The Big Villains Thread

Games Sentinel Comics RPG
481

Villain of the Day:  October 5 (The Night Marchers)

It seemed like a paradise.  The remote Seashells resort seemed like the perfect honeymoon getaway for Rob and Cheryl:  the resort featured individual bungalows, none in sight of the other, but each featuring their very own hot tub (complete with privacy shades).  IT seemed like the perfect place for romance and relaxation.

Then the drums started.  The Night Marchers had arrived.  By sunrise, not one soul at Seashells was left alive.

Arcanists have known of the Night Marchers for centuries.  The spirits of ancient Polynesian warriors, interred in seaside temple platforms known as marae, would travel the seas, protecting their decendents from spiritual threats.  At night, the ancient Polynesians could hear the approach of the Night Marchers from the sound of echoing drums, which called these warriors back from beyond the veil to defend their decendents.  Hawaiian legends tell of ghost ships breaking colonist blockades or ta moko-clad warriors swarming over would-be conquerors.

However, with the deaths at Seashells resort, it has become evident to many that something has gone terribly wrong.  And, if several arcanists are to be believed, the fault lies with Gloomweaver.

Something dire seems to have happened during what's referred to now as the Skinwalker event, as the ancient Voodoo demon took on the form of The Rotting God, bringing back corpse after living corpse, devouring anything in its wake.  However, the sudden surge in necromantic energy pierced the veil between life and death, sundering the usual life cycle that governs existence.  Typically benign spirits went mad; meanwhile, long-banished spirits pour into the waking world each day, often resulting in new occult threats across the world.

In the case of the Night Marchers, the necromantic surged caused the Night Marchers to turn from protection towards outright vengeance.  Any not of their own bloodline become a target, bodies smashed by spectral clubs and slashed with ghostly ritual knives.

Unfortunately, if this theory proves true, only one solution seems evident:  Lifeline believes that a blood magic ritual could be used to return the Night Marchers to their true state.  Unfortunately, magic always has a cost...and someone will have to pay for their power.

482

Villain of the Day: October 6 (The Tooth Fairies)

What was once a childhood tradition of loose teeth and nighttime dollars in our reality reflected a much darker truth in another reality.

In the days of mighty Thule, where arcane power flowed like wine through the halls of the wealthy and powerful, the creatures known as Tooth Fairies borderlined upon a plague. Underclass sorcerers often made a living hunting and exterminating these and other beasties, rooting out nests and putting these creatures to the torch.

Tooth Fairies, when fully grown, are insectile creatures, much resembling what we might call a cicada larvae, though assembling in great hives that often can exceed 5 feet in diameter. However, only adult tooth fairies live in the hive.

To lay their eggs, tooth fairies seek out mammalian hosts. When the host sleeps, the fairy enters the hosts mouth and devours a single tooth, numbing the area as it eats with a secreted anaesthetic saliva. The fairy then lays a compound egg sac in the socket of the devoured tooth, which quickly crystallizes. Oftentimes, a victim may only think that they have chipped a tooth or such, not realizing they are a host until it is too late.

The eggs lay dormant for approximately 21 days before hatching into a swarm of tiny worms. Those fairy larva then proceed to devour the host’s remaining teeth before bursting forth from the host’s ruined, bleeding mouth to seek outthe nearest fairy hive.

Thusfar, oddly two such hives have been found in our reality, but the sheer number of fairies in each hive certainly brooks concern in arcane corners. The influence of lost Thule upon our reality seems to continue, unabated…

483

Villain of the Day:  October 7 (The Myers Hill Charnel Pit)

It seemed like a fine idea at the time.

In the days of the Civil War, the Myers Hill Hospital served as a Union surgical outpost along the Ohio River.  Used primarily as a recovery site, Myers Hill swiftly gained something of a gruesome reputation.

You see, as a surgical hospital, Myers Hill became one of the main locations for surgical amputation for both the Union forces and for their Confederate captures.  The four-floor hospital sat over a large hollow.  So high was the volume of amputations necessary after the battles of Bradenburg Crossing, Corydon, and Morgan's Raid, that the surgeons were said to be seen throwing the amputated limbs out of the hospital windows, down into the hollow, so that they could move onto the next patient and bury the limbs en masse.

And, that's exactly what happened.  Leg after shattered leg, arm after mangled arm were pitched wholesale into the Myers Hollow for nearly three weeks, with surgeons working round the clock to save the lives of what soldiers they could.  As hospital wagon trains made their way to the hospital gates, caravanners claimed that the smell of the rotting limbs in Myers Hollow stunk like death itself, and that they could occasionally see something squirming down below, as if some animal had tunnelled down into the mound of flesh to feed.  But, given the urgency of the situation, they simply moved as quickly as they could and brought the surgeons batch upon batch of new patient.

