I am in a horror mood recently. The scenario i will be putting my players thru is the following.

Their Inquisitor will notice of an astropathic message saying that the facility X on planet Y is under attack by an unknown life form and requesting assistance, the message will be filled with distress and desperation from the Astropath last words. The station itself will be an astropathic relay station on a Icy planet, very cold to the point that being outside will freeze you to death in a matter of minutes. When they arrive at the station they will find that everyone in there is dead (maybe not everyone, maybe i will leave one or two survivors) and they should be isolated from their landing craft. Communication with the ship that brought them here will be impossible due to atmospheric interference on their vox system (maybe possible if they get the antenna up and running again).

The thing is, i need a big and scary monster. Something that can lurk in the dark and that can kill one man with ease if it gets to him isolated, and that can scare a group of 4 experienced players.

I considered using a Lictor, however i don't think Tyranids fit Askellon for some reason, also i don't really see the motivation for the Lictor to slaughter all the base.

Suggestions?

Genestealers would also qualify.

You could try homebrewing your own nasty beasty. Otherwise, perhaps a Dark Eldar?

If you don't want Tyranids though (which would be your best bet, as Genestealers were directly based on Xenomorphs), then your best option, imho would be a homebrew creature.

I personally considered creating a homebrew creature, but i was thinking about sticking to the lore for this one. My players are pretty knowledgeable in 40k and they enjoy meeting the big bads.

Never considered using a Dark Elder, might be interesting. Also a Genestealer would be a cool choice, but wouldn't they apply genestealer kisses on the relay station crew instead of killing them?

I am in a horror mood recently.

(...)

The thing is, i need a big and scary monster. Something that can lurk in the dark and that can kill one man with ease if it gets to him isolated, and that can scare a group of 4 experienced players.

I considered using a Lictor, however i don't think Tyranids fit Askellon for some reason, also i don't really see the motivation for the Lictor to slaughter all the base.

Suggestions?

Hi there,

first things first, the thing you don´t need is "one big, scary monster". "One big, scary monsters" is the thing that will turn the whole thing into "one encounter, and it is over". Players do not tend to fear encountering "one big scary monster", and I tend to blame the "bossfight-style" of adventure design that reigned supreme recently. Plus, "one big scary monster" is something you can deal with "one frigging bad damage dealer" rather quickly. And this is the kind of character this kind of game breeds.

My suggestion would be a sneaky, dangerous-in-numbers, ambush-type of enemy that is intelligent enough to lure the characters in, and then trap/ambush/harass the troup once they are "where the xenos wants them to be". The last RogueTrader "Creatures Book" featured some creature named "Ghul" or "Ghol" or alike that seemed to be link with the DarkEldar. It was your typical pale, hairless, nigh-blind, many-teethed impish murder-beasts, but it might work fine inside the base. And you can play all that airduct/crawlspace ambush szick with them. Make use of the Talent that boost "ganging up" further, and your characters will start to feel scare when outnumbered.... especially in close quarters, when the enemy gets the Initiative due to ambush and thereby, there is no chance for "first volley" of rapid fire without a "disengange" manouvre.

Another thing to keep in mind: Horror movie plot devices only work within horror movies.

Horror movie script writer have the movie characters do stupid things so that they end in dastardly, scary situations. Players don´t tend to do this with their characters, they want to be smart as they want "to win the scenario" while the GM tries to scare them.

They will make sure that you don´t cutt them off from their shuttle/guncutter or their communications. Think about VERY good reasons for countering that first, otherwise your players will balk a lot during the game (and perhaps rightful so). The atmospheric conditions should be clear up front, for example.

