Malignant Polar Entity

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Is it invisible?
We don't know.

Can it pass through walls?
We cannot say for certain.

Can it fly or leap over obstacles like a Spring-Heeler?
Possibly, but no one really is sure.

Does it have great, nasty teeth? Perhaps.
We do know it has incredibly sharp talons.

Is it fur-bearing or some sort of reptile or vegetable-thing?
This remains a mystery.

Is it intelligent, or is it an unusually clever animal?
That remains to be determined.

Does it have any weakness?
It has been reported on multiple occasions that the beast was driven off by fire.

Why would anyone risk life and limb to hunt this beast down?
There are several competing rewards or bounties on the beast, depending on whether it is recovered alive, dead, wholly intact or in part, as well as simply acquiring definitive evidence of the thing's nature. Bring us this monster, in whatever form or condition and there is a rich pay-day awaiting.

Excerpt from A Very Special Third Anniversary of the Third Expedition Edition

of The Whisperer

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Malignant Polar Entity 
(Currently Unidentified Antarctic Horror)
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Neutral (suspected, but so-far unverified)
Movement: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 5 (as Chain Mail)
Hit Dice: 6
Attacks: 1
Damage: 3d4 (Talons)
Save: F4
Morale: 9 (Decreases by 1 for every 6 points of fire damage taken)

Special: Immune to Charm, Hold, Sleep.
               All creatures within a 20' radius that are susceptible to Cold damage receive 1d4 damage per round.
               On any natural to hit roll of 20 the beast inflicts an additional 2d8 Cold damage.

Boreal Sea Bears, Gray Masses, Giant Albino Penguins, White Beasts and fossilized Polypous-things were not the only specimens brought back from a series of modestly-staffed, poorly equipped and questionably successful South Polar Expeditions launched by the Academy prior to the War. The first expedition claimed to have discovered a bizarre variety of aquatic crinoid and another more vegetative creature still frozen in a block of ice, both of which were apparently lost at sea when their airship was heavily damaged in a freak storm. The second expedition brought back a number of photos, ectographs, rubbings, sketches and maps from a so-far unnamed set of sub-polar ruins deep within an area of heavy volcanism from which they barely escaped when their airship caught on fire. Of the third expedition we know very little other than that they did indeed successfully return only to have their airship destroyed during a bombing attack during the War. Their records and manifest were lost, but it is almost certain that they are responsible for having brought a number of exotic specimens that were then let loose in the turmoil and chaos following the attack. Since then pretty much everyone blames the third expedition for unleashing the White Beasts and hordes of penguins and other such nuisances upon the city.

But out of all the nasty beasts and dangerous creatures removed from the Antarctic regions and dropped willy-nilly into the middle of Wermspittle the worst of the lot has to be the shambling horror that freezes its victims to death even at the height of Summer. At this time there are no pictures of this creature. It was never properly named. The members of the third expedition were all murdered or lost to Black Smoke attacks before any sort of formal report could be made. So a nameless, unseen, horror from the South Polar regions has taken up residence somewhere within Wermspittle and so far no one has managed to capture it, let alone document it...

The one good thing that has been noted about this creature so far is that it appears to go dormant over the Winter, confining its most brutal attacks to a couple of weeks around the Summer Solstice, a fact that has emboldened numerous cranks, con-artists, charlatans and astrologers to speculate wildly about the occult nature of the beast. Theories abound, facts are few; there's quite a lot of fame, perhaps even a good reward for anyone who can manage to discover more actual details about this beast...let alone capture it, or kill it.

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Source of Inspiration: "A malignant entity, or cosmic spirit from the southern pole, which pursues a party of explorers and kills them one by one, leaving on each, even in countries of the tropical or temperate zones (where it has followed them), the marks of frost-bite."
The Thing from the Antarctic, an unfinished synopsis/fragment by Clark Ashton Smith which can be found at the Eldritch Dark website.

Arctic Fireballs

"An Arctic fire-ball had traversed the sky, showering abroad, a sulphurous glamour over the snow-landscape. Before the intenser blue of its momentary shine had passed away, I saw Wilson stagger forward, and drop. And him and his lantern I buried deep there under the rubble ice."

The Purple Cloud,

by M.P. Shiel

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Arctic Fireballs
(Polar Irrlicht)

No. Enc.: 1

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Movement: 360 (120)

Armor Class: 

Hit Dice: 6

Attacks: 1 (constant / area effect)

Damage: 1d6 (20' radius)

Save: MU6

Morale: 8

Special: Anyone looking directly at one of these creatures must make a Save or go blind for 1d6 Turns. Repeatedly gazing into the searing blue light incurs a cumulative penalty of -1 on all subsequent Saves. Failing a Save three times in a row results in the blindness becoming permanent.
Damage inflicted within its area of effect alternates randomly between extreme heat and extreme cold.

When reduced to zero hp the creature explodes as an Incendiary Cloud (75%) or Ice Storm (25%).

Shimmering immaterial horrors from beyond the Arctic Circle, these effulgent orbs of preternatural azure flame plunge headlong through the night leaving trails of sparks and sulphurous fumes in their wake. Unquiet beasts of uncertain provenance, they make a fearful and easily distinguishable roar in their travels. It is described as being something akin to a stuttering sort of thunder one feels in their bones more than it assaults the ears, according to the accounts of various survivors. Even before the uncanny sound might be heard, a searing blue light will sweep across the landscape evaporating shadows and blinding any foolish enough to look too closely into the source of this weird radiance.

Unnatural things, intrusive forces from some Parallel Realm or malign sphere of existence few know anything about, there are many unanswered questions regarding these mysterious, sinister creatures and too few definite answers...