However, the battles in that region soon petered out and the war moved south and east.  The mound of severed limbs in Myers Hollow was buried over, with a nearby historical plaque to memorialize so many soldiers that had died or were injured during the nearby battles.  Myers Hill Hospital changed hands a number of times, eventually becoming a regional history museum.  While the gruesome history of Myers Hill Hospital was not forgotten, it simply became a part of the tour--a grisly historical footnote to feature during the Halloween ghost tours.

Curator Robert Parker was the first to discover the strangeness, though.  Eating his lunch each day at the benches overlooking the Hollow, he could have sworn that the topography of the land itself had started to change.  Like watching something wriggle from under a carpet, it was as if something alive was burrowing through the earth.  Four days later, the entirety of Myers Hollow had erupted into giant swath of upturned, blood-soaked grave earth.  

Arcane scholars still struggle to define exactly what the creature below Myers Hollow was, but its appearance is surely one of horror.  A roving amalgamation of undead flesh and clawing limbs, it appeared that every severed limb buried in Myers Hollow had congealed together and animated under some undue necromantic presence.  Since that day, the Myers Hollow Charnel Pit has made appearances at a number of other battlefields and burial grounds, each time leaving them scraped barren of human remains.  It only grows, week after week and month after month, awaiting the day to overtake the world in a tide of rotting bone and flesh.

484

Villain of the Day:  October 8 (Mister Misery)

Red Jenny held her head in her hands, sitting in the waiting area outside the Freedom Plaza infirmary.  Her third full mission as a member of the Sentinel of Freedom Epsilon Squad (known colloquially also as the Rainbow Guardians), simply couldn't have gone worse.  What was supposed to be a simple interception of a CRETIN heist had turned into a bloodbath.

Emerald Knight was currently in surgery; his body was pummelled into a bloody wreck by Adrenal.  The Eburnean was in fairly decent shape; his kinetic rerouting abilities served him well against Strut, though the initial collision with the cybernetic speedster did result in a dislocated shoulder and a few cracked ribs.  But Skyboy?  Red Jenny shook her head, tears falling openly now.  Caustic had caught Skyboy full-on in the face with a spray of sizzling acid.  He plummeted to the ground in a screaming heap, his body crunched awkwardly onto the top of a semi-trailer.

"Miss Red Jenny, I'm Doctor Moeller..."

Her vision blurry with tears, Jenny looked up.  A female surgeon stood before her, a clipboard in hand.  But behind her, someone strange...

His clothing was tattered and torn, yet jet black as if it had been soaked in crude oil.  In his hands he held a set of prayer beads, but instead of counting beads, a single thorn replaced each bead, dripping openly with blood.  But most distressing were his eyes. The man's eyes seemed to be vacant hollows, dripping with a black ichor onto the floor, where it sizzled and popped like hot grease.

Shouting a warning, Jenny flung the surgeon to the side, letting loose one of her "Spinning Jenny" blasts.  The cyclonic energy slammed into a wall and...nothing.  Jenny blinked away her tears.  The man was gone.

Dropping into a defensive stance, Red Jenny immediately activated her hands-free comm device, "Code 10-74!  Freedom Plaza infirmary!  All hands!"  Within moments, the room was swarming with superhero trainees, police, and GLOBAL response agents...who found only Red Jenny and Dr. Moeller.

Red Jenny provided a full report to her superiors at the Sentinels of Freedom, but the man she had seen was gone.  However, her eyewitness testimony began to corroborate a disturbing trend across the world.  The man--labeled as Mister Misery in the Sentinels of Freedom master file--appears to be some kind of occult horror, which preys upon those who are wracked by guilt or anguish.  Misery appears to magnify these feelings and, if confronted, will actively attack those it preys upon.  Those unfortunatels slain by Mister Misery appear to have superficial wounds, as if lashed with a scourge or--as Red Jenny noted--a set of thorn-studded prayer beads.

However, Misery's own nature seems to have kept him out of the public eye.  Based on Jenny's own investigation (a skill which has swiftly become one of her strongest, following the fall of the Rainbow Guardians), it appears that Mister Misery can only actually be seen through tears.  Someone not crying has no hope of even seeing this horror, much less imprisoning or defeating it.

485

Why couldn't Slenderman be this original?

