Silent Legions Sandbox Tools: Eldritch Deformities

Body horror is a classic element of, well, horror and H.P. Lovecraft was no stranger to the idea of physical corruption and deformities which hinted at some strange, eldritch influence in the character's heritage. However, surely today, in 2018 in more 'enlightened times' nobody would ever be freaked out by the strange appearance of someone.

R-right?

'Brundlefly'.

Unfortunately, having a disturbed or terrified reaction to someone with a strange appearance is inherent to human nature. There's a deep sense of discomfort which come to being exposed to deformities, be they fairly minor (such as my crooked fingers) to the physically-crippling genetic conditions which can unfortunately affect people and make their whole existence nothing but suffering. It is sad and perhaps wrong to feel unease when exposed to it but humans tend to fear the unknown and things which activate all those primitive instincts: in this case, a fear of sickness and crippling. Those who live their whole lives with crippled and deformed individuals feel no fear, for them these are just people, their friends, families and loved ones. However we can't blame strangers when they meet something which their brains register as wrong. It make use feel uneasy.

In real life, deformities are hardly an indicator of some malign corruption and they hardly make anyone suffer safe for the poor person stuck with these crippling ailments and their immediate family. But what if, for a moment, we abandon these ideals of tolerance we find so lofty and allow the primal instinct to kick in. Even worse, what if our primal instincts which tell us 'this person looks wrong' is true? What if this person looks wrong and feels wrong not because of a genetic condition or accident but rather because they have become inhabited by some eldritch terror from beyond or suffered arcane injuries in the practice of foul sorcery? And even worse still, what if our own bodies started being 'wrong'? What if some otherworldly sickness was corrupting us? Then there is the fear of aging, our bodies decaying and twisting, growing weak and ugly. Even the iconic zombie plays upon this fear as they drag their decaying bodies around, not to mention Videogames having brought a fusion of body horror and the zombie in the likes of Resident Evil and Dead Space. Cancer is a constant, looming fear for us today too.

It remain a poignant, very real fear. The fear sickness combined with the fear of the unknown. There's a reason the movies of David Cronenberg remain classics of horror, as does John Carpenter's 'The Thing'. In fiction, the fear of physical corruption and degradation can be a very real sign of some otherworldly force twisting the world and people.

Minor Physical Changes and Malformations (Which are explainable by a health conditions, right?)
D6	Skin	Eyes	Hands	Other
1	Skin is pale and slightly discolored, almost to a white or grey tone in places, depending on ethnicity.	Bloodshot, hungry eyes. Seem to almost turn red when excited.	Fingers are unnaturally long and creepy.	Unnaturally tall, almost seven feet or above. Limbs are long and oddly-jointed.
2	Bizarre, discolored splotches which may or may not be odd-colored rash or scars.	Eyes are discolored and they often leak what appears to be pus.	Seemingly lacking nails, as if they never existed.	Fat deposit in weird places, appears to be bloated in some places and thin in others.
3	Skin is unnaturally cold or warm to the touch and a bit oily/slimy.	One eye can’t open completely. Rash and scar tissue around it and it appears inflamed.	Nails are thick and tend toward an unusually dark green, yellow or blue.	Unusual gait, possibly slightly deformed legs and/or feet.
4	Skin covered in large, discolored and sometimes throbbing veins.	Unusually pale eyes: a shade of light grey, unnatural light blue, yellow or green.	Large, knuckle-heavy hands covered in warts and bumps.	Body odor is repellent. Smell unlike any human.
5	Skin has a sickly greenish, almost purple or blue tinge.	The eyes appear misaligned and maybe move independently?	Joints are strangely loose and flexible.	Unusually twitchy, constantly seem to sense things which aren’t there.
6	Unusually smooth and rubbery to the touch. Looks younger than they appear.	Never seem to blink.	Hand grip is unusually tight and firm, could almost break bones.	Body emits weird noises, like strangle gurgling sounds or the crack of bones.

Body Horror Corruption
D8	Skin	Body	Face	Other
1	Spot of skin on the body are now covered in disgusting, knotty tumour-like growth.	Limbs are growing longer, quadrupedal movement is now possible.	Face is still human but permanently twisted in an expression of rage, fear, madness or rapturous pleasure.	Body has an unnatural, eldritch glow.
2	Skin become covered in horrific blisters and cracks. What’s under the peeling skin isn’t remotely human-looking.	Back is hunched, spine is twisted and the back is bulging with malformed growths: soon to be new limbs?	Lips have shrunken back/peeled away, exposing rows upon rows of newly grown sharp teeth.
3	Hardened scabs which are starting to jut out from the soft human skin.	Lower body is formed and new hind limbs are growing: they look nothing like human limbs.	Lower jaw is melting away, replaced by some disgusting straw-like organs.	The body no longer feel any pain and even regenerate lost limbs.
4	The skin has dried up and started turning into something coarse and inorganic.	Hands have split into two halves, hinting at the growth of separate arms.	Multiple bulging eyes, glowing with baleful light in places where eyes should not be.
5	The skin is now completely slimy and gelatinous. Body is partially transparent.	Limbs have twisted and deformed, increasingly useless. Body has grown bigger and longer, almost like a worm.	Head is a deformed lump, less a head and more a protrusion in keeping with the other malignancies.	Can phase through walls as if they weren’t there.
6	A disgusting, eldritch fungus (or something like it) has symbiotically grown and is part of the skin.	A monstrous, alien secondary face has grown somewhere on the body.	Mouth as wide as the body. Gut is now twice as large and can swallow humans whole.
7	Skin has begun peeling off and bulging cords of newly grown alien muscles surge.	Skeleton is now growing on the outside of the body like body armor.	Skull is broken and peeling away, revealing a tangle of neural tissue, tentacles and mouths.	Body can turn invisible at will.
8	Skin is constantly shifting consistency and texture, sometimes revealing ‘things man was not meant to know’.	Arms have twisted into what can only be described as ‘something-like-wings-which-are-only-wings-in-fonction’. Flight is possible.	Head is swollen, with the brain pulsing under the skull which can barely contain it.