Rift Eater: a New Threat

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Would you use this monster in your games? (Feel free to explain your answer.)

Sure, I'd be thrilled to!
0
No votes
Eh, I guess, why not?
1
25%
I'll have to think about it.
0
No votes
Actually, I don't think so.
0
No votes
Being that there's no stats or anything yet, I really don't know.
2
50%
Yo momma. And your face is stupid.
1
25%
Chimichangas!
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 4

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Molydeus
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Rift Eater: a New Threat

Unread post by Molydeus »

I dreamed this last night, so I thought I would write it up and share it here. There's no real math associated with this yet, no stats or anything, and it's mostly just a concept still in development. But I thought I would float the Rift Eater and see what you guys thought. I'm open to suggestions and ideas, otherwise I wouldn't be sharing it, would I? :?

If there's any interest in it, I'll try to develop it further, put some mechanical meat on this conceptual skeleton and maybe even do some artwork for it.

There may be similar monsters out there, I don't keep up on the Rifter like I used to. If so, I came up with this honestly not trying to rip off anyone else's idea. 8-)

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THE RIFT EATER

Rift Eaters, as people have come to call them, are a new menace on Earth and elsewhere in the Megaverse. They are as massive as large dragons, and resemble a nightmarish cross between trilobites and ankylosaurs (two hard-shelled creatures from Earth's ancient prehistory). Their most prominent feature is a thick segmented shell, covering their backs and tops of their heads; it's composed of a chitin-like material laced with some sort of carbonic metal, presumably present in their native environment and consumed as they mature. Their rest of their bodies (limbs, flanks and undersides) are covered with a carapace of the same material, thinner though still hard to penetrate. They have six articulated legs and whip-like antenna on either side of a cavernous mouth. Six eyes located around a flattened head provide excellent peripheral and binocular vision.

Rift Eaters are appropriately named, because they literally consume rifts. This process cakes anywhere from 10 minutes to half-an-hour, depending on the size of the rift, with the rift getting smaller and smaller as the Rifts Eater siphons its energy, until it finally closes. Exactly how they're able to do this is unknown, and it appears to be a capability unique to the species. A Rift Eater in the process of feeding is vulnerable, and has to break off from the rift to defend itself. Fair warning, this tends to make them cranky.

Rift eating isn't a clean process, however. What remains in place of the devoured rift is best described as a dimensional wound. Such extinguished rifts aren't gone forever, and slowly recover and stabilize over a span of years (2d4). Such wounds are not safe during this healing process... and foolhardy travelers that attempt to breach these wounds sometimes (3% chance) disappear, never to be seen again.

Rift Eaters don't gain any sustenance from devouring rifts. Instead, the creature internalizes a rift's dimensional energies. The monster is thereafter able to travel between the two worlds connected by the rift while within a mile of where the rift once was. For example, a Rift Eater that consumes a rift that led from a Kansas plain to a mountain range in the Xiticix homeworld would be able to travel to and from those areas specifically. However, it would not be able to travel between any two other worlds or different areas of those respective worlds. This is possible not through magic as humans would understand it, but because a Rift Eater actually carries a rift within it.

The more rifts a Rift Eater consumes, the more places it can travel. They use interdimensional "hopping" to hunt and avoid threats, greatly expanding the territories that they can claim. (And presumably they might find mates this way, but speculation on the intricacies of Rift Eater mating is probably not best dwelled on.) Rift Eaters actively seek out rifts wherever they are and devour them, tracking them by using ley lines as "scent trails". Of course, rifts often have defenders, and Rift Eaters happily devour them as an appetizer before the main course. The appetites of these creatures is seemingly unending, and they're able to eat almost anything: people, animal, plants, even machinery and minerals. Of course, as luck would have it, living creatures are their preferred fare... though at least they don't seem to prefer intelligent creatures to other kinds of meat.

Rift Eaters are extremely tough nuts to crack. They're as big as buildings, and generally impervious to all but the heaviest weapons. Further, they're immune to psionics, and to any magic but direct Mega-Damage energy attacks. Unfortunately, Rift Eaters often force confrontations, voracious predators that they are, and they view small groups of creatures as snacks and communities as buffets. Thankfully these creatures are very rare, but the damage even one can do is incalculable. They're unafraid to invade towns, and will dig prey out of buildings and other hiding places , leaving ruin and death in their wake.

However, this harm is somewhat counterbalanced by their habit of attacking rifts, mitigating other threats to Rifts Earth. They do this to increase their own ability to travel and hunt, however, and not as any sort of public service. They're as likely to attack rifts through which benevolent entities cross as to attack demons and other threats. They're equal opportunity predators, eating any creatures that stand in their way. Three Xiticix colonies and two Brodkil anchorages have fallen to Rift Eaters, and like the Coalition, members of these species will go out of their way to hunt the lumbering brutes.

Killing Rift Eaters is very difficult, but not impossible for those with enough persistence and overwhelming firepower. However, this carries grave consequences. When a Rifts Eater dies, it explodes in a chaotic conflagration of dimensional energies, tearing open the fabric of reality and creating several (2d4) unstable rifts in the immediate vicinity. These rifts open to random worlds, and are uncontrollable. Potentially anything can step out of these rifts (25% per round that 1d4 creatures of a random type steps out of a rift). All but one of these rifts fades after a few days, but the remaining one is always permanent, and will lead to some location the Rift Eater had access to. These remnant rifts never completely stabilize, and function similarly to dimensional wounds, making them hazardous options for travel.

It's impossible to communicate with Rift Eaters, or at least no one has yet figured out how to do so. How intelligent they are is anyone's guess. Rift Eaters are cunning enough to use advanced hunting strategies and tactics, had to quickly adapt to new circumstances and opponents. They are fearless and can't be cowed, though may be baited -- one was successfully led by a brave Coalition SAMAS pilot away from a human town and to a Xiticix rift. (Of course, the beast proved impossible to control afterwards; after devouring the Xiticix and their rift, it went right back and destroyed the human community the Coalition was trying to protect.)

Aside from their great strength, resilience and penchant for munching on interdimensional anomalies, the capabilities of Rift Eaters are still being quantified. They can use their thick antenna for whip attacks, and can grab with them as well. They can shoot out a long tongue to grab enemies and draw them back into their gaping maws to be swallowed whole, not unlike a titanic anteater. (There's a 1% chance that swallowed prey will be sucked in by the rift within the Beast instead of being digested, and end up on some alien world!) They can also expectorate a bolus of sticky, smelly mucus to entrap enemies as large as a giraffe; treat this as a non-magical Carpet of Adhesion that covers a 20' area and persists for 4d4 rounds.
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Alrik Vas
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Re: Rift Eater: a New Threat

Unread post by Alrik Vas »

In regards to the last paragraph, I'd classify that as a Magic Net instead of Carpet of Adhesion.

Other than that, it's a great NOT conversion. Because it isn't really, but I see where you came from on it.
Mark Hall wrote:Y'all seem to assume that Palladium books are written with the same exacting precision with which they are analyzed. I think that is... ambitious.

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