486

Villain of the Day:  October 9 (Lernaeans)

The wars between Atlantis, Thule, and Lemuria brought many horrors into the world.  Eldritch sorceries, covenantss with otherworldly beings, and miscarriages of occult biometrics have left their scars upon the hidden places of the world, visible to only with those gifted with the ability to open their third eyes and see the truth.

The Lernaeans are a mere sample of the horrors unleashed in this primordial days and, in their day, were no more than Atlantean guard dogs.

Commonly known as hydras, Lernaeans were the the misbegotten creation of an Atlantean sorcerer named Lernaeus.  A flesh-shaper by craft, Lernaeus came of age as Atlantis clashed mightily against its two eldritch neighbors, and the Kings of Atlantis sought any new possible edge that might tip the scales in favor of Atlantis.  As such, Lernaeus began developing a guard creature, using a simple grub as a starting point.  He gifted that grub with immense size, the ability to burrow through earth, and a fanged maw capable of rending both armor and enchantment with ease.  While not truly intelligent, the hydras were given enough sentience to respond to trainers--Atlantean search parties often used Lernaeans when tracking down fugitives or in guarding sensitive installations and bases.  Lernaeus himself was lauded by his superiors; his creations worked exactly as intended.

The most notable feature of the Lernaeans, however, was totally an accident.  It so happened that the grub that Lernaeus used as his initial creature was a distant relation of the creature that we know as a planarian flatworm.  If destroyed or slain, a Lernaean hydra is capable of regenerating a distinct body from each of its finite parts, growing swiftly into a full-sized (about 9' long) hydra within hours.

While this accidental mutation earned Lernaeus even further accolades from his superiors--a legion of guard-creatures which only create *more* creatures if killed!--that very mutation led to his downfall.  It quickly became apparent that as a Lernaean hydra divides, its capacity for intelligence and sapience is divided between its newly divided selves.  After a few divisions, a battle-trained Lernaean would be reduced to outright savagery, seekingly only to feed and divide.  Beyond 6 or 7 divisions, a given Lernaean would simply not have the mental faculties to support homeostasis and a further division would simply result in death.

Lernaean hydras reached modernity's ears through the legend of Heracles, the half-Atlantean warlord known for his phenomenal strength, his equally phenomenal temper, and his prowess as a wrestler.  Today, we tell of Heracles' "twelve labors", though in primordial Atlantis, Heracles' tasks were more akin to missions, dispatched to him by the Kings of Atlantis.  His victory of the singular Lernaean hydra, in fact, was the act of putting an abandoned Atlantean outpost to the torch, having been overrun by overly-divided Lernaeans.

Lernaeans still haunt the deep places of the world, both in land and sea, and even the most cogent of them have long since gone completely feral.  Sightings of sea serpents and giant water snakes, most often, are simply Lernaean hydras--these include both "Champ" and the Loch Ness Monster.  However, a heroic encounter with such a creature may only result in the world being overtaken by the replicating creatures once more...

487

Excellent use of real-world myth! :D

488

I'll take it.  :P

So many of these have their roots in something from history, myth, or fairy tales.  The best types of monsters are the ones most familiar... 

489

Villain of the Day: October 10 (Murmux)

"Sleep with the weight of the world on your shoulders, and you shall give your nightmares fodder on which to feed."

Christine Ramandowski desperately needed a vacation.

Work had been incredibly stressful in recent weeks, with her often spending 10-12 hours days crunching data at her desk, wolfing down whatever food would deliver to her desk from Eat-Street.  Her teenage daughter had descended into a particularly rebellious phase, her ex-husband was late on alimony and child support (again), and an ongoing fight with her landlord had descended into a messy court battle.  "Just two weeks," Christine told herself, "Then maybe I can take some time off..."

As Christine looked up from her computer terminal, she stared blankly at the setting sun outside the plate glass windows of her high rise office.  Was that...a vulture?  In downtown Megalopolis?  How strange...

When Christine finally dragged herself home, her daughter was already in her room, listening to some punk rock anythem on blaring headphones.  Tossing her overstuffed briefcase onto a chair, Christine flopped face-down onto her bed.

She never rose.  After two straight days of sleep, Christine's daughter called EMS Express to take her mother to the emergency room.  After five days, Christine entered a state of brain-death.

Legends of the creature known as Murmux, also known as Murmur or Murmus in the Lesser Key of Solomon, have long stretched through occult circles.  Some believe Murmux to be a demon, while others have posited that the shape-shifting creature to be a servitor of Dread Gloomweaver, stealing away psychic energy to break down the veil between the Realm of Discord and the material world.  

