The Strange Bestiary
A nightgaunt's hands and feet have no opposable digits. All its fingers and toes can wrap around objects they grasp with firm but unpleasant boneless strength, perfect for swooping down, grabbing prey in a nearly unbreakable grip, and flying off into the night. Nightgaunt destinations vary, but a few of these horrible creatures are quickened and able to fly between recursion boundaries. This means that a nightgaunt briefly visiting Earth could snatch a victim and carry her away to Innsmouth or a related Lovecraftian recursion. But best not to dwell on that overlong, because it could affect one's peace of mind.
Though natives of Lovecraftian recursions, nightgaunts sometimes find their way to Earth through inapposite gates. When they visit the world of normal matter, they usually stay no more than an hour or two—just long enough to accomplish an obscure but terrifying goal.
Motive: Unknowable
Environment (Innsmouth | Magic or Weird Science): Anywhere dark, usually in groups of three to five
Health: 9
Damage Inflicted: Moderate wound (4 points)
Movement: Immediate; long if flying (short if flying with a victim)
Modifications: Perception and Speed defense as level 4; knowledge of the mythologies seeded by H. P. Lovecraft as level 7.
Combat: A nightgaunt can attack with its barbed tail (and it also uses the tail to tickle prey caught in its boneless clutches). To catch a foe, a nightgaunt makes a clutching attack by diving through the air from just outside of short range. When it does this, it moves 100 feet (30 m) in a round and attempts to grab a victim near the midpoint of its movement. A target who fails a Speed defense roll (and who isn't more than twice the size of the nightgaunt) is jerked into the creature's clutches and finds himself dangling from a height of 50 feet (15 m).
Once a victim is caught, the nightgaunt begins tickling him with its barbed tail. Although this sounds harmless, it's a subtle form of torture that increases the difficulty of all tasks attempted by the victim by two steps, including Might-based or Speed-based rolls to break or wriggle free.
If a victim caught in a nightgaunt's clutches seems likely to kill his captor, the nightgaunt will release him to the fall he seems to crave.
Interaction: Nightgaunts never speak, and they ignore anyone who attempts to interact with them, whether the communication takes the form of commanding, beseeching, or frantically pleading. Such is the way of nightgaunts.
Use: Someone who bears one or more of the PCs a grudge discovered a tome of spells and summoned a flight of nightgaunts, which set off in search of their prey.
Loot: One in three nightgaunts has a valuable souvenir from a past victim, which might be an expensive watch, a ring, an amulet, or sometimes a cypher.
GM Intrusion: The character is startled by the nightgaunt and suffers the risk of temporary dementia. On a failed Intellect defense roll, she shrieks and faints (or, at he GM's option, babbles, drools, laughs, and so on). She can attempt a new Intellect defense roll each round to return to normal.