Straight Flush Volume 1 (1-2 HD)

 Monsters. It was monsters that got me into this whole thing. The first RPG product I ever bought was the fifth edition monster manual, which I spent countless hours just staring at, not really understanding or caring about the mechanics. Well, here's my monster manual: the Straight Flush, monsters listed from 1 to 10 HD, starting with 1-2. These are the low-level threats of the world on which Morning Stars shine, persistent nuisances to be discovered and rooted out wherever they be found. 

Ideally, they will remain dangerous, or at least interesting to kill, well into your later levels. Context and environment is half the battle.

Dire Fowl

HD 1 (5 HP), AC as leather, 8 morale 

A hip-high junglefowl with a rooster's nasty temperament and a cassowary's ability to gut you like a fish. The hens weave wagon-sized nests and the roosters guard them, but both have spurs like daggers and will not hesitate to put them to use. Delicious when breaded and fried in oil.

Movement: Proud, deliberate strutting, capable of short bursts of awkward flight if it gets a running start.

Morality: Mean and territorial.

Intelligence: Birdbrained.

Attacks: +2 to hit, one kick with its spurs (1d6+1,) or two if it's flying.

Goblin

HD 1 (4 HP), AC as unarmored, 5 morale

A loathsome little thing of pasted-together garbage: cobwebs and old leaves for skin, thorns for teeth, eyes plucked from sleeping animals, all slick and rotten. A fae pest from before time and space, the goblin is a tiny shred of entropy with few interests but bringing everything to rust and decay.

Movement: Clumsy skipping on uneven legs.

Morality: Infinitely spiteful and vindictive. Can perform constructive actions only by accident.

Intelligence: Cunning, but utterly fixated on breaking things. Cannot tell lies from truth, but unlikely to care.

Attacks: +0 to hit, one attack with a garbage shiv (1d6-1, breaks off in the target on a 1 or 6 and inflicts 1 damage per round until an action is taken to remove it,) or one bite (1d4.)

Ruin: In the presence of a goblin, proficiency no longer prevents fumbling. Given a few minutes of work, a goblin has a 3-in-6 chance to render any object with moving parts nonfunctional, or completely beyond repair on a 1. Both numbers increase by 1 per additional goblin involved.

Imp

HD 1 (3 HP), AC as leather, 5 morale

A lanky gibbon’s body with a goat's head, fingers and toes ending in tiny claws. They make little sound but unpleasantly deep laughter. Often trained by Wizards and thieves to serve as watchmen, assistants, and pickpockets.

Movement: Goofy waddling on the ground, but they brachiate faster than a man can run. Adept climbers.

Morality: Petulant and thieving but easily bribed with tasty little treats.

Intelligence: Like a monkey that has learned to commit petty crime. Imps in urban areas understand money and its uses. There has been at least one successful case of a pack of Imps kidnapping and ransoming a dog.

Attacks: +2 to hit, one scratch (1d4) or one snatch (target must make a MOVE check or have a held item stolen right from their hands.)

Giant Locust

HD 1 (5 HP), AC as chain, 5 morale

They spend years in the soil, asleep in their eggs, until disturbed by some unfortunate digger. They emerge fully-formed, the size of dogs, wings buzzing like saws- is it mere pareidolia that has painted a human visage over their head? Over the course of a weak, they eat everything, lay their eggs, and then die, leaving another famine in wait.

Movement: Great room-length leaps or maddeningly loud flight.

Morality: No.

Intelligence: Hungry. Will preferentially target edible-seeming things first, even if they are rotting or outright poisonous.

Attacks: +2 to hit, one bite (1d6.)

Ravenous: Giant Locusts do not roll initiative, instead acting on initiative counts 20 and 1. 

Shade

HD 1 (5 HP), AC as unarmored, 6 morale

A shadow in the corner of your eye. It is known that there is no life after death. When the body dies, the soul disperses- or so it was intended, but the First and Last is not an infallible craftsman. With no body to record it, a lingering soul can become many terrible things, least of them all being the lowly and miserable Shade.

