Bogeymen are underused in fantasy bestiaries. We’ve got a hundred
sorts of undead, elemental, golem, elf, etc., so why not more
representation for the monsters under the bed.
D20
This Bogeyman Looks Like...
1
Yourself reflected in a warped and shattered mirror.
2
A cat with human fingers and joints that bend in all the wrong directions and none of the right ones.
3
A person with nothing covering their bones but tightly stretched skin.
4
Something indistinct beneath a patchy quilt of fur and raw skins.
5
A leprous crone with too many teeth.
6
A man made of needles.
7
A hypertrophied parody of a bodybuilder with thrombotic arteries coiled like pythons around their body.
8
A big, fuzzy, and round baboon with a little face.
9
A dripping eyeball with a body made from twisted nerves and veins.
10
A hairless bear whose flesh could be mistaken for a carpet of wriggling maggots.
11
Some kind of animal, or maybe a person, so scarred and bent you can’t tell which.
12
A spongy mass of fungal growths lumped into a humanoid shape.
13
A cracked, man-sized doll in a tattered dress.
14
Living roadkill.
15
A chitinous man wearing a sackcloth bag over its head.
16
A goblin with a carved pumpkin for a head.
17
A humanoid crocodile.
18
A person in heavy, form-concealing black clothing and nothing like a person beneath it all.
19
A scarecrow sewn from guts and tummies.
20
A phallico-yonic Freudian nightmare.
D20
A Distinctive Feature Of This Bogeyman Is...
1
A mouth full of dangling spaghetti-tendrils.
2
A splattering of bulging eyes across its head that can all turn in different directions.
3
A sharp-tipped tongue that can touch the tip of its toes.
4
The suckers along the insides of its arms and legs. Once it grabs you it won’t let go.
5
One of its hands is a big crab claw.
6
Its gaping flared nostrils that can track scents better than a bloodhound and spray webs of sticky snot.
7
Skin covered in pregnant pustules that release swarms of biting bugs when burst.
8
Spindly limbs like a daddy long-legs’ that can catch up no matter how fast you run.
9
Its crust of filth that covers it like armour.
10
The malformed symbiotic twin growing out of its back who treats it like a rider does their mount.
11
Its colourful stripes and slimy skin. Do not touch, highly toxic.
12
Its glowing eyes that can paralyze those who meet its gaze.
13
Its hook-clawed wings that can disembowel with a strike or carry it aloft.
14
Its prolapsable, prehensile, acid-dripping innards.
15
The knobbly horns atop its head and shoulders which it adorns with grisly decorations, such as impaled birds.
16
Its scraggly fly-like setae that can detect the slightest movement of the air.
17
The rubbery, elastic composition of its body.
18
The delicious, candy-like nodules extruded from its body.
19
Its ability to seem perfectly normal thing to the people it isn’t hunting.
20
That it breaks like a Matryoshka doll each time it’s damaged, revealing a smaller, weirder form beneath its current surface.
D20
This Bogeyman Is Known To...
1
Eat the nails off sleeping peoples’ fingers and toes.
2
Kidnap children to raise as its own.
3
Choose one person as prey then stalk them to the ends of the earth.
4
Fixate on a lonely person and address their imagined needs in a distasteful fashion.
5
Beat victims to the brink of death then leave out for the elements to finish off.
6
Spread false rumours of its own powers and vulnerabilities.
7
Be a violent alcoholic.
8
Take great joy in driving people to terror-maddened rampages.
9
Be unable to notice someone who’s hiding under a blanket that was knit with love.
10
Cut the tendons out of cowards so they can’t run away.
11
Spoil milk, turn wine to vinegar, and generally ruin all of life’s little joys.
12
Abhor cuteness.
13
Collect shameful secrets and sell them in esoteric trades.
14
Build shrines to unknown entities with blood as mortar and bones as bricks.
15
Trick the lusty into laying with it and then loose their hybrid children to plague the world.
16
Hunt anyone who’s come into contact with a particular treasure.
17
Kill the faithful and despoil temples.
18
Drive artists to create inspired and macabre works.
19
Switch targets if its current one makes a joke at another’s expense. The bogeyman will then go after the person who was mocked.
20
Serve cruel summoners as a hench-thing.
D20
This Bogeyman Is Believed To Lurk...
1
Just beneath the surface of scummy waters.
2
Atop the shelves of musty libraries.
3
Inside the walls of homes that have seen more tears than laughter.
4
On misty moors.
5
In a place parallel to reality, only coming into existence when called.
6
In empty graves.
7
Among the gnarled roots of rotten trees.
8
Near grates and drains and ditches.
9
In the deepest, darkest part of every basement.
10
In the shadows cast by wizards’ towers and witches’ huts.
11
On fresh battlefields and in the nightmares of their survivors.
12
Within a mine that killed many in a collapse.
13
In sewers and stink-heaps, ruling a court of clever rats.
14
And wallow in the gore of abattoirs.
15
In cupboards stocked with moldy bread.
16
In a manor on the bed of a dark and treacherous river.
17
Disguised among us in a human skin-suit.
18
In a grimy cauldron that flies across the night sky.
19
In farmers’ fields at noonday and midnight.
20
Atop a craggy hill where moonlight shines in strange shades.
D20
This Bogeyman Is Said To Be Especially Dangerous Because...
1
It can compress its body to squeeze through any crack and hide in any hole.
2
It can teleport between patches of darkness.
3
It can brew poisons and potions from its own secretions and parts from unclean beasts.
4
It can find out all your fears with a glance.
5
When it’s near the only noise you can make is screams.
6
It can make you regress in age, down to an infant then further still.
7
It can change shape to resemble an ordinary household object.
8
It can swallow something as much as twice its size whole.
9
It can inflict lingering delusions and phobias.
10
If you think of it it’ll know where you are.
11
It can feed off fear to become more powerful.
12
It can make sleeping people sleepwalk into its traps.
13
It can befriend even the mindless undead and convince them to do its bidding.
14
It can phase through inorganic matter.
15
It was once a human serial killer, and understands psychology and society better than others of its kind.
16
There’s only one way to kill it for good, and nobody alive knows what that is.
17
It can pop in and out of a pocket dimension like a trapdoor spider and its den.
18
Magic and machines work unreliably in its presence.
19
It’s part of a whole family of bogeymen who will avenge its harms.
20
Fighting it makes you lose track of time and space.
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