Angelmen (+ Monstrome v2)

Angelmen

Angelmen are tall, beautiful, and gaunt.  Every single one has alabaster skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes.  They look like angels.  They sometimes drape themselves in loose clothing, but more often they are naked.  You’ll find them in the wastelands, haunting sun bleached ruins.

Lvl 3  Def none Bite 1d6+1

Fly vulture  Int wolf  Dis hunger

Divine Remnant - Angelmen recognize priests and clerics for what they are and will never harm them.  Additionally, angelmen are immune to all spells cast by priests and clerics.

Sacred - Each time you attempt to harm or restrain an angelman, you must succeed on an Easy Cha check.  The DC increases by 2 points each time you succeed in harming an angelman.  Once per day, you can reduce this stacking penalty by 4 points by spending an hour in prayer (asking forgiveness) or in wanton debauchery (hardening your heart).

Healer - Angelmen can cast cure 3/day, healing themselves or a touched creature for 1d6+1 HP.

Lesser Resurrection - An angelman can resurrect a corpse 1/day, restoring their body to life.  However, this is all that it restores.  Mind, memories, and personality are still absent.  

Common Knowledge

Most people believe that there is a race of fallen angels that live on Centerra.  The most common myth casts them as outcasts: not pure enough for Heaven, but still too kind to join with Hell, with their voices stripped from them by the Authority.  Most people pity them, despite how dangerous they are.  It is rumored that they can resurrect the dead, and sometimes people bring their dead loved ones to the angelmen–but they are never seen again.

If you ask a priest, they’ll tell you that the angelmen are abominations.  After a long period of investigation by St. Cascarrion, it was discovered that no fraction of divinity was found anywhere in angelmen.  They were an artificial race, created in mockery of heaven.  The evil wizard Shadoom was a likely culprit.

Experts can explain the individual abilities of angelmen.  They’ll also tell you that you should kill them on sight, before they gather in greater numbers.

Tactics

Angelmen will follow the party around, waiting for them to show weakness.  They typically fight 1-2 rounds of combat, frequently retreating to heal.  If an angelman dies, the others will resurrect it.  (Resurrected angelmen are indistinguishable from the other angelmen–they don’t have much in the way of memories or personality.)

They are bestial in nature, but know how to use their gifts (flight and healing) effectively.  And they are damn patient.  

Encounter Design

Angelmen are designed for a complex outdoor environment, like a ruined city.  Their wings are a lot less useful indoors, and rooftops give them a place to perch while they watch the party.

Here is the archetypical encounter.  (I recommend using it the first or second time your party encounters angelmen.)

1d2 angelmen happen upon the party.  They fly to a safe distance and perch on some rooftops, where they can follow the progression of the party.  While following, additional angelmen will join the first group.  (If using the Underclock, add another angelman whenever a 1 is rolled.)  If the party goes into a building, the angelmen will be waiting when they emerge.  The attack will happen when the party seems weak, or after nightfall.

Their core tactic is “follow you and then attack when you’re weak”, but that doesn’t have to be the case.  However, be aware that they work best when they can retreat and heal.  If they are unable to take those actions, they become much easier to kill.

Your players will eventually get good at preventing angelmen from retreating.  That’s okay.  Remember you embrace your players’ success.

Lairs and Encounters

1. Graveyard

Three angelmen are digging up a grave.  If you allow them to finish, they’ll eventually unearth a coffin, resurrect the person inside, and then begin eating them.  

2. Crossroads

A keening, birdlike call is audible for half a mile.  It is coming from an angelman, with their neck caught in a snare.  30 minutes later, two more angelmen will arrive.  If rescued, the angelman will not be grateful (and in fact, is probably incapable of it).

3. Lair

This is the home of 14 angelmen, although only 1d12 are here at any given time.  They live on the third and fourth stories of a four-story building.  The second story has completely collapsed.  The building is covered with long white streaks of dung and gnawed bones.  It is impossible to approach this building during the day, since there are always 2-3 angelmen watching from the roof.  However, it would be easily entered at night.  Angelmen sleep in groups of 1d4, squatting on their heels with their wings curled around themselves.

4. Desperate

Silas Nybridge is desperate.  He offers you 200s and three years of servitude if you’ll help him bring his wife back to life.  She was so young, and the miscarriage so was horrible.  He has the coffin on the wagon behind him.  Please.  The angelmen are not far from here.  Please.  Please.

Dungeon Design

If you put angelmen in your dungeon, be sure to place them where there are high ceilings, to allow them flight.  Or to phrase it another way: assume that angelmen seek out the places where they can use their wings to the best effect.

