Overgrown Secrets: The Anhui

Surrounded by monsters that thrive on human souls, the forest tribes of Overgrown Secrets have a secret weapon: the Anhui. Anhui are six-limbed monsters of green chitin and bone. Their parasitic larva  transform its host into a powerful warrior for a short time before killing them. The forest tribes intentionally raise and keep these monsters to produce powerful warriors in times of distress, known as "Bearers". Each tribe has a "Keeper" that tends to its dormant and caged Anhui until they are needed.

Anhui didn't actually see much screen time in Overgrown Secrets, but they easily could have, and they had a strong effect on the setting.

• Choices and Choosers
• Handling the Beast
• The Beast Itself 
• The Fate of a Bearer
• Anhui in the Campain
• Appendix: The Transformation
  

Choices and Choosers

The Anhui were introduced to Overgrown Secrets to give the players a dramatic choice. The timing of making a warrior into an Anhui Bearer is difficult to get right, and the decision of who should be sacrificed to become a literal combat monster for the next few months is the sort of thing that drives tribal council drama. The selected Bearer needs to be a capable warrior, but they will also die at the end. Does someone especially want the honor? Is someone less than anxious to be chosen?

My players didn't end up using the Anhui, perhaps because I let them buy some fairly tough animal allies that ended up giving them the power they needed to defeat the crypt spirits, and perhaps because they didn't think the death at the end was worth the extra stats and abilities. The existence of the creatures still greatly effected the game, if only because the tribe's Keepers of the Anhui were important characters.

Handling the Beast

Anhui can be put into a stupor, hibernation, or a rage by using various plants found in the forest. The "Keepers" of the forest tribes do this for their tribes. This lets them manipulate the monster's life cycles, having an Anhui always ready and available. They keep the beasts in cages, waking them from their dormant slumber up one or two times a year to feed them large amounts of raw meat. Then they induce the dormancy again. The wild versions of the Anhui are large and powerful, like a bear, but the breed kept in cages by the Keepers tends to be merely human sized. 

Anhui are voracious, but they don't eat humans. They only lay eggs in them. The creatue may injure its victim if the victim struggles, but if they does not, it will quickly inject an egg and then leave. When done intentionally, this is done with a pair of cages with a door between.

When a Bearer is about to loose his mind, if they have accomplished their purpose, they will  enter one of the Anhui cages, allowing they and their resulting hatchling will be contained. The hatchling will come out while the bearer is in a stupor, and is about two feet long. If allowed to, it will consume its bearer in the next three days, and after a week of voracious eating it will each its full size, at which time the keeper will put it into a stupor.

Keeping captive Anhui is dangerous, and requires the Animal Handling (Anhui Skill). This skill is taught by Keepers to their apprentices and other members of the tribe whose assistance they might require.

The Beast Itself

An Anhui is a long slender creature crossing features of the reptilian and the insectoid. It has a scaly body that is weirdly segmented, two pairs of front legs, and one pair of back legs. In place of a tail in has a stubby ovipositor, complete with a sting to make a hole for the egg. Bony plates cover the back of the creature. Its mouth has a large sharp symmetric beak, but no teeth.

Anhui are notoriously fast and vicious, having power and speed beyond their size, fueled by the soul of their host. Even Anhui not kept by the Keepers spend long periods of time in a dormant state, preserving their supernatural energy until a suitable host is found. That is, a host with a soul. They do not eat humans, even when starving. Instead, the Anhui will savage them and then lay an egg in them. If a human lays down and doesn't resist, they may not even savage them. Maybe.

The following stats are for a wild Anhui: the ones bred by the forest tribes are usually smaller, with ST 20 and doing 2 less damage on all attacks.

ST	24	HP	24	Speed	7
DX	14	Will	12	Move	7
IQ	3	Per	12
HT	14	FP	14	SM	1
Dodge	11	Parry	12	DR	8/3

Bite (14): 2d cutting, -1 to defenses. Considered a grapple against a foe it hits
Limb (14): 2d+1 Impaling, -1 to defenses. Considered a grapple against a foe it hits
Ovipositor (13): 2d+2 Impaling. Implants an Egg. Lower damage often done voluntarily
Traits: Combat Reflexes, Extra legs 6, Horizontal, No Fine Manipulators, Wild Animal , Discriminatory smell, Sharp Teeth, Talons, Striker (Impaling, clumsy -3 )(ovipositor), Immune to Mind Effecting Magic, Obsession (lay eggs in host), Striker inserts egg, hibernates
Skills: Brawling - 16, Tracking - 12, climbing - 13, Stealth - 14, Survival - 12, swimming - 14, Wrestling - 15, Jumping - 15
Notes: Prefers to grapple human opponents so that the ovipositor can hit. The High DR is the bony plates that partially cover the body. Bypass it with a -2 to hit, or by rolling 2 or less on 1d6 after hitting the torso, face, or a limb. Other locations use DR 8. Because of the hard bony tips on Anhui feet, weapons may be parried at no penalty.

The Fate of a Bearer

In Overgrown secrets, there was no way to reverse being implanted with the egg of an Anhui. In a game with better medicine, a surgery roll may be sufficient. The Bearers of the Forest People are infected intentionally, at times of great need for their tribe. They seek out the transformation, and use it to devastating effect. 

The first two advantages granted by the egg are regeneration and +3 hard to kill, which means that if a forest warrior is gravely injured, making them a bearer can often prolong their life for two months, if the Anhui is gentle enough not to finish them off.

