Nightmare Fuel / The Unexpectables

• Anything and everything having to do with Stillhavity, the demigod child of the god of Greed. Counts as literal Nightmare Fuel for poor Task after Stillhavity starts visiting him in his dreams.
• While the party are investigating a mysterious sets of murders that took the lives of the creators of Constructs in the city, they finally get a lead by getting into the heavily fortified house of one of the creators Dulmar. In there they find that Dullmar was never murdered, he simply used a soul crystal to move his body into the statue of the Construct hero Might-Crank and began his murder spree out of jealousy. When the party prepare to leave they find that the door they unlocked from the outside has been sealed shut again when Borky checks outside he sees that Dullmar has killed the guard they had watch the entrance of the place and is going to lock the party in his house until they die.
• The reason Solly ran away from the United Orun Clergy is a combination of this and a Tear Jerker. A bunch of flumphs just wanted to know about Orun, and for daring to teach them, the flumphs were slaughtered and Solly was set to be severely punished.
• While searching through the books on the pirate ship, Panic comes across an old book written entirely in ancient Abyssal. After Willow determines it's not magical, Panic decides it couldn't hurt to try playing a song written in it. This winds up being a serious error.
• Tiengo in general is a walking, talking, murdering nightmare, but his greatest moment of inspiring terror comes after the party meets Mel in the sewers to discuss her heist; He starts coming down the sewer with five bodies speared onto hooks attached to a metal rod and a suspicious sack. All the bodies are from Eltmer, and he gives the sack to the party which contains Meryl's friend Cynthia. Thankfully the situation that got her injured and kidnapped wasn't Tiengo's fault (if anything he managed to save her from the crazed Eltmer traditionalists), but if the party hadn't been down there who knows what Tiengo or Avryman might've done with her.
  • For context the party was only in the sewers because Borky's deciding vote to go down there came with a coin flip. Cynthia might've died if that coin had come up tails.
  • The above incident is Tiengo on a good day. On one of his bad days he wiped out an entire island, tortured everyone who was dumb enough to stay after his warning, and the whole incident was so bad he not only scares the entire United Orun Clergy but the island itself became so cursed no one can even live there.
• The fate of the long-forgotten kingdom whose ruins the Unexpectables stumble upon while on a quest for Lady Aila. While it's not entirely clear what happened, or how, the restless spirits of that kingdom reveal via flashback that the entire kingdom was besieged by giant, eyeless horrors let loose by an entity known as the Hellmouth. Though they were ultimately victorious in their battle, it came at enormous cost... all but around fifty of their citizens were slain, and their King, a warrior called Luistrog, was not among the living.
  • Worse still, they barely have time to breathe from their Pyrrhic Victory before they are set upon by Raunfalt, and are ultimately slain to the last.
• The Fleur De Mort is a massive, sapient forest that has, according to itself, consumed dragons, kingdoms, and even a fae monarch. But for the most part, it's a fair and hospitable host for the Unexpectables... right until it learns that its beloved Ivan was killed and that his seeds were never spread like Fleur De Mort wanted them to be, at which point it decides to ensure its seeds will be spread by implanting them directly into Greckles' stomach. Only a timely intervention by Log saves Greckles from a grisly fate.
  • And to make things worse, after Alivast starts making plans to kill Fleur they end up realizing that the thing’s bigger than a continent and that the only hope they have of killing it is by destroying the original tree. As a reminder this is a country that has acquired an small army of Silver Dragons.
• The United Clergy of Orun's attack on the Green Gully in Canary's Channel plays out like a player's worst nightmare. After having their ship capsized and a long, brutal fight against 14 collective Paladins and Clerics, all of whom roll insanely high, the party is dragged aboard one of their vessels and given a choice; either give up Solly and Hellina's locations in the city or die. Remy tries to barter for the lives of everyone else (since he is a Volithian noble and thus worth more as a hostage than a group of random adventurers), but the Clergy flips it on him. He gets taken prisoner aboard their ship while the party, currently bound and gagged, have there most valuable possessions (Panic's guitar, the sword containing Raunfalt, the Scary Acid Dagger of Stab, and Task's Crown Devil Horn Helmet) tossed overboard, followed quickly by themselves to give them a 'quick death'. The party sinks down into the depths, bitingly cold and unable to swim back up… and that's where the session ends! Sweet dreams folks!
• While their win over the UCO in Episode 74 is a well-deserved moment of catharsis, there's a slight moment of horror at the very end when the guys find a Portable Hole. Inside is a sea of gold in all different denominations and makes, over 10,000 Alivastian Credits, a few magic items...and then over 300 individual Alivast/Underbelly Tickets piled up. All that gold had to come from somewhere...
