett leads a relatively large team of Hunters, and runs a tight ship. His team has formal and oft-practiced standard operating procedures which focus heavily on containment first and enforcement second. He's well liked by Section M as a result, with a long track record of discretely handling incidences, and his crew is often preferentially sent mid-sized problems or called in to take over from less mindful Hunters who have allowed a situation to spin a bit out of control. However, his team is not currently set up to handle the higher end of the spectrum of supernatural threats; the group was previously led by a competent field wizard named Donnovan, but he was killed on a Hunt and no one else on the team has an equivalent skill set. Thus, like it or not, Garrett sometimes has to tolerate working with one or more outsiders who can provide the necessary esoteric abilities to solve a particular problem.

 

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

SAIC William "Billy" Harker

 

A farm boy from Kansas, Billy joined the Army at 17 and ended up in the Green Berets his second tour. Did his action in the Gulf and Somalia. Got too close to a grenade but survived it relatively unharmed if you ignore the serious scar tissue on his back. Finished up his tour debriefing specfor teams in an intelligence function. Exited the military and got a degree in Law Enforcement from a two year community college via the GI Bill then followed that up with another two years at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York to get a Criminology degree, finally cycled in to become an FBI agent at Quantico. He was marked for Section M service early due to his combat skills and experience, and he soon proved himself as an capable and reliable field agent, able to get things done even (particularly!) under extreme pressure. Over many years of successes and just the one notable fuck up (do not mention Waco, TX around Harker...just don't), he rose through the ranks of Section M and became one of the handful of Special Agents In Charge within the Section. Harker takes care of the dirty business...situations in which a violent resolution is a foregone conclusion and his particular gift for militarily precise operations is called for. One thing is for sure: Harker gets results...the kind with a body count and some collateral damage attached.

 

Harker is one of the last of the old guard, from the previous era when most of the serious field work was undertaken by Section M Agents rather than the current organizational preference to rely on Hunters for most of the heavy lifting and instead having Agents handle the administrative side of things. Harker is pragmatic vs "by the book", may or may not stick to the letter of Accords Law depending upon the optics, and tends to have a heavy hand with a preference for "final solutions". Over the years his role within Section M has evolved into more or less operating like a Black Ops team lead, doing things off-book. He has a black budget to retain the services of small team of talented Hunters and assets on an as-needed basis, and he leads these teams to actively seek out repeat offenders, individuals in permanently sanctioned categories, and "most wanted" targets. Various threats that have just sort of disappeared from the face of the Earth over the years? Many of them were quietly and secretly scratched by Harker and his revolving roster of hard hitters.

 

Harker has a lot of pull and can be a potent mentor or ally for a young Hunter, but a recent fumble in L.A. has cost him some political capital, and he's nearing retirement...he's on his way out. He's still got one or two big Hunts left in him though and with nothing to lose career wise there's little limit to how far he's willing to take things.

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

Special Agent Benjamin Matthews

 

Ben Matthews grew up in Minneapolis, went to a Big 10 university, got a degree in Criminal Psychology, and joined the FBI...just like his dad who had served 30 years in the bureau without ever firing a pistol and retired with a golden watch. Determined to make his father proud, Ben gave 110% every day at Quantico, and succeeded in standing out...unfortunately for him it got him noticed by Section M and he was earmarked to be trialed into the highly secretive group via the sneaky mechanism used to recruit normal agents with no previous supernatural experience...put them on ridealongs on low-level stuff with an agent getting close to retirement and see how they handle themselves when things start to get weird. If they handle it well, the heat gets turned up a bit and they get sent out on cases of increasing weirdness until the prospective recruit finally encounters something obviously supernatural, survives it, and doesn't lose their mind or wig out.

For Ben that happened on his fourth case. He'd been increasingly disconcerted by the oddness of his first few cases, but on his fourth he came into full contact with a shapechanger, and actually witnessed a form change directly. There was no explaining that away, and his mentor / partner Agent Lake finally started to educate him on how things really are in the world.

 

Ben was sent back to Quantico and began Section M's training program. A decade later, he was regarded as one of the brightest of the "new breed" of Section M Agents, with a focus more on managing Hunters and special assets to get things done rather than conducting field investigations directly, a trend the old guard of more action-oriented Section M Agents are not happy about. In recognition of his managerial skill and trustworthiness, Ben was promoted to Special Agent and assigned to run a brand new secluded facility outside of Riverside, California. He's been successful in that role for going on five years now. He also met and married the woman of his dreams, and started a family. The last five years were good for Special Agent Matthews and his facility was referred to as an example of how to do things properly within the Section. Then SAIC Harker and one of his black bag teams fouled everything up with a secret operation against a Master Vampire's coterie in the Greater L.A. area resulted in an unprecedented all out assault on the facility Matthews managed. The attack was repulsed, but with great loss of life. Ben himself was injured protecting the Vault, in which many powerful artifacts and things best left untouched are stored. In the aftermath, the facilities location was obviously compromised, and the higher ups decided to shut it down.