As the transformation progresses, the subject slowly gains inhuman endurance, strength, vigor, healing, and bony plates. They also slowly loose their mind, their ability to speak, their memories, and even their temper. There is no "Proper" stage of the transformation at which to use the bearer in battle: different stages each have their advantages and disadvantages. The forest tribes often try to use them after about 24 days of incubation. At this point, the bearers usually have the following changes:

+5 ST, +2 DX, +2 HT, -2 IQ, 2 DR (tough Skin), +3 Hard to Kill, Regeneration 1/hour, High Pain Threshold, Resistant to Mind Control Effect +8, Glutton, Stubborn, Bad Temper (12), Non Iconographic, and spoken language limited to accented

The bony plates that grow on their body are much like that of the Anhui: when striking the torso, a limb, or the face, there is a 2 in six chance of ignoring the bony plates. The plates can also be ignored by taking a -2 penalty to hit. 

Through the next 30 days, they'll get get stronger, grow more bony plates, and their minds will continue to deteriorate. The last two weeks it is very difficult to get useful activity out of the bearers, as they become paranoid, have their hands fuse into spikes, loose the ability to speak or understand more than the simplest command, and forget who they were. In the days just before the hands fuse, they are terrible weapons, having gained 10 ST and 7 DR including their bony plates. 

The full stats for the transformation are at the end of the article:

 Anhui in the Campaign

The Anhui are both a monster and a weapon. In Overgrown Secrets, they are the ultimate weapon the Player Characters had access to. No one was chosen as a bearer, but that was because the PC's managed to bring more combat prowess than I had planned on. I didn't invoke a wild Anhui, but I easily could have. 

One thing that surprised me was how not-tempted my players were with the power. I had one player who was squicked out by the body horror angle, and asked me to make sure that being infected was always a choice--which I agreed to readily. The others joked around with the benefits, and wonder if I would have had to kill a PC or two before they'd consider taking the power. So as a power system, or a faustian bargain, it utterly failed.

On the other hand, the Anhui were a fantastic success from a cultural standpoint. The player with the body-horror concerns gave her character a phobia of the Anhui, and explained it as not being born into the tribe. One of the tribe's Keepers was a persistent and memorable NPC. And the villains awakened from their long slumber made a point of referring to the forest people by the name of their pet monsters. My players still remember the made-up name of the creatures, even as other terms have been forgotten.

Anhui are probably a fair horror monster, but they are much less suited for a monster hunters game than either the shape-shifters or the crypt spirits, as they are fairly vulnerable to guns and don't hide especially well. They might make sense in a space game, they are fairly alien, but they remain vulnerable to firearms, and the transformation is too slow and too obvious for it to be a real threat. The transformation might be an interesting "technology" though. In a fantasy game, were their strength and armor are meaningful, they're a way for an would be conqueror to build up a massive army quickly ... or even for the heroes to do so.

I hope you enjoyed reading about the Anhui, and I hope you find them useful or inspirational. Happy Monster Hunting.

Appendix: The Transformation

 First Hour

• Regeneration 1/hour
• +3 Hard to Kill

At 24 Hours

• +1 ST 
• High Pain Threshold
  
• Glutton

At 4 Days

• +1 DR (Tough Skin)
• Resistant to Mind Influencing Effects +3
• Stubbornness

At 8 Days

• +1 ST (+2 ST total) 
• +1 DX
• Bad Temper (15)
  

At 12 Days

• +1 ST (+3 ST total)  
• +1 DR (Tough Skin) [+2 DR Tough Skin total]
• -1 IQ (keep Will and Per the same)
  

At 16 Days

• +1 ST (+4 ST total)   
• Resistant to Mind Influencing Effects +8 
• Non-iconographic
  

At 20 Days

• +1 ST (+5 ST total)   
• +1 DX (+2 DX total)
• Language at accented only
  

At 24 Days

• +1 ST (+6 ST total)
• +1 HT (+2 HT total) 
• -1 IQ (keep Will and Per the same) [-2 IQ total]
  

At 28 Days

• +1 ST (+7 ST total)  
• +1 DR (Armor plates) [+2 DR (tough skin), +1 DR (armor plates)]
•  Bad Temper (12)

At 32 Days

• +1 ST (+8 ST total)   
• Immune to Mind Influencing Effects 
• Language at broken only
  

At 36 Days

• +1 ST (+9 ST total)
• +1 DR (Armor plates) [+2 DR (tough skin), +2 DR (armor plates)]  
• -1 IQ (keep Will and Per the same) [-3 IQ total]
  

At 40 Days

• +1 ST (+10 ST total)   
• +1 DR (Armor plates) [+2 DR (tough skin), +3 DR (armor plates)]  
• Paranoid
  

At 44 Days

• +1 DR (Armor plates) [+2 DR (tough skin), +4 DR (armor plates)]  
• Cannot speak, but can understand broken language
• Bad Temper 9
  

At 48 Days

• +1 DR (Tough skin) [+3 DR (tough skin), +4 DR (armor plates)]   
• -1 IQ (keep Will and Per the same) [-4 IQ total]
  

At 52 Days

• Striker (Impaling)
• No Fine Manipulators
  

At 56 Days

• Amnesia (forgets former life)
  

At 60 Days

• Extra Sleep 8
• Obsession (Find safe Place)

At 70 Days

• Falls into a permanent Stupor. Death by the hatchling emerging.