Angelmen don’t necessarily need a home.  They can exist strictly as wandering monsters.

Although they look like people, they function more closely to animals, so expect dungeon factions to treat them like animals.

Psychology

It is unclear what the inner life of an angelman is like.

No angelman has ever been observed to speak, laugh, smile, or cry.  They can be roused to anger only with persistence.  They sometimes stare into the sun without blinking for hours.  They seem wary of darkness, and sometimes show signs of fear in dark places.  They rarely show signs of fear while in the sunlight.

They hate demons, though, and always attack them on sight.

Culture

Angelmen have no culture.  They live in squalor, speak no language, and show no curiosity.  When an angleman grows sick, its family usually begins eating it while it is still alive.

This is not to say that they are without altruism.  Parents still protect their young (although they do not seem to mourn them), and companions will heal and assist each other.  

Biology

Angelmen all appear male (hence the name) although some of them are actually female.  Their alabaster skin lacks all hair, and their groin is perfectly smooth, with no external genitals.  Internal gonads have only been discovered after dissection, which appear human-like, albeit smaller.

Reproduction is accomplished through a type of frottage, performed in perfect silence.  The female lays an egg exactly 3 months later, disgorging it through her mouth.  The eggs are soft-skinned and flexile.

Many of them suffer from parasites.  Ticks and tapeworms are both common.  It is unclear how long they live, but the oldest one in captivity is still healthy even 50 years after their capture.  It is theorized that they tend to die from disease.

They build nests from sticks, feathers, and garbage.  Both the male and the female take turns incubating the egg.  The young angelman hatches 6 months after they are laid.

Angelmen spend much of their time searching for carrion.  When they have located a corpse, they’ll resurrect it in order to restore it to freshness, and then kill it, typically by biting the throat.  They prefer to eat organ meat, which they obtain by chewing through the perineum or abdomen.

Ecology

Angelmen are so fucking eerie that you can place them in any creepy place.  They don’t have any specific ties to anything except perhaps divine magic.  (In my setting, they’re believed to be part of the fallout from the War Against Heaven, but that background is hardly needed.  Your angelmen can stem from whatever unsavory slice of history you wish.)

Loot

Petrified Angel Egg - Blackened as smooth as oiled leather.  Hold it tightly to your chest and think bad thoughts about someone within 50’.  It appears in their stomach.  1d6 turns later, they spend a turn painfully regurgitating it.  On the surface of the egg is written a secret of theirs.

Lightning Sword - It's a sword +1. It can be used to shoot a 3d6 lightning bolt, but then it becomes a normal sword until you can get it baptized in a church. Every time it is baptized it must be given a new name; it is the name of the lightning bolt.

Holy Infant - The petrified corpse of a human infant.  If broken, all creatures within 100’ become incapable of violence for 10 minutes.  Anger is banished.  Reset all NPCs dispositions to neutral.  After 10 minutes, the feelings of guilt persist, but gently, and are broken as soon as someone takes a hostile action or says a hostile word.

Scroll of Transfiguration - If read out loud while designating a holy person (priest, cleric, paladin, etc) within 50’, a beam of light shoots and envelopes them.  They are physically pulled up into heaven, with all of their gear.  If that person doesn’t want to go to heaven, they have a chance to protest this, and have a 50% chance to be returned to earth 1d6 minutes later.

Discussion

Angelmen have only a modest attack.  Their real danger is hidden in their Sacred ability.  The penalties from Sacred stack, and they require a solid hour to remove.  This means that repeated encounters with angelmen rapidly erode a party’s ability to deal with them.  The ability to spend an hour praying to negate the stacking penalty is useful, but it can only be done 1/day.

So a single encounter with angelmen is not a big deal, but repeated skirmishes can become challenging.  Of course, if your party is able to find good ways to kill them indirectly, this can be partially negated.  

Angelmen have a low AC, but this is offset by the Sacred ability, which helps protect them against even spellcasters.  They work best in pairs (since they can heal and resurrect each other).  With so many conditions, their strength is very situational.  And of course, they’re only ever interested in food.  (I don’t imagine them being minions of anyone.)

The Monstrome

I'm writing a monster manual.  You can see the work in progress here:

MONSTROME - V2

Newly added in this version:

• Land Sharks
• Angelmen
• Some Fairies

I've left comments on, so bonus points if you want to flag any of my typos.  

And thank you so much to everyone who corrected my typos in the last version!