Urban Fantasy: Bogeymen Revised

Before I started working on the Urban Fantasy setting, I wrote about one of its monster categories (if such a thing even truly exist), entities born of human primal fear, the dark and alienation. These creatures are known as Bogeymen.

Nature And (Lack Of) Origin

The Creeper, from Jeepers Creepers.

Bogeymen are wholly corporeal creatures, at least when alive and active. While they embody certain things and concepts they are not Spirits. A bogeyman can be touched, its pulse will be felt (if it has a heart, anyway), its skin will have sweat and it will bleed when cut. As long as the creature remain alive, it is mortal flesh and blood although often of a particularly hard to kill variety, as these creatures sometime display a baffling anatomy and an uncanny ability to resist mortal wounds. In form, they are humanoid but all similarities with human end there: these creatures never look human up close, indeed they are horrific mockeries of humanity at the best of times. Their skin may be pale and waxy or it could be a horrid mass of scabs and scars erupting in bony spikes. It may have scaly skin, four eyes, a jaw that can open like a snake or even bugs living in its flesh. Even the most human-like of these creatures would look like someone who has been disfigured beyond what one would think is possible. Unlike Witch-Breed they never have the ability to appear human, relying on dark lighting and bulky clothes to hide briefly among ordinary people.

Where they come from is a mystery. No one has ever observed them raising their own children nor displaying any kind of familial link, safe perhaps for the myth of Grendel (who was definitely a Bogeyman in many aspect of its behavior) and the appearance of his mother. They are not transformed from ordinary people, as those are Witch-Breeds. Bogeymen simply come into existence over a period of time until they just exist and take their first life at which point the monster is indeed a fully realized entity. Some speculate they are a form of transformed Spirit of Fear and Darkness somehow given flesh but there are several holes in this theory. Beyond their connection with primal fears no one know where they come from or how they come to be. They just are. They are monsters lurking in the shadow, trolls under the bridge and manic monsters too bizarre to be considered a true Slasher. To make a comparison from movies: the Creeper is a Bogeyman and Jason Vorhees is a Slasher. One is a mostly inexplicable monster, some demon-like entity while the other is a supernaturally tough killer-later-turned-undead.

Abilities

The abilities of Bogeymen are quite varied, given that each is a mostly unique monster. These are not particularly impressive or potent supernatural abilities most of the time but simply quirks of their implausible biology manifesting as minor gifts such as being able to resist a specific type of damage (from a tough hide or spongy flesh), wall-crawling or stretching their limbs and/or jaws. As a whole, however, Bogeymen do display a few commonalities:

'It' is too powerful to be a Bogeyman but its motives
and the way it mess with people are spot on for their nature.

• Bogeymen are Hard to Detect. At the very least they are hard to take recordings of, as their innate nature will corrupt the recording, ranging from distorting the image to a mere smudge to rending a video completely corrupted and unreadable. More potent Bogeymen can extend this ability to a greater degree, such as causing all lights in their vicinity to crackle or even go out at will. In ancient time, this snuffed all candles and fire but in modern times it turn off lights. Finally their corpses tend to disappear and/or crumble to dust in some fashion. The most human-like may very well leave a corpse behind but to medical examination it would simply appear to be a horrifically deformed human, all supernatural properties having left the body upon termination.
• Some Bogeymen rely on minor and passive mind-influencing powers in addition to the basic abilities. These creatures could, for example, put out a minor aura of confusion and/or forgetfulness which only affect adults for example, prompting a Saving Throw to remember seeing the creature and not just a vague, blurred shadow.
• Finally all Bogeymen can see in the perfect darkness. Those who can't usually have other ways of detecting their prey, such as advance echolocation or scent.

These basic abilities, while rather minor and of no use in a direct fight if cornered by some supernatural investigators of some sort, exist to aid the creature's nature as a nocturnal predator. Many Bogeymen prey on children (possibly because children are easily afraid of the dark and the unknown), for example and these minor abilities are enough for it to devour a few kids here and there. No one will ever believe these children who DO see the creature due to the aforementioned mind influencing powers.

Previously in this post, the Bogeymen were described as mostly identical stat-wise to the Slashers. Because the Urban Fantasy game tend to involve more potent characters with a better chance of fighting back, the Bogeymen is instead re imagined as 3-5 HD monster with above average attack bonus and damage. The Slasher's immunity to non-magical attacks is missing but it might exist in more powerful Bogeymen. Potential new abilities include:

• Licking the blood of a victim gives the Bogeyman the ability to instantly sense the victim's presence within 30m even through walls.
• Either through eldritch geometries or the disgusting ability to break and reshape its bones the Bogeyman can take 1d4 rounds to squeeze through any hole no bigger than a human fist. It can also seemingly hide in similar spaces or larger even if it would not fit normally. Yes, this include hiding a seven feet tall monster under a child's bed.
• As long as the Bogeyman remain in areas of even partial darkness, its AC become 17. Blows either miss or seemingly glance off the obscure form of the monster as if having its horrid form hidden by the darkness made it harder to wound.
• Much like its relative the Slasher, Bogeymen are known to fake death. When taking damage the creature can pretend to drop dead from the wound as it extend its mind-clogging powers as a defense mechanism. Anyone that see the Bogeyman fall must make a Saving Throw or be compelled to think its 'dead for good, now'. They will be compelled to move on, tend their wounds, maybe turn around or talk to each others as if all tension is deflated. The creature will then either spring back to attack then or wait for them to leave its body unattended at which point it will scuttle off and prepare for a new offensive.Note that this 'off screen body disappearance' is akin to a teleportation effect and works even inside of a room so long as it has more than a single exit.
• Some Revenant abilities associated with Slashers also work, such as Sense Victim or Pursuit. The ability Long Tongue can also be given to Bogeymen.
• Like some Demons they can sometimes also Sense Sin, even if its limited to weird things like misbehaving children or horny teenagers.

Bogeymen occupy a conceptual zone which overlap with ogre-like monsters, demons and slashers but they are neither. They are monsters born of fear and nightmares which are made flesh. They are not tied to specific mythologies nor are they truly powerful creatures which can be a threat on a massive scale. They are a simple yet potent archetype of the monster in the dark.