Have large complex, have the Astropath chambers far away from the landing pads. Have a lot of npc mooks guarding the craft while the characters goe down...and DON´T have the mooks die all in a sudden rush but have them fight off attackers while they give panic-reports over vox. THAT will help to build up atmosphere. Not "totally silence" but some clearly distressed seargent reporting one of his men seriously wounded, attacker having disappeared to nowhere while a soldier curses loudly in the background while his mate is bleeding heavily and not responding due to woundshock...have him die later, while the characters trie to make it back to the craft.... you know, stuff like that. If the **** hits the van outright, the players will just shrug... have things get worse every scene, and the players will feel a need to act quickly. It is not about NOT h aving them now what happens next. It is about having them NOW what will happen next, but not if they can make it BEFORE that..and having them WANT to make it before that happens..because they don´t want the NPC to die, because they don´t want to suffer the third ambush because the second ambush gave them thrice the wounds of the second one... let them role for running, climbing, getting through the corrridors. If this is the thing that safes them the next round of combat, it can be as intense as the next round of combat, especially if you describe the "running through the corridors" scene as good as you describe fighting the next bitchy-beast.

My players are pretty knowledgeable in 40k and they enjoy meeting the big bads.

If they do, consider DarkEldar and consider the mentioned RT creature book. It had some new take of the Warp Beasts. BIG things that warp through walls and slaughter armed teams of security (or soldiers) rather quickly. If said installation was a victim to a Dark-Eldar raid, some of those beasts could still linger, together with those mentioned. And if some "rear guard" of the Dark Eldar Raid Party is still there...they could launch such an "after Ambush" :

+ wait for the rescue/recon team to come for looking what has happened

+ wait for the main team to descent into the complex, while some rear guard of theirs guards their craft

+ use the beasties to keep this "go-down-team" busy while attacking the rear guard

+ kill the rearguard and PERHAPS deal with the "go-down-team" later on. Otherwise, just kill the rear guard, take the survivors and vanish back into the warp gates/tunnels you came in the first place...or to the barkes waitnign in the snow storm. After all, THEIR craft is coming down on a soaring-hot engine while YOU can stay down till your scanner picked THEIR heat signature....yours can be dimmend down to non-detectable in this mess of a weather condition...

What i learned in the past about horror is that it's not about making the players scared or spooked, this never works. I learned that what really scares the players is the isolation and the lack of sense of control. When they can't go back the way they came from (thus isolating them from their landing ship) and unable to ask for help the hardest part of the trick is done, or have the wrong tools for the job ahead. Well all of this make them afraid for their characters and sometimes for the NPCs they care about.

I personally plan to bring a few NPCs to be used to build tension, but most of them should matter to them otherwise it would be useless. But i don't want to bring a bunch of people to be killed in order to demonstrate how scary the adversary, this usually that builds the sensation that only NPCs die to the big scary monster.

Gonna check the RT book you mentioned. I imagine it is Koronus Besteary right?

Gonna check the RT book you mentioned. I imagine it is Koronus Bestiary right?

Yep. Both the suggestions of Ur-Ghul and Khimerae (the new version of Warp Beasts) are good.

I'm thinking a new type of xenos (or maybe even Tyranid?) species that can replicate itself at the celluar level to mimic its victims (think of the alien in John Carpenter's, The Thing). Alternatively, a Necron Wraith would fit your scenario very well. Having a killer, snake like robot on the lose which is hunting you in the dark and can escape by phase shifting between dimensions and passing through walls would make for a terrifying encounter,

i think in order to create a big scary monster adventure you should consider a lot of cut scenes to really help the enemy escape in order to create a step by step climax in the adventure. the enemy should also give hints that it is intelligent enough in order to try to split the party...you can even use a mode that the monster cant be hurt but cant hurt the players also so you can have flexibility in creating the desired scenes without an all in from your players. my suggestion is something from the kroot family. they are adaptive predators. you can scale it up or down in power level as you see fit. You can always bring more of them as reinforcement or play it like an imminent danger. you can use dark eldar in bigger ongoing adventures....its a pity to spoil them in this kind of scenario!

even better a mutated kroot

Also a Genestealer would be a cool choice, but wouldn't they apply genestealer kisses on the relay station crew instead of killing them?

They might. But they might not. Genestealers will do what they feel is best for the swarm. They're pretty intelligent creatures, and they might determine it's better to eliminate all witnesses of their presence.

On the Dark Eldar though they also have those nightmarish creatures on their side that could serve as a nasty beasty. Ur-Ghuls for example. Or anything a Haemonculi might have made, like a Grotesque.