There are those who would reward any intrepid investigator who successfully uncovers a clue as to the actual identity of these things or any facts regarding their ultimate nature. Divinations and prognostications do not work on these things necessitating the gathering of intelligence by the time-honored process of discrete pursuit and patient observation...

Recent Developments

1. An Ill-Advised Attempt at Binding one of these things has resulted in the death of four students, leaving three others horribly burned and their Student Advisor Miss Kalisham missing and presumed either Displaced or possibly disintegrated. The Board of Inquiry is seeking the advice of anyone with what might pass for a reasonable amount of credible knowledge in these sorts of matters i.e. direct, personal experience in dealing with malevolent Irrlichts and related things.

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2. Mandival Kosrigand, a nearly destitute disgraced scholar with a penchant for exotic forms of Black Liquor claimed to have captured a specimen of what he prefers to refer to as an Effulgent Azure Orb, if only to annoy his detractors and rivals. When a group of his peers broke down the door to his study all they found was his charred corpse and what remained of his papers scattered in total disarray. Perhaps his method worked and someone moved to snatch it away before he could share it with anyone else. Maybe he was the victim of spontaneous combustion and there's nothing more to the matter. All that is certain is that someone would do well to take a closer look at things, just in case some sort of sorcerous skullduggery might be afoot...who knows who might be the next victim...

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3. A lone Forager who was presumed lost for three weeks reappeared just recently telling a bizarre tale about a strange series of caverns where all the exposed surfaces were vitrified to the point of being nearly glass-like due to the efforts of a '...radiant blue sphere of corruscating flame wreathed in a halo of sulphorous fumes that resented all intrusions upon its secret domain.' Allegedly the Forager was able to escape, but became lost in the Middle Deeps and was forced to wander through numerous unmapped areas before finally stumbling across a Sewer Militia Antekeep on the banks of a deep, cold river. They've only just left the custody of the Sewer Militia and word of their misadventure has spread quickly.

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4. Nasigallir of Greft, renowned for her research into photovoltaic phenomena has put out a call for research assistants and support staff, including a contract with a notorious fully licensed band of Pruztian deserters mercenaries...rumor has it that she intends to hunt down and either capture or destroy a number of Arctic Fireballs as part of her ongoing efforts at weaponizing various forms of Irrlichts under her grant and Letter of Patent & Marque bestowed upon her by Baron Ludrivarca Bollingern, master of one of the 'violently independent freeholds' that have seceded from the Empire now that the War has descended into anarchy and chaos. The Baron is not a man who abides chaos. At all.

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Inspiration: The quote from M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud was the starting point for this nasty luminous horror that was somehow brought back from the Arctic by some ill-fated expedition or another. Perhaps it is somehow connected to the Inner City at the Two Magnetic Poles and the Dno-Hna Formula or is it one of the ancient and shining foulnesses that fester between the angles of Yr and Nhhgr? Possibly...

White Beast (Red Bestiary)

"We perceived something white lying on the ground, but could not immediately make out what it was. At length we saw that it was the carcass of the strange animal with the scarlet teeth and claws which the schooner had picked up at sea on the eighteenth of January. Captain Guy had had the body preserved for the purpose of stuffing the skin and taking it to England. I remember he had given some directions about it just before our making the island, and it had been brought into the cabin and stowed away in one of the lockers. It had now been thrown on shore by the explosion; but why it had occasioned so much concern among the savages was more than we could comprehend. Although they crowded around the carcass at a little distance, none of them seemed willing to approach it closely. By-and-by the men with the stakes drove them in a circle around it, and, no sooner was this arrangement completed, than the whole of the vast assemblage rushed into the interior of the island, with loud screams of Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allen Poe

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White Beast

No. Enc.: 1d4
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90' (30')
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 6+
Attacks: 2 or 1
Damage: 1d6/1d6 (Claws) or 2d4 (Bite)
Save: F6
Morale: 11

Special: White Beasts Move Silently (75%), and Hide (80%) within arctic or boreal environments, irrespective of shadows. They also gain a +2 bonus to hit if they manage to attack with surprise. They are consummate ambushers. They are also highly resistant, if not immune to most poisons.


Red in tooth and claw, the great white beasts roam far and wide across the frozen wastes surrounding the polar regions of many worlds that are officially listed as 'dead.' These creatures endure tremendous hardship, persist in the face of incredibly daunting prospects, and abide within the barren wilderness. Predators and scavengers, they present a formidable challenge to any who would attempt to cross over into their fiercely defended territories and hunting grounds. They feed upon fish, crabs and other sea life, as well as anything they can run down and kill on the ice such as various types of penguins and/or adventurers wandering about lost after blizzards and the like. Confirmed man-eaters, these things appear to prefer man-flesh to any other sort of meat and will go to incredible lengths to get past any and all defensive measures to dine upon human flesh.

These beasts appear to have survived upon worlds devastated and depopulated by the Purple Clouds. Some scholars believe that the White Beasts may be somehow immune or resistant to the toxins produced by the Purple Clouds, making them invaluable as subjects for study and evaluation by means of dissection and so forth. Of course no one takes seriously the crack-pot theories and half-baked claims that these things are in any way related to the Gnoph-Beasts, any more than they are some kind of aberrant ursine or degenerate 'polar ape' such as the Nickel Dreadfuls do so love to go on and on about despite any definitive proof or evidence of their existence. The samples taken from carcasses brought back by the Parzguin Expedition into the brightest heart of the Glowfield were supposed to have conclusively proven that these beasts are indeed a unique species unto themselves, but most of their samples were lost in a fire that gutted their laboratory and warehouse, so the question remains open and myriad unproven theories abound.

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