Murmux most often descends upon individuals suffering undue amounts of stress, for whom a lengthy rest would seem a respite.  Masquerading as an vulture--Murmux's true form is something akin to a round-bodied creature standing atop twelve insectile legs, with a two-faced, crowned head that bears a human face on one side and a vulture's face on the other--Murmux descends upon the individual and implants them with an "oneiric seed" that keeps them asleep as he works his foul ministrations.

Murmux then bodily enters the individual's dreams, turning normal dreams into phantasmagorical nightmares from which the victim will never wake.  These dreamscapes are often surreal, with a victim fleeing from misshaped creatures in living landscapes or being tortured in all manner of physically impossible ways.  Murmux, all the while, observes from afar, tending the swelling oneiric seed and fertilizing the seed with the dreamer's fears.  

When the seed finally sprouts, the victim's mind is consumed by these irrational fears, overwhelming their conscious mind and leaving them a drooling husk.  Meanwhile, Murmux harvests as much realized fear as possible, then flees the dreamscape, returning to the physical world.

What Murmux *does* with these realized fears, however, remains a mystery.  Most believe that it simply uses the fear to add to its own power. Those who believe Murmux to be a servitor of Gloomweaver believe that Murmux channels the fear to its master.  Still others believe that Murmux requires this fear in order to feed or sustain itself.  In any case, the sweet respite of sleep no longer offers refuge from the horrors of the world.

490

Villain of the Day:  October 11 (The Tempter Bug)

Mike Hawkins always wanted a Puma x70.

The background on his computer was a scene of the sleek black sports-car, whirling along a banked curve.  His screensaver was a slideshow of the gorgeous piece of machinery, in all manner of dramatic poses.  His favorite was, undoubtely, the shot of the Puma roaring through a rainstorm, headlights beaming through the deluge, as it plunged towards the viewer.  Everyone knew that, once Mike finally decided to retire, that Puma would be his.

What shocked everyone, though, was the Mike didn't bother to wait.

Mike was arrested just across state lines, after a state trooper clocked him going 135 in a 70 zone.  Running the plates before striding up to the car, the officer immediately noted:  dealer plates.  After a quick exchange with Mike, it quickly became apparent:  that Puma was stolen.

Mike confessed to the crime, but his entire social circle was incredulous.  This was a guy who reported a $4.72 accounting error to his superiors during an audit.  This was a guy who would always give back the wallet he'd find on the street.  This was a guy who loved nothing more than sitting on his back porch with a cold drink, watching the sunset and listening to the sounds in the wetlands behind his house.  This was a guy who gave to charity, was always good for a favor, and was easily one of the nicest guys around.  What could possibly have driven him to steal a car, particularly one he was already saving up for?

The answer, at least according to some sources, lies in The Tempter Bug.

Believed to be a pseudo-natural mutation of a normal cicada, tempter bugs tend to congregate in areas of ambient occult power--swamps, graveyards, intersections of ley lines, and ancient ruins.  And, as it just so happens, the wetlands behind Mike's house was just such a location.

Tempter bugs affect humans by providing a low-level bioelectric interruption to the judgement centers of the cerebral cortex, allowing the natural wants and desires of an individual to overrun their logic and their adherence to social norms.  Under brief exposure, the drone of a tempter bug does little to influence individuals in any manner.  However, with repeated, continued exposure--or exposure to many tempter bugs simultaneously, that bioelectric interruption can swiftly turn the most moral, upstanding individual into a self-serving, id-driven madman.

Several factions have come into conflict over what to do regarding tempter bugs.  Some have advocated exterminating them en masse, though environmental rights activists have noted that tempter bugs represent a new evolution which should be protected.  Still others have attempted to collect tempter bugs, for surely nefarious purposes.  All of these factions dread the day when a swarm of tempter bugs move into a new, urban locale, which would surely descend into carnage within hours...

491

Villain of the Day:  October 12 (Flat Susan)

Chris Markham just wanted his wife back.

He hadn't meant to hit her.  The argument had just escalated, he equivocated; Susan threw that drink in his face and that just set him off.  He hadn't meant to kill her.  How could he have known she would hit the side of her head against the stove?  It wasn't his fault!

Despite his tears, despite his frustration and grief at his own callous, abusive hand, Chris managed to think quickly.  The crime scene was scrubbed clean, Susan's body was piled into the tarped bed of his truck, and Chris left the house at 2am, heading far out of town.  His destination?  A junkyard and recycling center three towns over.  In the darkness of the new moon, Chris dropped the tarp containing Susan into the trunk of a long-rusting sedan and drove off, tears still streaming from his eyes.