Mandrakes are also great potential for nightmare fuel in a campaign.

I'm thinking a new type of xenos (or maybe even Tyranid?) species that can replicate itself at the celluar level to mimic its victims (think of the alien in John Carpenter's, The Thing). Alternatively, a Necron Wraith would fit your scenario very well. Having a killer, snake like robot on the lose which is hunting you in the dark and can escape by phase shifting between dimensions and passing through walls would make for a terrifying encounter,

I don't know if it's still around as this was back in 3rd edition but I remember a big Tyranid nasty that would kill an individual and then hide in that individual's body and mimic the person staggering around wounded and crying for help. When his allies came to save him the creature would burst out as a giant nightmarish creature (don't ask me how he managed to get inside a human body, lets just say it's a 40K thing) wipe out the would be rescuers and then start the process anew with one of their bodies.

That could make for an interesting beastie for the characters to try and discover and fight and may lead to some healthy paranoia of if that guy staggering towards them screaming for help is really wounded or the creature in disguise. Could also lead to some tragic mistakes.

Otherwise if you are looking for individual lore monsters perhaps you could come up with homebrew stats for something such as Old One Eye or the Red Terror. The Red Terror could especially work well for the type of isolated scenario you are suggesting. Potentially they could have been captured by a rogue trader vessel looking to start a new exotic beast market and unaware of exactly what they have found. At some point the creature obviously awoke/escaped and ran amok and the ship crashed somewhere on the planet. With the crew dead the creature found its way to the facility where it started the carnage anew and that was when the messages were sent.

A C'tan! Ok, ok tha's a bit OP and stupid.

How about Necron Flayed Ones?

They are scary hard to kill xenos who will horribly kill you and wear your skin for the evulz.

Necrons are xenos to. And you really don't want to be stalked across some abandoned outspost by something that looks like a mix of Freddy, Leatherface and the T-800, going all Ramsey Bolton on you .

For a shapeshifter, there's a beastie in the DH1 supplement "Creatures Anathema" called the Simulucra, or something to that effect which is essentially a shapeshifting Xenos that takes the form of those it's killed, along with their memories (though this deteriorates over time).

I think there was also a shapeshifter in the Deathwatch Mark of the Xenos, but don't remember what it was called.

For a shapeshifter, there's a beastie in the DH1 supplement "Creatures Anathema" called the Simulucra, or something to that effect which is essentially a shapeshifting Xenos that takes the form of those it's killed, along with their memories (though this deteriorates over time).

The problem with using a Simulacra as the main villain in a horror plot is that an average DH party will one-shot it as soon as they suspect it. Gregorius21778 touched on this in an early post- even a powerful monster will likely be anticlimactically killed at a much earlier point than you want in a proper horror story. Hence I recommend a swarm- and don't let your players know how many monsters there are in the swarm. I once ran a mission where the Acolytes discover a backwoods community on a Frontier World had been turned into Beastmen via sorcery. I hoped to stage a Night of the Living Dead-style all-night siege at one point, but once the shots started flying I realized that I had set the number of Beastmen too low- and I couldn't increase it because the Acolytes already knew the population size of the town...

Perhaps you could have had more beastmen living rural in the bush around the town that attack from the shadows when the

As for the issue with of numbers with a big nasty perhaps have a few Ravenors accompanying the Red Terror or reveal later that the Red Terror itself is actually a small brood of the nasty critters. What we are still being attacked, but I thought we killed it, **** it there's more than one!

It is possible to have one monster lurking there. Remember that you can always have narrative scenes, to creep up the terror, that playes can't affect, until those rights moments where they'll have amassed enough clues and such.

Otherwise, a slaught, used intelligently, can be very efficient. They can hide easily with their shadow cloaks, their elasticity justify that they can fit and flee with whatever they want (small plumbing, air-duct, etc.). They are tough and very dangerous when entering the fights and killing them without powerfull weapon is a long process. And with the new righteous fury system, they are harder to wound, since they are immune to any critical damage that isn't the loss of a body part or death.