These are some monsters I made for my Tournament of Fate myth arc/one-shot.
They’re a bit detailed.
Gunnar Lachlan
Monster: Torturer
Motivation: To acquire a true eternal life.
Gunnar Lachlan died in ancient days well before the era when Excalibur came into the hands of a certain young king. He was a cruel beast of a man who reveled in tormenting others and subjecting them to creative and cruel tortures. For his sins, he was thrice cursed by holy men. The first to curse him was a druid of the old Celtic religion. The second was a skald in service to the Nordic gods, captured from a raiding party. The third was a Catholic priest traveling to Briton with the Roman legions. No one is certain which curse struck true or if it was the combination of all three, or if it was just Gunnar’s evil nature that doomed, but when Gunnar finally died in battle, he was denied the rest of the grave. Now he seeks to end his undeath, but not to enter into a true death. No, he wants to walk the Earth for eternity as a living, breathing being.
Powers: Undeath and Blight
Attacks: Spear of Choosing, 3-Harm Magic. Blighted Grasp, 2-Harm Far Magic Area.
Armor: 0 vs Bludgeoning attacks. 1 vs Slashing attacks. 2 vs Piercing Attacks. Hurt by bullets only if attacker rolls 10+. Shotguns deal damage as normal against Armor 1.
Harm: 18 Harm will defeat him at least temporarily.
Custom Move: Moment of Reckoning. Gunnar can empower his spear to attack a target seemingly on its own. It will follow a twisting, non-euclidean path to aim inevitably for the most vulnerable spot on the enemy. The secret here is that the spear is weaving backwards through time from the point that it has already hit, creating the path that must have happened for that to occur. When someone uses Protect Other or Kick Some Ass to counteract this move, they must use the lower of their Weird or Tough to make the roll.
Weakness: Gunnar is a walking, skeletal death knight held in the living world by the power of three curses as three separate entities claim the right to judge him. In order to end his undeath and his existence, a unique spell appealing to Hel, the Morrigan and Azrael must be completed extolling these entities to come to an accord and judge Gunnar’s crimes as a unit rather than fight over who has the rights to his end. The creation of the spell itself will be a Big Magic that involves basically mediating between cosmic entities and success will cause a vision of the three judges appearing before a ritual participant chosen by the Keeper and imparting to them an incantation that can be used to call their attention. When Gunnar is physically present, the incantation can be spoken as three separate Use Magic moves occurring by the character who was given the incantation. The other characters will have to protect them while the incantation is called. Once completed, Hel, Azrael and the Morrigan will physically manifest and rip Gunnar’s soul from his body as each pronounces their particular sentence before he is consigned to whatever private hell they’ve collectively created for him.
Minions: Gunnar Lachlan has a number of servants including undead of various types including skeletal warriors, headless horsemen, screaming ghosts, black dogs and other such Gaelic or British specters. There are several living followers as well, so he definitely has some influence in the world of the living.
If Gunnar wins, he will regain his life with an immortal body similar to that of Nasato’s. The three curses giving him into the power of the judges of death will fail and they will no longer have power over him. He will remain a warrior and necromancer of great power and, like Nasato, will likely continue to try and participate in the tournament for centuries to come until his will is subverted by the creature powering it and he becomes a willing servant to the great beast.
Maeve Maria
Monster: Queen
Motivation: To establish a great dynasty.
Maeve Maria is a clever woman in her early thirties of Irish and Hispanic descent. Her parents were successful in business, both legal and illegal, and she has inherited their financial empire as well as all their connections. Unlike her parents, Maeve is also imminently aware of the existence of the supernatural and has been using her resources to seek powerful secrets and artifacts for ever since their mysterious death nearly ten years ago. She is a savvy business woman with a silver tongue and an eye for opportunity. She wants to leave her mark on this world, a mark to last through the ages.
Powers: Money, Charisma and Cunning
Attacks: Pistol, 2 Harm, Close, Reload.
Armor: 1
Harm: 8 Harm will at least seem to kill her.
Custom Move: Does Her Research. When in confrontation with the hunters, Maeve will try to turn their thoughts toward how reasonable it would be to work for her. She will bring up several personal pieces of information, often problems that they seek to solve, and offer them her aid in dealing with those problems. She will be quite calm and rational in her speaking and will be appreciative and complimentary to the Hunters, praising them on their competence. She will even applaud them if they resist her offers and charms to attack her. Her pleasant behavior won’t break even if she is killed (or “killed”). The extent of her information and the reasonable nature of her plans and requests is such that Hunters being focused on will have to Act Under Pressure with failure meaning that at the very least they will stop and think about it (give other characters the chance to talk them down from changing sides…or they might “retire to evil” at that point, who knows).
Weakness: Decoys. Maeve makes frequent use of immensely loyal women who have been surgically or even magically altered to resemble her and trained to act like her. Until this fact is discovered, anytime Maeve is killed will actually kill one of these decoys. Maeve even trusts these decoys with powerful magical artifacts and command over crack mercenaries and only the decoys know for sure who is real. Once the fact she’s using body doubles becomes obvious, the Hunters can probably try to turn that against her by interrogating or even turning one of her doubles into betraying her.
Minions: Maeve has a budget that makes some small nations look broke. She has all sorts of minions ranging from mercenaries to gunship helicopters. Her charisma has even earned her the services of a number of smitten or impressed sorcerers minor and major.
