ChaosMonsters

The 11 Terrible Monsters of the Sea of Chaos

Qingu has a grain of sand for each monster, each encased in a pearl of a different color. He wears these pearls on a necklace. These monsters are not spirits, and they function closer to demons but nobody in Creation can have any control over them as if they were spirits or demons, since they are part of another Creation (the Sea of Chaos). Mechanically, they should be treated as corporeal beasts after they are summoned. They too take aggravated damage from iron and cannot soak it with their staminas (they can use natural armor for soak though, such as scales, etc.)

They also can't be killed. When their health levels are reduced to 0, they fade away into essence and return to their master's pearl. They heal inside the pearl at a rate of 1 health level of lethal per week (faster for bashing, slower for agg, of course). They fully recharge essence and willpower automatically when they are inside their pearls; the essence spent by the summoner in calling them supplies them their essence pools.

Qingu oftentimes lends these pearls to his servant-exalted cataphractoi. The summoner must be touching the pearl to summon. Summoning a monster is a simple action, and once summoned the monster generally takes between 1 and 3 additional turns to materialize onto the battlefield. Summoning costs a lot--at least 1 willpower and 10x the monster’s essence score in motes. (The monster’s essence pool is 10x their essence score). Summoning a monster will drain a baptized fae of most of their essence.

Banishing a monster is a simple action and costs nothing. The monster gets sucked back into the pearl instantly like a vacuum. It is at the Storyteller’s discretion as to whether or not player-characters who get their hands on these summoning pearls can summon the monsters themselves. I believe doing so is within game balance but would certainly alter the mechanics of the overall game. A summoned monster fight sounds pretty damn cool to me, though. It might be a lot of fun to let a player control a summoned monster or two. Some monsters might be less amenable to this than others. For example, Jabojogund is stubborn and will serve anyone who is nice to him; Bahamut will probably willingly serve only those who are stronger than him, etc.

Monsters can only be summoned for a scene; after that, they vanish and swirl back into their pearl. This means that Qingu can’t summon Lahamu and ride around Creation at 120 miles per hour whenever he wants.

The only way to truly destroy a monster is to submit its grain of sand to conditions of ultimate stasis or reality. The monsters are products of chaos, so throwing their pearls into one of the elemental poles or channeling powerful sorcery on a manse will destroy them forever.

They do vary widely in power, but almost none of them can be defeated with brute force -- they all require strategy to kill. Feel free to invent your own stats, or your own monsters. Inspiration for these creatures comes from the Babylonian Enuma Elish and Final Fantasy games, as well as The Neverending Story for one in particular.

Here are the names of the monsters.

1. Lahamu (7 essence): the most powerful of the summoned monsters, and comparable to a fetich demon. She is an enormous four-winged crystal-scaled creature that looks like a cross between a dragon, a huge bird and an airplane.

2. Bahamut (6 essence): a large black and purple dragon with an even larger wingspan.

3. Lotan (5 essence): a very long purple and green serpent, as wide as a man is tall, that can hover in midair and turn into water.

4. Akpi (5 essence): an exceedingly large ram with healing powers.

5. Grograman (4 essence): a lion that is perpetually ensconced in different-colored flames.

6. Jabojogund (4 essence): a large floating fish surrounded by a bubble of water and lightning.

7. Naj (4 essence): a bunch of animated coral reef.

8. Ipogu (3 essence): a scorpion man.

9. Iksos (3 essence): a very fat 3-headed water buffalo that breathes lightning, fire and ice.

10. Uquoyin (3 essence): a shark ninja with four arms and several weapons.

11. Maranuk (3 essence): a huge blue-black tornado.

Here is the text I got the inspiration from. I'll write the numbers next to the names so you can tell how they match up:

She (Tiamat) hath set up vipers (3), and dragons (2), and the monster Lahamu (1),\\ And hurricanes (11), and raging hounds (5), and scorpion-men (8),\\ And mighty tempests (6), and fish-men (10), and rams (4);\\ They bear merciless weapons, without fear of the fight.

Of course, the stupid Enuma Elish only identifies 9 monsters, and vaguely so, even though the gods are always bitching about how Tiamat has ELEVEN terrible monsters ... so I just made up two of them. Coral reef seemed fitting, and what's a group of demons without the ever-present water buffalo?

All monsters, like the fae, take agg damage from iron weapons and cannot soak them with their staminas. Natural armor soak still works, though.

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