Simple Guard for a cult research facility Instinct: Prevent Escape

• Guard Exits

"The first symptoms are blackened veins, spreading across the body - then black crystalline growths form as a deep fever sets in. By the third day the victims are almost certainly mad, screaming about 'the voices'. If left untended they all hunch together into the fetal position as the growths form over them entirely forming a chrysalis of sorts, then those wicked creatures erupt from what remains of the poor victims. Sharp of claw, lacking heads but instead possessing a black flame atop which sits a golden eye, black shiny hides and the strength to tear a man limb-from-limb and the speed to snuff a life without needing to stop. If this truly spreads then we are all doomed." Instinct: To Serve the Void

• Infect and Corrupt
• Wield void magic
• Issue forth a black miasma

Python-sized biomagical snake. Moves/slithers with alarming, almosty supernatural speed. Its plate armour skin is made up entirely of reflective magic material, that makes it impervious to most ordinary attacks. It cannot be scratched or burned. The material is brittle however, and may shatter when brute, blunt force is applied to it. Instinct: To suffocate

• Encoil (1d8)
• Focus light as a weapon (blinding)

Few know this, but the world was once ice. Or nearly all of it. Most of the lands were theirs, but then it began to thaw and they retreated, farther and farther, unable to tolerate the warmth, until most had returned to their own realm, but there they just schemed and planned, seeking to make the world like it once was: A frozen tomb, but more important to these giants - tall and mighty, clad in ancient armour and wielding ancient arms - theirs. Instinct: To create an ice age

• Pelt with boulders
• Command ice and frost
• Shatter things
• Rend asunder

Instinct: Corrupt

• Raise the dead
• Raise the dead

Many are drawn to power, few are able to find it. Fewer still are willing to say the words and make the signs and bind your soul to something far greater, but those that do can wield impossible power. Gnomes are already skilled at magic and illusions, but to augment yourself through the power of an archfey patron is more and more common nowadays, as the world fades into grey and magic slowly dies. But the trouble with power that isn't truly yours, is that it's addictive, you always want more and if you ever lose it you will never be the same again. Creatures like this get desperate, and desperation breeds terrible acts. Instinct: To seek power

• Warp minds and break wills
• Wield illusions
• Unleash fey might
• Utilise the weirdness of faerie
• Sacrifice for power

A story to scare children, an old wives tale, a face briefly glimpsed in a nightmare: most think the witch of the wood to be nothing more than these. The few who know her to be more know little about her. Her age, origin and true nature are all lost to the endless decades she has haunted the Ashwood. What is known is the deep, dark pleasure she takes in twisting others to her will, and her talent at causing terrible pain. Instinct: Twist and Torture, Coerce into Service

• Place a curse on a hated foe
• Strike a dreadful bargain
• Twist nature to her will

Souls who do not earn their way into any particular deity's heaven are offered a choice: become one with the void, or wander the Fulldark for eternity. Souls that enter the Fulldark are met with a blasted, twisted mirror of the world they tread as mortals. It doesn't take long for they themselves to be corrupted. When a soul from the Fulldark returns to the land of the living, be it through magic or some terrible bargain, it appears as a being of pure shadow, but for the terrible, empty white eyes with which it sees the world it lost. Instinct: To Spread its Baleful Influence, to Drive Out the Living

• Strike with dark weaponry
• Convert into Shadow
• Open a gate to the Fulldark

Instinct: To hunt down the weak or injured

• Tear its prey to shreds
• Seek out easier prey
• Give chase

The village of Holmoak has always stood out from its neighbours in the Fenwater Delta for its prosperity, and the enormous oak tree visible for miles in the flat, brackish delta. What most don't know is that an ancient creature lives in the great oak: a pale, faceless vaguely man-shaped creature. It knows all that happens in the area under which the oat's roots spread. It is able to alter its limbs at will, elongating its fingers into razor-sharp claws or rootlike suckers that drain life. It uses its magic to improve the village's fortunes. In return, a cult of villagers feed it travelers. Its flesh is spongy, porous and uniform: it has no organs to speak of. It can only be truly harmed by piercing weapons carved from the wood of, or burned with fire kindled from, the great holm oak it lives in. Instinct: To endure

• Know its domain
• Drain essence
• Call cultists