It’s Halloween time! The best holiday of the year! To get into a spooky mood for Halloween, we’re focusing on the monsters of the game. We’re shining a light on the scariest of monsters so that you can use them to give your players a fright! Today we’ll be looking at the illusory predator: the displacer beast.
The displacer beast takes its name from its ability to create a phantom image of itself right next to it. This gives the displacer beast an eerily ghostly appearance and a tendency of being hard to hit. Like many creatures that originate from the Feywild, the displacer beast may also have the ability to teleport. A ghostly, teleporting panther with tentacles coming from its back is definitely not something you want chasing after you.
Once a displacer beast has set its sights on you, you have little choice other than to run. They are formidable combatants and ruthless hunters, traits learned long ago when they were bred for a court in the Feywild. The only warning you’ll get of an attack from the beast is two glowing eyes. These eyes mark the glaring gaze of the beast, and even persist through its death. Displacer beasts are such good hunters that they even partake in hunting for sport, playing with their prey before the kill. Once the beast is done, it will take its next meal and drag it to a feeding spot for it to consume.
These traits can lead to some memorable and quite frightening encounters. The eyes serve as a constant source of paranoia for your players, a constant reminder that they’re always being watched. The beast’s love of a sporting hunt can lead to multiple encounters, wearing down your party before one last desperate fight. This fight can end up in a feeding den, with the ground covered in bones of previous victims, a grim reminder of what will happen to your players should they fail.
This monster lends itself to some great imagery, which is the greatest strength of the displacer beast. The glowing eyes, the ghostly after image, the dragging of corpses; all of which are strong scenes that can send a chill up your players’ spines. How will you use the displacer beast? Let me know down below! And as always, keep those dice rolling high!
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