 

Agent Matthews is still in charge of the mothballing and migration of the resources within the facility to other locations, having been found to be blameless in the debacle...in fact he received a commendation for his efforts and injury in the line of duty. It remains to be seen what his next assignment will be in the aftermath once the facility is fully shuttered.

 

[Killer Shrike]

Voodoo Zombies

 

Non-infectious "slow" zombies of the sort created by voudons by raising corpses, these animated undead are surprisingly durable and frightening...but with a classic vulnerability to head shots. Containment is usually easy for a team of Hunters that know what they are doing, but beware of whatever other nasty tricks the voudon doubtlessly lurking nearby might have up their sleeves.

 

[Killer Shrike]

Guede Loa

 

A Guede Loa is a formless and invisible extra-dimensional entity with the power to possess a willing or unwilling host. Technically a form of "possessor daemon", unlike most daemonic entities a Guede Loa isn't necessarily malefic, tending to be quirky and mischievous instead. However, Guede Loa's typically don't seek to exist in the material plane; those encountered are almost invariably summoned by a mystic and bound to serve their summoner's will for a period of time and thus are generally acting as ordered. Guede Loas have the ability to know things that their current host knows, typically having access to all basic knowledge of the host and potentially might have awareness of more specific, advanced, esoteric, or distantly remembered knowledge. This often enables them to fool those who know the host, making them insidious infiltrators. Those possessed by a Guede Loa usually retain no memory of what occurred while they were possessed, though a Guede Loa can choose to allow a host to remember scenes or the entire episode if they wish. 

 

[Killer Shrike]

Darryl Sharpe aka "Baron Kriminel"

 

A powerful bokor, capable of things traditionally associated with Voodoo as well as other higher order mystical workings, Darryl is a skilled practitioner and not someone to be trifled with. Despite the bias and assumptions of others, he is not intrinsically evil, nor is he good. He exists in the grey space between. He has somehow managed to avoid getting sanctioned, despite the gruesomeness of his style of magic, mostly by being very careful and deliberately walking the razors edge of what is and is not covered by the Accords. 

 

Many have claimed to kill him or reported witnessing his death, but he somehow always comes back. Within the community of Voodoo practitioners, it is commonly held that he is an incarnation of the entity called Baron Kriminel, but whether this is true or not is difficult to determine.

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

Slip

 

Slip is a powerful vampire with a bit too much ego than is healthy, suffering from delusions of grandeur. He is hungry for power and recognition, and has openly begun to make a play to either carve out his own territory to lord over or to perhaps even overthrow the areas reigning master. He can be quite dangerous to a group of Hunters...particularly if they are not prepared for a vampire fight. However, his desire for stature makes him more of threat to his own kind than to Hunters, as his sloppiness in making new vampires in a bid at empire building and not carefully controlling their early excesses has opened the door for another vampire purge to descend upon the area.

 

Slip's signature abilities take the form of subtly affecting the emotions and minds of others, particularly via social interactions. His personality seems larger than life, and he can sway a crowd just as easily as terrify them, with nothing more than sheer presence. He also of course has all the standard Vampire abilities (such as Vampire Boost, fangs, etc) and weaknesses.

 

[Killer Shrike]

Julian and Julietta

 

A brother and sister Vampire duo of a `bloodline` typified by incredible superhuman strength and durability but also suffering from monstrous looking features when their superhuman abilities are in use. Though far more potent than the average vampire, they are both simple soldiers by intellect and inclination, operating as effective heavies for the area's master vampire.

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

Marcus

 

Marcus is an elder vampire with powerful stealth abilities. Fast, silent, and deadly, he nevertheless prefers to deal with things indirectly, avoiding open conflict. He is neither cowardly nor brave...he is at essense "pragmatic"; he does what makes the most sense in the moment. He will not risk his immortal existence when a plan starts to unravel, believing that the smart play is to regroup and come back with a better plan when least expected. He serves ably as a trusted trouble shooter and lieutenant for the area's master vampire, possessing intelligence and discretion.