The Strange Bestiary
Mirror gaunts hide in mirrors. They slither from one to the next, following their prey. When someone casts a glance into the mirror, the gaunt fades into the reflection's shadows, unseen, unnoticed, but almost always leaving an impression of being watched. Mirror gaunts feed on the people they catch. They stretch long, hideous claws from the mirror's surface to drag their victims into the pocket recursion they inhabit, where they take the prey apart bit by bit in a frenzy, stuffing bloody gobbets into their mouths to sate their terrible hunger.
Stooped, naked things with spindly arms and legs, mirror gaunts have the shape of a human, but the similarities end with their faces. A wide mouth stretches across a smooth plane of skin on the torso, a mouth burdened by rows and rows of flinty grey teeth. Tiny black eyes, looking much like caviar, seem to float on waxen skin just above the prodigious maw. When mirror gaunts move, they scuttle, scampering on hands and feet, and when they draw someone inside their mirrors, they grunt and chirp with excitement.
The mirrors are pocket recursions that generally conform to the dimensions of the room or area where they hang. The images on their surfaces don't necessarily match up to the areas they reflect; something is almost always out of place.
Motive: Hungers for flesh
Environment (Magic or Psionics): In any mirror
Health: 9
Damage Inflicted: Minor wound (3 points)
Movement: Short, though a reflection cannot move more than long distance from a mirror it can see
Modifications: All tasks related to stealth as level 5.
Combat: A mirror gaunt stalks its prey, moving from mirror to mirror. It can emerge from the mirror but prefers not to. Instead, it grabs prey within an immediate distance, though only when it believes no one else is around. A target damaged by a gaunt must also make a Might defense roll or be pulled inside the mirror.
Victims pulled into a mirror cannot escape until the mirror’s surface reflects no light, such as if the mirror is brought into a dark room. Breaking a mirror that holds a creature also releases it, but mirrors in which gaunts live have been affected by the creatures’ magic; the mirrors have Armor 2 and don’t shatter unless they take 15 points of damage from a solid object.
Breaking a mirror destroys the mirror gaunt lurking inside it and inflicts 9 points of damage to any other creature trapped inside.
Interaction: A mirror gaunt that has recently eaten someone might be convinced to talk. Since it can move from mirror to mirror, the gaunt is a notorious voyeur and may share information about people it has seen. Gaunts always refer to others as “food.”
Use: One of the mirrors haunted by a gaunt contains a gate to a recursion the characters need to visit. The PCs must find a way to enter the mirror and contend with the horror living inside it.
Loot: A character may find a few cyphers and other valuables hidden inside the mirror.
GM Intrusion: A character who would be drawn into the mirror becomes stuck halfway. The difficulty of all attacks, defenses, and other tasks attempted by the PC increases by two steps for one round, or until the character is pulled fully inside (or hauled out by allies).