Chris Markham was found dead three days later, under the most unusual circumstances.

You see, despite Chris' abusive and foul intentions, Susan Markham was not dead.  She awoke in that tarp, mumbling and woozy.  That's when she heard the beeping of a nearby forklift, felt the sway as the entire junker she was trapped in lift up...and felt it crash into the car crusher.  As bone snapped and organs popped, Susan's mumbled curses surely must have reached the ears of some force of vengeance...two days after, she arose in a new form.

Chris Markham's body was found squeezed in all manner of grotesque ways, his body twisted and compressed as if smothered in a blanket which simply compressed him to death.  Only one eyewitness to the event came forward:  88 year old Agnes Hawley, who claimed that something slithered into the house itself, trailing blood and hair behind it.

Flat Susan has since become an urban legend throughout rural America, serving as a twisted pseudo-cautionary tale against any who might raise a hand against their spouse.  Flat Susan herself is borderline amorphous, capable of slithering across the ground, transmuting into various temporary shapes, and possessing an unearthly strength capable of twisting and crushing flesh.  However, her mind has been utterly shattered.  Despite having taken revenge on her killer, Flat Susan continues to target anyone who remotely resembles Chris (himself being a fairly non-descript, 40s-ish brunette male).  She prefers to stalk her prey, striking only when her target is isolated and unsuspecting. 

Since Chris' death, Flat Susan has struck four times, her prey always crushed and twisted in unnatural ways.  And she's not done yet.

492

Villain of the Day:  October 13 (The Eyes Beware Him)

Artist Bill Stoneham has long been said to have created one of the most haunted paintings known to man, The Hands Resist Him.  Urban legend spoke that, within the span of a decade, the owner of the gallery in which the painting had first been displayed, the original buyer of the painting, the first art critic to have reviewed the work, and the first family to have purchased it were all dead.  Tales of the disembodied hands, seeming to clutch at the vacant-faced children as they stared helplessly at the viewer, tearing free of the painting and slaughtering anyone who dared view the cursed work.

Bill's less known work, The Eyes Beware Him, makes his other work look like a simple vase of flowers.

Stoneham, as it turns out, is not only a student of the arcane arts, but also one of its most vindictive, misanthropic members. Stoneham, known in certain circles as Lord Exeter, utilizes his art as a medium for his hateful designs.  Utilizing a form of geomancy--the act of utilizing geometric shapes and movements to tap into ambient leyline energy--Stoneham seeds each of his canvasses with an intricate series of arcane linework, over which he paints a disturbing scene.  Arcane energy gathers in the painting over time, eventually releasing in a deluge of negative energy.

The Eyes Beware Him, however, may be Bill's piece-de-resistance.  Sketched in a method once used by Italian occultist Ignacio Gallo, the painting was colored almost entirely by the bile and internal fluids of three dying men.  The painting itself shows a man in drab, sitting in a padded room, as if incarcerated there.  His hands claw at his face in anguish, and a broken bottle of what might be a dark liquor spills out onto the floor.  As the viewer's gaze draws back, the horror of the drawing quickly becomes apparent:  the various segments of the room itself are, themselves, eyes; the man is trapped within a cell of eyes, ever-staring  into the angished figure with a gaze that wil never relent.

The spell encoded within the painting is one straight out of a body-horror nightmare.  If the spell take holds in the victim, their skin begins to split and crack over a period of days, eventually revealing foul, bloodshot eyes beneath the skin.  Eventually, the whole of the victim's skin sloughs away, revealing a flesh made entirely of squirming, bloodshot eyes.  In intense pain and madness, the victim flails away at any in the vicinity until their body discorporates into a mass of squirming, disembodied eyes.

Stoneham himself intends to attend the unveiling of his newest painting at the Overbrook Museum of the Arts.  If only the public knew what horror awaited them...

493

Villain of the Day:  October 14 (The Groves at Marlbury Heights)

The hills have eyes, they say, the trees hear every whisper in Marlbury Heights.  The people of the surrounding village (of the same name) fear every day that their deepest secrets would be revealed to anyone who dared walk in that cursed wood.

As it turns out, the forest surrounding Marlbury Heights harbors much greater dangers. The trees there stalk through darkness and do not brook interlopers of any sort.

And, while some have taken to calling the groves "cursed" or "haunted"--Marlbury Heights was long home to a mental institution, which was shut down in the late-1960s--though the truth of the matter is quite more strange, and even more otherworldly.