  • ** It's also pretty clear that there was something wrong with Athtar, the Herald of Orun they fought. He didn't bleed, with Monty describing his dying body as releasing some kind of foaming ichor and dissolving upon death.
• So you know that the gods can't be physically killed, and are instead shattered? Well one of those gods Insodroc, has a group of followers who are trying to put the pieces back together. Those pieces being Kobolds, Chromatic Dragons, along with Chromatic Dragonborn. How do they do this? By slaughtering every Kobold tribe they come across to use as building blocks for Insdroc, slowly putting him back together. And if a vision that Task had is any indication, They're already three fifths of the way there...
  • What makes it even worse is that a comment that a captured Dragon states to Task about finally reuniting with him indicates that it's also a suicide cult that will off themselves for the last pieces to resurrect Insdroc.
• In Episode 85, the party is set upon by a pair of creatures resembling multi-headed anthropomorphic crows that make sounds like "an air raid siren of crows screaming" and dissolve into swarms of crows when their hit points drop to a certain level. The way Monty describes the creatures, along with the music used during the scene when they're introduced, makes the whole scene feel like something out of a horror movie. Taka even flat-out says that he finds the creatures very unnerving.
• The entire trip to Tracadia is this in a nutshell; it's inspiration from the Curse of Strahd is readily apparent in everything from the scheming, village slaying vampires who are trying to bring about eternal night, the feral were-creatures hiding just out of view in the forests, the racist villagers who barely tolerate the party because they need to be Properly Paranoid about anything they don't understand, and the fact that Anyone Can Die is in full effect. Task managed to catch lycanthropy and had to pay out the nose to get cured, and Rat caught it twice! It's frankly a miracle that anything can thrive there at all, and the party has collectively decided to never go back unless they absolutely have to.
  Task: (while being chased by werewolves) This place sucks so much!
  Panic: Why do you think I left?!
• The team is currently in the Underdark and already they've had to make their way across what was apparently a massive lake of blood while fighting off cloakers. The session ends on a cliffhanger after the party finally finds dry land and are set up by a veritable swarm of creatures (likely darkmantles) dropping from the cave ceiling.
• As the party fights the drow that have been hunting them, they feel tremors under their feet, which grow more intense as they cause more noise. Eventually, the source of the tremors is revealed: a neothelid, a mind flayer larva that was never implanted in a host, experienced neoteny, and thus survived by devouring its siblings in the spawning pool, eventually growing into a giant, mindless worm capable of swallowing humanoids whole. Oh, and it still has the psychic powers of a mind flayer, of course. The moment it shows up, the fight stops being about defeating the drow, and starts being about getting the hell away.
• We finally learn what’s causing the United Clergy’s dive into insanity and it’s not pretty Bob ends up revealing that typically, the only way to kill a god, instead of shattering it into pieces, is to have it’s followers quit believing in them. But if there’s ever a reason that a god ends up dying while still being worshiped then it’s followers end up losing their minds, something is killing Orun, and the United Clergy, being the most devout followers of him, suffered from the effects first, and if Orun’s not healed, everyone who worships him will be driven insane.
• From the second Remy and the Mercz episode: the Rat King. An abomination made up of thirteen large rats with their tails forcibly tangled together. It can command swarms of rats and exerts Mind Control over an entire small village. The Mercz find the bodies of it's victims eviscerated with countless little bites all over them.
  • The most horrifying thing about it is how it came to be. Two teenage boys found the blueprints detailing the ritual to make a Rat King, and they decided to perform said ritual just for the fun of it. They caught and tortured dozens of rats, and the ones that weren't the right size were nailed to the outside of their tree house. As disturbing as their deaths were, you can't really blame the Rat King for doing so.
  • Also, there's how the Rat King is defeated. Cliff uses a spell that his boss, an entity known as the Mouthless One, warned him to only use in emergencies. The spell summons the Mouthless One's tentacles, which grab all of the rats and rip them apart.
• The Realm of Discord, home of Omnimaw, lives up to its name. It's a flat grey expanse filled with demonic entities that have evolved to operate entirely based on sound, and who can track down the source of sound like a wild animal can track down scent. These demons resemble an amalgamation of musical instruments and strange, humanoid limbs, and spread a sonic poison known as Resonance. And the environment is full of features like an entire forest made from instrument strings, which stretch all the way up to the sky, to a series of "tar" pits full of rosin. It's utterly alien, and perfect for the god of the minor chord.
