Man-Shaped Things

arboreal fellows (aren't we all)

lemure
HD 1
a restless shadow

Caught like curses on jungle treks. Hides in your shadow and eats your dreams. (You cannot read omens, spoors, or written warnings.) Cutting off its tail breaks the curse. Travel in tight-knit nuclear families.

 

grandfather
HD 2
a lone hitchhiker

Lopes along roads at night, seeming a wrinkled old man. Traveling with him improves your reaction rolls with everyone. Slowly replaces your own grandfather in your memories; after a month of this, your real grandfather unravels, wherever he is.

fetch-life
HD 3
an unpolished reflection

Hirsute body doubles, unwise and curious. They learn procedures quickly and language slowly. Often exploited and abandoned, spawning cargo cult enclaves in the aftermath. Their stone bodies are extremely heavy; they won't cross deep water.

howler
HD 4
named for its contributions to the City-by-night

Encountered in brachiating platoons of exactly twelve. Persistence hunt travelers by depriving them of rest and luring wandering monsters. They can do both from miles away. Preferential sapiovores.

mandrill
HD 5
once, a man laid with a tiger

Dagger-fanged half-men, dressed in dogskins, iron lanterns held aloft. In torchlight, they are suave and gentlemanly, their tiger souls turned by fire. If the light goes out, they lose all sense of restraint and kill everyone. Of all the man-shaped things, they are the only ones who make and use gunpowder.

gorilla fighter
HD 6
a knight apostasia

Kitschy tombac soldiers alloyed against the world. Abandoned their oaths for the strength of abomination. Sweat metal and recite poetry. Their hide turns every weapon except the gun. After sufficient chivalric effort, they'll move into an old fort and fill it with an army of man-shaped things.

 

You'll rarely encounter man-shaped things in daylight. One day, they will bring down the sun.