One of the star-seeds sent hurtling through the cosmos by the Stolon, the Prime Extensor of the Exciccatus, landed in Marlbury Heights' woods, embedding itself deep within the ruins of the long-forgotten Heights Home for the Mentally Disturbed, buried deep within the basement.  Cracking open, the star-seed's tendril roots began working their way into the vast root system of the forest outside the asylum's walls.  Within a matter of months, the entire forest became a part of the Exciccatus, executing the alien hive-mind's fell will from hundreds of light-years away.

To the poor souls living in Marlbury Heights, the horror stories from their woods simply keep coming.   Tales of interlopers hung by vines in the depths of the forest, of unwary teenagers impaled upon root and branch, of children who wander into the woods and never come out.  While the town elders have long-considered hiring a logging service to simply strip away the forest piece by piece, the tales of Marlbury Heights' horrors have kept away all but the most profit-driven logging companies.

Enter Toporos Logging and Clear-Cutting LLC.  Owned and managed by the ever-cash-motivated Paul Tavolini, Toporos is set to begin working on the east side of the Marlbury Heights woods in just a few weeks.  Paul is quite the skeptic, and would hardly let any "old ghost stories" get in the way of a several hundred-thousand dollar contract.  If he only knew what he was truly in for...

494

Villain of the Day:  October 15 (Johnny No-Face)

The stories surrounding Johnny No-Face are numerous and varied across the country.  None of the stories could have possibly lived up to the the day that Johnny No-Face actually appeared.

A long-time urban legend, teenagers and college students lumped Johnny No-Face in with Bloody Mary and Spring-Heeled Jack in terms of names to evoke around the campfire or while up late at night at a sleepover.  Those stories, though, never seemed to be entirely consistent.  Some said that Johnny was once a famous actor obsessed with perfecting his looks; he was so vain and conceited that his plastic surgeons refused to perform any more procedures.  Johnny dropped into a fit of rage, stalking and killing off each of his surgeons in turn, taking with him a number of surgical supplies.  When police finally caught up with him, Johnny had dropped into a fit of mania--in trying to 'perfect' his face, he attempted to perform a new surgery himself.  However, the surgery was so botched that nothing remained of Johnny's face; all that was left was a bloody ruin.  As police burst in, Johnny fled into legend.

Still others say that Johnny was no actor, but rather a Rook City informant who dropped some information on The Chairman's backroom dealings.  When one of the various underbosses of the Organization found out, they whisked Johnny away to an isolated warehouse.  There, Johnny's face had an unfortunate meeting with a belt sander, where the skin of his face was ground away until nothing but a bloody mess remained.  The thugs then simply dropped Johnny into a shallow grave, one less problem standing in the way of the Organization's daily operations.  

And yet others tell any number of variations on these themes.   Some say that Johnny's face was burned off with fire or acid.  Still others say his face was taken in an industrial accident or in some superheroic collateral damage.

All the tales, though, end the same way.  Johnny No-Face stalks the night, scalpel in hand, ready to find himself a new face.  Universally, victims claim that running from Johnny seems to be all but impossible; no matter how far one runs, Johnny always seems to find his quarry.  Hiding is a temporary measure, at best, as Johnny has a keen awareness for the location of his quarry.  Should he catch his prey, Johnny tries to remove their face with his scalpel, applying it to his own ruined head.  To date, no less than 8 faceless corpses have been found, attributed to Johnny's mania.

The few who have survived an encounter with Johnny No-Face continually cite one thing that has saved them.  So petrified of his own visage, Johnny can be driven back temporarily by the sight of his own reflection.  However, this is a short respite at best, as Johnny No-Face is nothing if not relentless.

495

Villain of the Day:  October 16 (Grand Marsh, Illinois)

The thing that descended onto Grand Marsh, Illinois defies all convention. 

When authorities first lost contact with the small, rural town, the first belief was some gas leak or some other mundane disaster had destroyed the town.  As EMS and hazmat crews descended onto the towns nearby , it swiftly became apparent that the town of Grand Marsh simply... wasn't. 

Rather, the buildings of the town stood as if the town had never begun inhabited.   No bodies remained in the city limits, no sign of motion, no evidence they anyone had ever lived in Grand Marsh.   However, in the center of town, something strange emerged. 

No two people were ever able to describe the thing in the same way.  One hazmat crewman described it as a swirling, crystalline spiral surrounding the town gazebo.  A second described it as an inky darkness, oozing and seething as if away a roiling boil.  Yet another saw something more akin to a 'crack' in reality, through which something watched. 

To this day, the entire town of Grand Marsh has been under military quarantine, with none permitted within its walls without expressed permission from the commanding officer, Lieutenant Leslie Natick.  To date, only three teams have been dispatched within the quarantine zone.  All three have disappeared without a trace.  Occult scholars have been stymied, as have the finest of the world's scientists.   