  • Omnimaw certainly lives up to his reputation. A towering being with multiple mouths, covered in the same black ichor that bled out of Athtar. And when he speaks, it's a horrific Voice of the Legion.
  Omnimaw: YOU CAN'T BLOCK IT OUT! YOU CAN'T DENY MY SOUND! YOU WILL BE DEAFENED BY A THOUSAND OF MY HELLS!
  • Though Euphoria has turned out to be a lovely person, the second mouth on her neck with it's jagged teeth and second tongue is very unsettling. And apparently this is fairly tame compared to her mother, who had multiple mouths all over her body.
• Yugoloths are a kind of fiend that is neither devil nor demon, and love to get into high positions of power in developing cities and countries to sow chaos everywhere. When the Unexpectables are assigned to deal with these creatures they quickly learn that these things can track their every move and have their minions attack at any moment, and they are good enough at espionage that at the very least they are able to compromise the Romansion, opening their private rooms up for scrying and devouring an escort when she was left alone in the private baths.
• The tenebrus demon, a beastly monstrosity that can produce a magical darkness that can't be lit by normal means. It's introduced with a creeping darkness worming it's way under the doors while all of the Sweet Dragon employees are effectively trapped in Panic's room when it enters the tavern.
• Greckles is already on edge from Meryl getting kidnapped by a fake/possessed Stendon, and the lower guard dismissing his concerns isn't helping. Then he notices that Sebastian Strong is talking in a very stilted, fake sounding tone, and he realizes that the lower guard has been compromised too. Adding the fact that Doros is missing after going to attend a meeting, and Remy has apparently had his High District access revoked BY Doros, and they begin to realize that the entire city guard may be under the yugoloth's control.
• Episode 118 has Darkus, now with wings finally show up as part of the Dragon Cult's sudden and massive assault on Alivast, with dragons of all ages taking part, including ANCIENTS.
  • On top of all that, a three-headed Draconic Abomination facsimile of Insdroc perches itself atop the Attic right before the episode ends.
    • Not only is Insdroc 3/5 of the way to completion, the blue head is the very blue dragon that massacred Task's home. This along with him seeing Darkus makes Task very unnerved.
• Throughout the Mountain of Repetition, the party is stalked by a powerful mechanical leopard construct that can dimension door, turn invisible, and has powerful assassin-like qualities to it's attacks, nearly instantly killing Panic in a single combat round, and to make matters worse, when they attack it enough, it merely disappears via dimension door to lick it's wounds, then return to attack them again. Even worse, when Borky finally finds out that it's extraplanar and banishes it back to the realm of Mechane...they're right next to a portal that connects to that plane, which sends it right back. It makes an otherwise unoccupied dungeon into a massive stress-inducer. And apparently, this is the weaker version, as Monty toned it down considerably from her sourcebook.
• The Dragon Cult's camp is not a very place. Everyone they captured is enslaved and is forced to work nonstop and if they do then they're killed, with a particular highlight is them using the less physically inclined or skilled to form a gigantic sacrifice circle using the blood of those who died their and their brushes? made out of humans.
  • Even doing what the Dragon Cult wants isn't going to grantee their safety as everyday they sacrifice five people to Insdroc to be eaten by his incomplete body by the time the cult is dealt with only a few hundred prisoners survived
• A rare moment of horror against the villains themselves: when the group is facing Darkus and the Dragon Cult, they are assisted by Oreyara in the form of two powerful celestial entities, who subsequently grapple two ancient dragons and attempt to drag them into the realm of Oreyara. One is actually successful, and the remaining dragon watches in horror as hundreds of modrons drag his friend through a rip in reality into another plane of existence where it will suffer an unseen fate. The remaining dragon, unsurprisingly, flees in utter terror.
  • While in the Air Plane trying to find a lead on the Oni's the party are forced to sneak into a sacred temple there in an attempt to get help from the current leader after the previous one was imprisoned for murder. They eventually realize that a good chunk of the people in the temple are the Hobgoblin minions of the Oni in disguise and whenever they try to talk to a person of high power in the temple the Oni, who is a Living Shadow. Uses whatever weapon it can find to kill them before the party can get help. The group then has to spend a good chunk of an episode running in terror as the seemingly invincible Oni chases after them.
• While traversing the Feywilds, the Unexpectables are repeatedly accosted by packs of Pantomimes: unnerving monkey-like creatures with Cheshire Cat Grins, extra fingers at the end of their tails, and the ability to perfectly echo any noise they make. Most of those echoed noises are most definitely people who stumbled into the Feywild and were chased down and killed by the Pantomimes.