Lore24: October 10th - The Var, hypochondriac scientist aliens
Lore24 is a series of worldbuilding bits for RPGs (mostly horror)
Welcome! While this is my first post on this Substack, I have several posts on my old blog, at Stories with Dice. I will gradually transfer the content from there to here. In the meantime, I will prioritize posting new content here.
What is Lore24 and this blog?
On this blog, I write random bits of RPG advice and worldbuilding. I mostly focus on horror RPGs (Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu). I also write the occasional short piece of fiction prose.
Lore24 is a successor to Dungeon23. While Dungeon23 was the daily challenge of creating a dungeon level throughout 2023, Lore24 is the daily challenge of writing a bit of worldbuilding lore. For me, it’s become the dumping ground for ideas for horror RPGs, inspired by random tables, movies, books, or whatever else might be on my mind.
Today I will create a monster. I am using random tables from:
Rolls
Why Aren’t They Known?: Some humans work to assiduously clean up evidence.
Their Greatest Remaining Work: A concealed global network of underground structures
Where Did They Come From?: Explorers or vanguards of a distant alien species.
What Did They Influence?: Animal life. Some animals are secretly under their control.
Names: R Va
The Var are an old race of alien monsters that sent their spies to Earth many eons ago. These pioneers were sent to Earth to mine it for precious resources.
What?
Faction resources: Medicine: Knowledge of anatomy and resources to heal, cure, or prevent diseases or injuries
Specifically, they studied life on Earth in order to build a catalogue of known diseases and injuries. The Var are an old race, and, with the eons, they grew paranoid and hypochondriac. They could not leave their home planet of Jevyon Yor.
Planet name
Names: Je Y
Within Earth's depths they built elaborate laboratories to study the flora and fauna. They catalogued it and sent many of their findings to their home planet. They were ecstatic with their findings on our planet.
However, with time, life's sheer amount of diseases and mutations overwhelmed even their advanced computers and intelligence. The scout scientists went mad trying to understand and predict its randomness. They have now been reduced to blathering masses of flesh. Their only instinct is to obsessively collect and dissect all terrestrial lifeforms. They stopped sending regular information back home.
How do they look like?
Basic Configuration: Bird-like winged
Animal Types and Characteristic: Maggot Softness, wetness, rot, squirming, gnawing
Other Growths: Bone spikes
Manner of Feeding: Eats well-aged carrion
Voice or Call: Fluting and tonal
The Way it Moves: Slow and deliberate
Hunting Style: Lies in wait
Optional Special Abilities: Emit a hideous stench that leaves all victims in a 10 meter radius at -2 to hit for 1d6 minutes
The Var have soft, winged maggot-like bodies, with their organs and appendages squirming across their cartilage. They crawl across the soil and feed on aged leftovers of their experiments. When threatened by other species, they spray them with a foul juice that weakens them and alerts their kin.
Cut to: today, Kova borehole, Russia. Engineers pick up signs of extensive underground spaces that don't seem natural. They send robots to study it. The robots retrieve "strange artifacts". One of the robots' video feed cuts abruptly when a "gust of wind" pushes it over the brink of a chasm.
Hooks
A Russian oligarch snatches a few of the artifacts recovered from the Kova expedition. He's hired a team of biologists and chemists to extract the information from the Var's supercomputers. What secrets lurk in there? What lessons will the scientists learn? What sort of effects will this knowledge have on the human body?
A further expedition is being prepared into the underground complexes, funded by the Russian, Chinese and US governments. Representatives from each country are being assigned to the team.
The Var have grown concerned over the radio silence. They are now sending a new wave of scientists to find out what happened to the first landers. NASA has picked up strange objects at the edge of the Solar System, moving unlike any other celestial body. Doomsday cults have already popped up, heralding the return of Nibiru.