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Ideas for the true forms of evil shadow monsters?

ShadeZ

Maester
So in one of my WIPS I have an group "The Beloveds" who are able to see a whole second world overlaping the normal human world and function as super soldiers of a sort within both worlds. You have evil invading spirit like beings which the humans of the world call the shades. If a shade wants too it can choose to be visible, it can polymorph to hide its true form and appear very pleasant. A beloved however can see them if they don't want to be seen, can see their true form, can sense them, can see if they are attached/anchored to a person, animal, or object. Their purpose is to fight these shades. If a shade consumes enough negative emotions and/or the hosts mind gives up and surrenders power to the shade then the shade can gain a tangible and often quite dangerous forms that look like rabid and sick animals, human corpses, and dragons covered in a jet black color that consumes normal light with eyes that glow any of a variety of colors EXCEPT blue. This is where you get the whole dragons razing villages from normally.

My question. What should the real forms of these beings look like? Should it look like their physical manifested forms? I kind of like the idea that no one knows how bad it could be if they manifest a body. So if you have one manifest its a roulette if you're going to get anything from a massive dragon to an evil demon ferret.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
I suggest the Lovecraft route - yes, the 'Beloveds' can see these entities far more clearly than others, yet there is always something indistinct or indescribable about them, as they do not belong in 'normal reality.'
 

ShadeZ

Maester
I suggest the Lovecraft route - yes, the 'Beloveds' can see these entities far more clearly than others, yet there is always something indistinct or indescribable about them, as they do not belong in 'normal reality.'
So tentacles etc or just "intense feeling of horror"/wrong looking and feeling ie sick/rabid animals, demonic dark beasts, zombie like forms, corpse like undead dragons?
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
So tentacles etc or just "intense feeling of horror"/wrong looking and feeling ie sick/rabid animals, demonic dark beasts, zombie like forms, corpse like undead dragons?

Closer to the second -

'...tentacles that sprouted from some mass that my mind refused to process...'

'...a bulbous face devoid of features that nonetheless stared at me with senses beyond understanding...'

'...its legs seemed to appear and disappear...'
'
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
My initial thoughts on this is something with a changing unknowable form. I see them as negative energy crackling with kind of a strobe light effect and scribbled appearance. Long spindly limbs, always in motion. Insect like and roughly man-shaped. Kind of black shapes against flickers of negative light.
 

Queshire

Auror
You could go with something really wild.

The creature was a song. In the gap between its discordant and clashing tones its body forms. It surrounds itself in bells and resonant crystals and its multitudinous arms grasps all those who hear it to add to its chorus.
 

ShadeZ

Maester
My initial thoughts on this is something with a changing unknowable form. I see them as negative energy crackling with kind of a strobe light effect and scribbled appearance. Long spindly limbs, always in motion. Insect like and roughly man-shaped. Kind of black shapes against flickers of negative light.
True. There are some that are not unsimalar to a succubus or incubus in that they can appear like very appealing men or women but have an almost zombie like real appearance chunks of flesh missing rotten, dead, decayed and all around wrong feeling.
 
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