Mortasheen Preview Holding Pen

Heya, it’s me, Titleknown! You may remember me for refusing to shut up about the Creative Commons or for banging on about my Patreon that only makes ten bucks a month! I am here for a guest review! Of some floating eyes!

Yeah, apparently though they wanted to do this Gloomizer’s design is remarkably bare bones for a Mortasheen creation, even admitted as such by Bogleech themselves on the old Deviantart enty, but its powers are interesting enough to be worth a look twice-over.

Essentially, it’s got an Eeyore/Marvin The Paranoid Android (Take your pick)-type personality surrounding its extreme level of despair; which it can essentially spread to everybody else in the room, with the idea of “Inducing auto-mutilation at a stare” being mentioned.

That is not only clever, but also a great case of tying powers to personality; a classic trope of creature design that creates a cohesive-feeling entity with a lot of potential for storytelling.

The “perpetual downer” is kind of a classic comedic archetype, and they’d probably make a great foil for; say; the directness of a Chainsaw Kid or the bubbly happiness of a Carerazor.

But again, that design. I mean, it’s a classic; simple design, but I can’t help but think that it could have been slightly more elaborate. I’m not sure how, maybe emphasizing the veins or making the gelatinous coating more prominent or doing weird stuff with the pupils, but probably something.

This monster’d probably benefit a lot from a redesign in color honestly, to make those distinctions pop. Heck, I even did my own weird colorjob of the original art, though your mileage may vary as I did get a bit off-kilter:

But yeah, my final rating is A Hamburger Bun/10 .

It’s simple and arguably necessary, but there’s probably ways it could have a fair bit more flavor added to it. And yes, I did the Projared-style rating for it, hush.

And, inspired by The Daily Bestiary, here’s three story prompts for how to use it! Because the RPG’s gotta get out of development hell sometime, right?!

-As often happens in Mortasheen, yet another scientist made an arbitrary and stupid bit of monster hybridizing with more “mundane” (For lack of a better term) organisms, a combination of the eyeballs that grow like grass around Mortasheen city with the Gloomizer to create an effect that; from an individual eyestalk; appears much weaker.

But, in this case, it ascended from “Arbitrary nuisance” to “potential ecological threat” when it escaped and began causing mass die-offs. Because, while one stalk is far weaker than a proper Gloomizer, in aggregate they’re far stronger; and more widespread in their effects. And now, a squad of “cleaners” have to eliminate the infestation before it spreads too far…

-An entire village of Gloomsday Devilbirds have gathered around a gargantuan; ancient Gloomizer wedged in the ground as essentially a sort of mystery cult; dedicated to this being of ultimate; arbitrary despair.

If one cound befriend them (As much as one “befriends” a village of horrible monster-birds), they could gain valuable allies and, a valuable weapon in the form of the gargantuan Gloomizer’s rays…

-How does one pacify an ancient living weapon? Why, with endless despair of course! At least, that’s the logic of the professor sending you down into the bowels of a gargantuan entity; said to be a peer of the dreaded Ultimates; which has been showing troubling signs of motion lately.

The idea is to get a Gloomizer into its brain to allow the Gloomizers eternal despair to keep the entity down while it’s vulnerable; placing that straight near the source. Trouble is, it’s always unpleasant at best to drag around such a thing, and even moreso when the thing you’re dragging it into has curiously active bodily defenses…