New Monster: The Gremlin

By Joeker, in Dark Heresy General Discussion

The Gremlin is a non aligned minor chaos daemon. It inhabits small machines, usually servo skulls and has the physical characteristics of the items (wounds, movement, etc.), and uses them to spread misery and mishaps. The Gremlin can spread and take over more of similar types of machine that it inhabits, feeding off of the greed maleficence of people it has taken on as it's master.

The Gremlin can be thought of as a low powered evil djinn, interpreting the wishes of it's "Master" to what ever causes the most havoc, death, and chaos. From creating death trap spiked beds in minutes to wiring a fusion generator to overload when a "Master" wants a big, powerful weapon: and while quite useful when sent against a technological foe or learning chaos tech, mostly the Gremlin is just bad news.

The apparently most useful aspect of the Gremlin is it's ability to create daemon infused weapons and items. While these items appear to be under the "Masters" control they are in fact still controlled by the Gremlin, and give the Gremlin a way to gain control over the "Master" or anyone using the daemon infused item via a possession roll. A roll vs. the control can be take when ever the Gremlin forces the person to do something against their usual personality. The Gremlin can only create one daemon item per five items it has taken over as it's host (e.g. 15 servo skull equals 3 items it can create). It takes 1d10 days to create an item (use the rules in the Enemies Beyond book) or 1d10 hours if in the warp or thin veil area. These days/hours do not need to be consecutive. If the Gremlin is destroyed, the items return to being mundane, but give off a negative psychic reading and can never be consecrated or given a blessed or holy sub-type and would make the item easier to be daemon infused again.

Once the Gremlin has made an opposed willpower check it can talk to characters and NPCs telepathically otherwise it can only use the host items ability to communicate.

Gremlins are hard to get rid of, all Gremlin hosts must be destroyed and their remnants exorcised by ritual or psychic power. Even a single cog missed will cause the Gremlin to reform.

Once a Gremlin accumulates one hundred host items it can spawn a new Gremlin. To recruit a new host item the Gremlin needs to touch the item and if necessary make an opposed willpower roll.

Gremlin host items appear dirty or blackened by fire.

Post it in the Bestiary?

With a better format, it would be nice indeed.

Better format?

Better format?

I think he might mean adding a space between paragraphs.

Also, consider restructuring this as a template instead of a description.

For example, you could state that a gremlin is base monster plus a few named Gremlin traits.

Also, being a Daemon weapon factory is a little.... off. Daemon weapons are not mass produced, they are rare, storied relics which are individually significant.

You could instead make the Gremlin give weapons the Tainted quality? Or create rune weapons. You could even give the Gremlin the power to create temporary Daemon weapons, which can potentially rip free of its bonds and turn on its wielders.

I just used the base template of the item it was possessing. Whether it be a servo skull, cherubim, servetor, or scalpel bot. The daemon weapons are temporary, once you kill the Gremlin, they go away. And it gives a reason for greedy players to keep it around once they find that it is trying sneaky ways of killing the party off. "Yes it nearly destroyed the gellar field on the ship we're on, but it gave me a daemon infused auto cannon. (true story)".

The daemon weapons it creates can't be used against it, and are trying to take control of the characters using them. Remember this thing wants to kill everyone not holding one of it's daemon weapons or weak willed individuals that it might use later.

Unlike most daemons, this is the sneaky evil trying to kill them. "Why did the engines on the fliter suddenly ignite, nearly killing half the party?" "Why does my las gun keep jamming?" "Is that a daemon possessed nuke?"