If Maeve wins, hundreds of thousands of people within a particular region of the world will suddenly find themselves predisposed to be loyal to her. They will feel a calling of some sort but won’t know what it is until they see her on television or in person. Many of these will be highly important people and in a pretty short order, Maeve will conquer a large space of land to establish as her own nation. She has no interest in physical immortality, but the boon will twist fate in the favor her children and children’s children down through seven generations. The nation might even start as a decent place to live, for all that it is created through mind control and conquest, but there will be a desire running through the advisers to continue to participate in the Tournament and eventually the nation, or at least its leaders, will become subservient to the creature trapped in the bonds.
Nasato
Monster: Sorcerer
Motivation: To accrue power.
Nasato was once an honorable man and a great hero. He first entered the Tournament of Fate over a thousand years ago with the goal of seeking a way to bring it to a final end. However, he was unable to think of a way to destroy the creature behind the tournament or to seal it completely. Lacking a better idea, he took as his boon immortality and continued to participate in the tournament in order to study and seek a way to end it. However, as he participated over and over again, and won two more times, he continued to become less concerned with ending the tournament and more concerned with building his own power. Now he still has a sort of twisted form of honor and he is not yet a servant of the beast, but he is certainly an amoral, megalomaniac that simply seeks more and more power.
Powers: Immortality, Swordsmanship and Teleportation
Attacks: Katana 4 Harm Hand
Armor: 2
Harm: 14 Harm will defeat him at least temporarily.
Custom Move: Teleport. Nasato can teleport both long and short distances, moving in the blink of an eye. He ignores the effect of ranges and is always considered to be within attack range of anybody in the fight. In addition, he can grab people and teleport away with them in order to split up the group.
Weakness: Nasato can only be permanently killed by taking a trip to an Underworld and directly writing his true name into one of the books of death. Learning that his name is erased from the books of the Underworld will be a major undertaking on its own, finding directions to reach the Underworld would require research and Big Magic. However. Nasato can be indefinitely removed from action by killing him and taking his head and heart to be held apart from the rest of his body. He can operate at reduced power without one or the other once the rest of the body recovers, but if both head and heart are kept locked away, he cannot become active again.
Minions: Nasato has a devoted following of samurai and ninja. The ninja mostly prefer to fit into the modern world and dress in appropriate garb, rarely if ever taking up the night-suit associated with ninja. The samurai mostly dress as feudal samurai and armor themselves as such as well. They prefer traditional weapons as a whole, but many are not against wielding modern weaponry.
If Nasato wins he will add a new power to his repertoire. He will also finally step over toward falling into service to the great beast behind the tournament. In the next tournament, he will be fighting to free his master.
Yoni Kovac
Monster: Herald
Motivation: To bring about the freedom of his master.
Yoni Kovac has waited for this day his entire life. He was born into the Order of the Spiral, the ancient order of sorcerers that first sabotaged the attempt to destroy the great beast and eventually became corrupted by its power. He has been trained for this all his life, participating in and commanding operations all around the world as the secret society made plans for this day. In the past they order had won several Tournaments, using the boon formed of power stolen from their master in order to weaken his chains. Now they feel that it will only take one more victory from them to set the monster free at last. Yoni will not let anything stop him from opening the door of the apocalypse.
Powers: Blood Magic
Attacks: Corrupted Blood 2-Harm, Close, Magic, Ignore Armor. Sacrificial Knife, 1 Harm, Hand.
Armor: 0 vs Bludgeoning attacks. 1 vs Slashing attacks. 2 vs Piercing Attacks. Hurt by bullets only if attacker rolls 10+. Shotguns deal damage as normal against Armor 1.
Harm: 12 Harm will defeat him at least temporarily.
Custom Move: Rain of Blood. This is an expression of Big Magic. Yoni, with a cadre of followers, can call upon a supernatural storm cloud to cover an area roughly the size of a small city or large town. Drops of a thick red liquid like blood falls everywhere covered by the storm cloud. People touched by this curse blood are overwhelmed with an insane rage to destroy anything and everything except for those who are specially marked by participation in the summoning ritual. Those that participated in the summoning can command these people to attack specific targets. Lacking that, they will attack anybody not infected. Resisting the infection will require Acting Under Pressure. Use Magic can protect or purify one person, a Big Magic ritual can disrupt the entire ritual. Contact with blood from the cursed won’t cause the effect, only directly being rained on causes the infection. In all the cult, he is the only one who can lead this ritual.
Weakness: Bleach. When his body is killed, Yoni’s soul remains within the blood. If his blood comes in contact with someone else’s then he will slowly take over the body with first his personality erasing theirs then the memories as the soul pushes out the original owner of the body. If the blood is rendered inert, then he is killed permanently. So pouring bleach over his body and anywhere his blood spilled will kill him finally. Other similar methods will also work. So alcohol, cleaning fluid, etc.
Minions: Yoni’s minions include the cultists of the Order of the Spiral, some of whom are likely to be lesser mystics. Some might seem normal but hide their devotion to the cult. Of course, he might also have the blood zombies.
If Yoni wins, then the great beast, the Great Beast, is loosed on the world. The creature will be weakened after its long imprisonment, but it will quickly gain strength and begin to wreak havoc across the world again. Unless stopped immediately, it will take centuries to gather the forces necessary to face it directly again.
