CYTHRONS (from 2000AD's Slaine) - Monster for Old School Fantasy & Horror

 

Glenn Fabry.

The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property. (Charles Fort)

AC Unarmoured   HD 6+3 or 8+4    Movement 100% Normal Human    Morale 11

Time-travelling humanoid alien demons that inhabit Cythraul, a hell-dimension that is in fact the Earth millions of years before the appearance of earthly life. Imprisoned (in space, but crucially not in time) after losing a cosmic war, they are analogues in Slaine's world for the Great Old Ones and Old Ones/Elder Things.

They feed on the energy produced by human emotion, especially the negatives ones. As well as food, this energy can be harnessed towards the goal of awakening the dead/sleeping High Cythrons and freeing themselves from the Earth.

Alignment: We're nothing but stupid animals to them. Some of them like hurting us more than others. Some keep us (or merely a scrap) as pets. Mostly we're raw materials.

Three-way alignment, they're Chaotic, I suppose; nine-ways, they're a mix of Lawful and Neutral Evil - possibly representing the organic farmers (millions of year alien conspiracy) vs. the battery farmers (full-scale alien invasion).

Dexterity, Intelligence and Strength: min.12 in each; 13/15/13 min. array for 8+4 HD Cythrons.

Roll d6+12 for exceptional individuals. Modifiers as for stat/system.

Innate resistances: Half or no damage from cold, electricity and normal fire.

They are immune to acid, poison (inc. gas)/venom and the related abilities of jellies, oozes and slimes. These are variously cleansing, refreshing and therapeutic to Cythrons - they enjoy them.

Unless specially made, their armour, equipment and garments do not share any or all of these resistances.

And they hate it, spoils a good abduction.

Weapons and Armour: swords, axes, spears and pole arms of various levels of sci-fantasy sophistication but really anything they/you want, including their bare hands (prolonging their victory so they can feed on your desperate fear, puny mortal).

Can use leyser weapons (sci-fantasy magical energy weapons - swords, pistols, cannons) but - from the comics- favour minions, hand-weapons and optical leyser beams (see below).

Cythron Power Suit: the wearer look like a sci-fantasy ancient astronaut insect-skeleton stormtrooper (see above). Often look like ancient images/descriptions of deities.

• As protective as chainmail, as encumbering as leather.
• Activated by thought control:
•  +5 bonus to AC* and saves vs. all attack forms, protection from normal missiles, resist cold, resist fire.
• Non-Cythrons will need to be instructed or experiment in order to use the suits as more than passive protection, but even a brutal and unimaginative barbarian will find it easy enough.
• 8+4 HD Cythrons get the added benefit of protection from mortals - immunity to non-magical attacks from 0 to 3rd level characters. 
• Optical leysers: 2 beams per round for 2-12 hits, plus save vs. stun (1-4 rounds). Electricity or energy immunity works against the stun effect. Ranged touch attack, adjusted for cover (including shields).
• Fly as a glowing energy ball. I'm going to rule that you can travel through any non-solid medium without ill-effect in this state.
• Additional weight/living beings can be carried. In the comics, a Cythron abducts Nest (female human druid), and Slaine rescues both Tlachtga (female human fighter) and Ukko (male dwarf thief).
• Non-Cythrons need to concentrate while doing this. Double-ones on 2d6 you botch landing/re-entry and materialise in an occupied space. 
• I suggest contested saves to see who survives if it's a living being. If it's an object, roll, argue or judge to see if you have the reflexes and wit to turn back into energy and rescue yourself (still take a critical wound worth of damage). 

If one was to come onto the mortal market, it would as likely trigger an actual war as it would a bidding war.

It's sufficiently advanced technology that it's indistinguishable from magic. How it interacts with magic (and dispel magic) is up to you and your setting/system.

* Can stack with the passive protection, because I've based the Cythron power suit mechanics on Oard technology. However, I'd make protection from mortals the main effect and only use the higher AC bonus - but that's because I'm a low-armour kind of fellow.

Communication (8+4 HD only) with anything that has equal or lower species-average Intelligence than they do.

This is a universal translator ability, but they can also use telepathy - especially with minions.

Cythrons invented Common, and then took it away as a joke/punishment (symbolised in the Tower of Babel). 

The 6+3 HD Cythrons have a lesser and non-telepathic ability to speak with anything that has a language (within the range given above).

See Aura (8+4 HD only): As well as your emotional state they can easily determine your alignment, experience level and whether you are under a curse/spell. They will not be fooled (or not long fooled) by (human) disguise, polymorph or invisibility. 

The ability is a biological function and blocked by things that would foil normal vision. I'm going to say this includes magical darkness. In fog and smoke, they can probably tell you have an aura, but not the specifics.

What Was Left Out.

The Guledig (Praise Be His Name!) and the High Cythrons (Cthulhuvian in their nine-dimensional glory).

Myrddin, sired on a human mother by the Guledig, and by implication, other half-Cythrons.

The niceties of the bio-welder and the organic blender. 

Cythrons can re-make living things, for amusement and for utility. Reskin any monster as various forms of Orgot (organic-robot). AD&D Mongrelmen and Broken Ones/Shattered Brethren serve as abandoned experiments and grotesque pets. All these things are, at some level, human.

Cythron regeneration. Only one featured Cythron does this (three times, shedding its skin as it does so and extruding sucking tentacles). Slaine claims it was feeding on his energy, but he doesn't seem to suffer for it.

Cythrons vs. charm etc. As Nest is able to use the Talisman of Venus to charm the Cythron, Oeahoo, so at least the 6+3 HD Cythrons are not immune to mind-affecting magic.

How this translates to a D&D-ish system is up to you, but a quick rule could be that 8+4 HD Cythrons are immune (so Knuckles the Medium can't charm Pseudo-Osiris) and the 6+3 need two castings and to fail both saves.

Relationship to the Laws of Macrocosm - acts of so-called Good and Evil tip the balance in favour of the other side. A game of rock-paper-scissors in which you have to tell your opponent what you're going to play, and the least worst way to win is for nobody to take a turn.

Earth Power. There's at least two (1) (2) Slaine rpgs, so there's rules out there you could crib.

Commentary.

I stopped regularly reading 2000AD after the first part of The Horned God (early 1990s - switched to Fortean Times), and tended to re-read the earlier stuff in the time since (stuff I actually owned) - with the first part of Time Killer being one of the gaps in my collection.

Because it's a lot easier to access nowadays, I've speed-read c. 40 years of Slaine recently and that's the spark that lit the where's-the-Slaine-old-school-homebrew tinder. 

I can see why the Time Killer/Tomb of Terror arc wasn't remembered fondly, comparing it to what came before and (some) of what came after. Maybe the story/worldbuilding suffers because it's an episodic comic strip, put together week-to-week? I don't think the dungeon-crawl role-playing game tie-in did it any favours, either.

BUT: I was always able to squeeze a lot of juice out of it, and Glenn Fabry's art is great.

If this exercise wasn't about the Cythrons, then you could use/reskin Oards.

If you think they're a little bit low-powered for god-like beings, then graft on some later-edition types & sub-types (Aberration and Outsider?) onto them, maybe give them a d12 Hit Dice into the bargain.

Ian Sturrock did a piece on leyser weapons and Cythron characters (+2 Strength, +2 Wisdom, -4 Charisma, +4 bonus when making magical attacks) for the d20 Slaine rpg.