And only one fact seems to hold true.   Grand Marsh is spreading...

 

496

Getting into SCP territory here. :D

497

Villain of the Day: October 17 (El Gato Malvado)

The native tribes knew to fear it.   Deep in the Orinoco basin, something stalked the darkest jungles.  Something wild.  Something savage. 

And despite every warning against doing so, Dr. Maria Vasquez, professor of zoology at Megalopolis State University, was sure that her career would be built upon catching the beast known as El Gato Malvado.

Maria was forever a 'cat person', studying numerous big cat species in both South America and in sub-Saharan Africa throughout her academic career.  However, when rumors reached her ears of a particularly notable big cat in the Orinoco river basin, she began gathering as much information as possible.  El Gato Malvado was said to be responsible for the deaths of at least 14 citizens in the small town of Puerto Ayacucho, and of at least 20 tribal natives in the surrounding rainforests.  Those who glimpsed the creature and lived claimed it to have dark, ruddy fur and at least 6-8 clawed limbs-- something unheard of within big cats worldwide.  Survivors noted it to be whisper-quiet, given away only by a ferocious yowl as the creature pounced.

Securing funding from a grant through the Marklund Foundation, Maria led a group of zoologists, botanists, jungle guides, and survivalists into the deepest parts of the Orinoco basin in search of El Gato Malvado. 

That was three days ago.  No one's heard from them since. 

498

Villain of the Day:  October 18 (The Eye in the Deep)

Max took a long sip of his coffee as the last vestiges of the sun descended beneath the wine dark sea.  His knees ached; a storm was surely rolling in, despite the clear skies.  Billy, the newest hand on the oil rig, sidled up to the old-timer, still gnawing away at one of the sandwiches from dinner. 

"Can't beat the view, can you?"  Billy smiled in the twilight.

Max shifted his gaze, looking sideways at the 22-year old, "This your first time out, is it?"

"Yeah.  Do I come off as that green?"

Max chuckled, "You do.  You ain't seen the hard stuff yet.  We've had good weather.  That's about to change."

Billy shook his head, "I checked the weather.  Clear skies for days.  What makes you think it's going to rain?"

Max looked down.  The sea soaked in all the light, leaving a vast expanse of black to contrast the red-purple skies.  Squinting sideways, he could almost see it down there.

"You'd best get ready when the storm comes.  There ain't no shelter from the wind or the waves, even indoors.  It'll lash you like whips across your eyes.  Close 'em and you can't find your way around this thing.  Keep 'em open and you might as well go blind.  When the rain's comin' sideways and the wind scours your back, just remember one thing:  don't you look down."

Billy paused, audiably swallowing the last of his sandwich, "...you mean from the heights?  Never bothered me before."

Max stared down the new hand, grimacing, "You don't look down, because all you'll see is The Eye.  It's down there, watchin', waitin'.  In the storm, it rises up closer to the surface.  It can't break free yet, but it'll look right down your gullet into your deepest fears. And it'll call to you.  It'll speak right into that pea-brain of yours and tell you everything's gonna be all right.  All you gotta do is jump in, and it'll all be taken care of forever.  All your worries drowned in the embrace of the sea.... you don't dare look down."

Billy stood stunned.  A slight breeze picked up, curling cold across his neck.  He opened his mouth briefly, but no sound came forth.

Max turned on his heel, "The Greeks called it Charybdis, I think.  The big whirlpool sitting at the end of the world what swallowed Ulysses' ship.  It's had a lot of names, I'm sure.  Same thing remains no matter where it is.  It's down there, and it's looking up.  Don't you dare look down."

Max crumpled his styrofoam coffee cup into a ball and stalked away, tossing the cup into a nearby wastebin as he went.  Billy looked after the older rig-hand, unsure of how to even reply to such weirdness.  As the last few rays of sunlight descended and the stars emerged over the ocean, it was all Billy could do to keep from looking down into that wine dark sea.

499

Villain of the Day:  October 19 (Blink Scorpions)

The Realm of Discord is truly a place where seemingly anything can happen.  The more chaotic and bizarre the circumstance, the more likely it will appear within that plane of chaos and madness.  However, the same goes for the creatures that call the Realm of Discord home.  None may epitomize that strangeness better than blink scorpions.

