Old Gods of Appalachia
A wrongness is an unnatural thing that only vaguely resembles an animal, as if a small monstrous thing was playing at an animal's shape. Its features are obscured by a thick layer of dark powder very much like coal dust that absorbs most light that touches it. In the rare times it's found in bright sunlight, a wrongness looks like a coal-black, lumpy, misshapen parody of a natural creature, its limbs disproportionate, its joints bending the wrong way, and its body combining aspects of emaciation, bloat, and deformity. In areas of lesser illumination, it's merely a dark shape, a shadow blacker than midnight, that gives the impression of being put together incorrectly and slowly sliding into new configurations.
Some wrongnesses that have spent a long time near humans can roughly mimic the overall shape of a human child, but the result is inaccurate, disturbing, and eerie.
Motive: Defending its territory, causing fear
Environment: Mines and near woods with mines, solo or in groups of up to ten
Health: 6
Damage Inflicted: Minor wound (3 points)
Movement: Short; short when climbing
Modifications: Speed defense as level 3 due to size; melee attacks as level 3; perception and stealth as level 4
Combat: A wrongness attacks once per round according to its current shape, typically with a part of its body that looks like a mouth or claw. In addition to normal damage, the attack coats that part of the target's body in harmless coal dust.
A wrongness's shape is somewhat fluid, and they can easily squeeze through spaces that would confine a creature half their size, including between picket fence posts, the spokes of wagon wheels, or metal bars. When a wrongness uses this ability, it often has a different shape when it comes out the other side, as if it forgot what it looked like before and has to rebuild itself from scratch.
If a wrongness takes fire damage, the dust coating its body bursts into flame, inflicting a moderate wound (4 points) in an immediate area (or just 1 point with a successful Speed defense roll). This can happen only every few rounds, as it takes a little while for the creature's body to replenish its dust coating. During this time, it loses its modification to stealth.
About once an hour, a wrongness can expel its dust onto a small object or area about 5 feet (1.5 m) square, making that thing appear absolutely black, like the wrongness itself. It uses this to conceal an item it wants, or to create the appearance of a hole in the ground (or to obscure an actual hole).
Interaction: Wrongness are strange, confusing creatures. They sometimes act like they want to communicate or can understand language, but then lead people into an ambush, a deep hole, a collapsing mine tunnel, or another hazard. They have been seen playing with corpses of things they killed, including making chewing motions, but they don't appear to actually eat anything, and they might just be mimicking predator or scavenger behavior they've seen.
Use: A misshapen beast has been luring or chasing miners into dangerous areas. Something darker than midnight watches people on a particular stretch of road.
Loot: A dead wrongness takes a single, simple form: that of a pile of coal dust. The collected dust can be used as a cypher material relating to fire damage or protection.
Connection: A character remembers tales of misshapen creatures spotted just before a deadly mining disaster. A character remembers the feeling of being watched by a shadow as they tended to a person dying of black lung.
GM Intrusion: The wrongness causes a tunnel collapse in an immediate area, inflicting damage and trapping the character beneath rubble until they are freed.
A character breathes in a lungful of the wrongness's dust and must succeed at a hindered Might defense roll or lose their next action due to hacking and coughing.