Blink scorpions are so named due to their relative similarity in anatomy to the fatttail scorpion (androctonus crassicauda), though the the similarities between the two begin and end on at the holistic-anatomical level.  Blink scorpions often grow to the size of six feet in body length, reaching up to 10 feet when claws and tail are included.  Females tend to be larger than males, and the largest catalogued specimen of blink scorpion totalled twenty-six feet in body length.  Further, while most 'normal' scorpions tend to be dark in coloration, blink scorpions border on translucent; even their internal organs are relatively see-through, making detection of such creatures particularly difficult.

Blink scorpions, however, take their name from their preferred method of catching prey:  the use of a localized distortion field to stay outside of their prey's sight range.  The creatures reflexively teleport to the periphery of their target's vision, working in mated pairs to outflank and incapacitate their prey.  As such, few have actually seen a living blink scorpion for more than a few seconds; in most cases, those who have survived encounters with blink scorpions only truly recognize what they are fighting once the creatures are dead.

While they do attack with vicious claws and a wickedly-curved stinger, blink scorpions are not, by default, venomous.  However, much like the so-called 'poison dart frogs' of the Amazon, blink scorpions can take on and excude the toxins secreted by their food.  In such a case, the toxin often is visible within the blink scorpion's system, providing a vague green-black outline, ending at the tip of the scorpion's tail.  While the venom may provide the scorpion with more offensive capability, this outline does make them easier to detect and can provide a would-be target an easier time avoiding the blink scorpion while in combat.

To date, blink scorpions have not exhibited anything beyond basic insectile intelligence.  As mentioned earlier, they are often found in mated pairs, though larger colonies of blink scorpions are not uncommon.  Some nefarious forces across the Realm of Discord have even encouraged larger colony formation as a sort of natural method to defend against interlopers.  Female blink scorpions lay their eggs in fallen creatures, ensuring that their young have a tasty first meal ready and waiting upon their hatching.  Anyone discovering such a creature is sure to find it a foul surprise.

While not necessarily the greatest threat in the Realm of Discord, blink scorpions ensure that travelers should surely keep their guard up.

500

Villain of the Day:  October 20 (Plutarch)

The act of taking on a familiar is one that has been passed through arcanists throughout the ages.  While the magic used to summon a familiary actually verges on that of minor blood magic, the summoning ritual allows the caster to channel additional energy through their blood-linked familiar, enhancing their own abilities and providing the caster with a useful compatriot and spy.  The first Merlin, Myddrin Wyllt, was the first to call upon a familiar, an owl that became known ages later in fiction as Archimedes.  The Harpy called upon her familiars, Huginn and Muninn, early on in her arcane career, forever linking the powers over birds given to her by the Mask of the Matriarch to her burgeoning occult abilities.  

The cat known as Plutarch, however, is something unique:  a familiar without a master.  This is, primarily, because Plutarch has arranged to kill every master he has had, taking their arcane lore and artifacts for his own.

Plutarch began his life as a normal cat, raised to sapience as the familiar of a minor Renaissance-era occultist, Lavinia Cosimo Fabritio.  Fabritio was a talented enough arcanist, though her true love was that of collecting arcane baubles and jewelery.  Rings, amulets, brooches, and more:  Lavinia simply couldn't get enough.  her arcane laboratory looked more like a glittering treasury than a repository of knowledge and, true enough, Lavinia didn't quite know what she had gotten her hands on.  One of the necklaces that she had procured was, in fact, a Thulian "Forever-Star"--a teardrop-shaped diamond that was capable of trapping an individual's consciousness within it.  Seizing the opportunity of his owner's naivete, Plutarch stood by as Lavinia inadvertently whisked her consciousnessess into the diamond, with no way of emerging.  However, this left Plutarch in a unique situation:  with his blood-linked master trapped in stasis, he had become effectively immortal.

And, with such long life and so many arcane trinkets as his disposal, Plutarch fell swiftly into a power-mad lust.  He began seeking out other arcanists, offering to become their own familiar, fully knowing that the ritual would fail due to his already-extant bond with Lavinia, while still maintaining all appearances that the ritual had succeeded.  He then proceeded to accompany those arcanists, learning their rituals and their wards, all the while leading them into an untimely demise once Plutarch had full access to the depth of their arcane libraries.  

Since those days, Plutarch has been responsible for the fall of at least ten--possibly up to thirty--separate wizards, including the fifth Merlin, Francois Jollivet-Castelot, known as the father of 'hyperchemistry'.  With each fallen sorcerer, Plutarch adds to his own arcane library and lore.  While Plutarch himself is something of a limited spellcaster--not having a humanoid form does tend to limit one's options--his mastery of those artifacts makes him a cunning foe and a dangerous ally.  All in the form of a simple black longhair.