Movement: Flickering faster than the eye can see. Hard to lose, but quick to lose interest.

Morality: Miserable and prone to lashing out. Can be appeased with fresh blood, which they will lap up from the ground like cats.

Intelligence: Urges and instincts from a life nearly forgotten. They may speak, hoarsely, and beg for warmth and comfort from the cold grave. More lucid when freshly fed, enough to recall places and names, and to bargain.

Attacks: +0 to hit, one cold touch of death (1d4, ignores physical armor, heals the Shade for 1 HP,) or one thrown or pushed object (1d6, or more if it was a dresser or something getting tipped over on you.)

Shadowed: A Shade has an AC as chain and +2 to hit in dim light, and is all but impossible to hit and has +5 to hit in darkness. A shade must check morale when exposed to bright light, and automatically fails this check when exposed to sunlight. Unless killed with fire or magic, a Shade will coalesce back into being at the next sunset.

Undead: Shades do not sleep, breathe, or eat. Drinking blood serves a psychological need for them, not a physical one.

Orcneas

HD 2 (12 HP), AC as unarmored or as worn armor, 10 morale

Casualties of war, impossibly alive. When not given a proper burial, the soul may linger where it fell, and when death comes suddenly and violently, it knows only to kill or be killed. Always fresh-wounded, the Orcneas take up their own bodies to wage war on the living.

Movement: Pained staggering on broken limbs, with no loss of speed from life.

Morality: War. There is only war. Vestigial allegiances may resurface, but not for long. Loyal only to their fellow war-dead.

Intelligence: Arms, armor, military tactics. Foggy recollection of everything else.

Attacks: +2 to hit, one attack with a held weapon.

Battle-Scarred: Don't bother rolling for HP. Instead, roll 1d6 to see how the Orcneas was wounded in battle: 1. Clean kill. Still appears living, from a distance. 2-3. Shot/cut up. Clearly a dead man walking. 4. Missing arm. 5. Missing leg. Movement halved. 6. Head ruined. Blind or deaf.

Undead: The Orcneas do not sleep, breathe, eat, or drink. They never rot, but only scab over with age.

Humanman

HD 2 (7 HP), AC as leather, 8 morale

When the cruel forces of fairy hunt humans, it is with other humans. Humanmen are to people what wolfhounds are to wolves; a foot taller than normal, with all of it in the limbs, with cheekless jaws full of teeth taken from animals better suited to biting. They do not sleep, but if they could, they would dream of dragging you screaming into the dead lands behind the angles.

Movement: A faster sprinter than most people, and utterly tireless.

Morality: Unfailing loyalty to something completely malignant.

Intelligence: Most higher brain functions scooped out. Nothing but well-honed animal instinct, but there's enough left to follow orders and recognize targets.

Attacks: +2 to hit, one bite (1d6) or grapple attempt (+3 MOVE)

Manhunter: Humanmen can track by scent like a hound, and ignore the negative effects of exhaustion until it kills them.

Pack Hunter: Each time a Humanman hits a target, all other Humanmen get a cumulative +1 to hit or +1 on grappling checks against that target that round.

Genomos

HD 2 (6 HP), AC as chain, 9 morale

The Flesh of Stone dreams of organs in the cool earth, and no body will permit an infection for long. They are extruded from cavern walls like speleothems, fetal and cone-headed. You could mistake them for stalactites and stalagmites, until they open their wet obsidian eyes and show their sharklike teeth.

Movement: Short-legged stumbling on the ground, but climbs walls like a spider. Completely unable to swim.

Morality: Single-minded intolerance of things that don't belong under the ground.

Intelligence: Like an immune system if it learned guerilla tactics and flint-knapping.

Attacks: +2 to hit, one attack with a stone knife (1d6, can be thrown 20’) or a spray of naptha (target must test SNEK when moving or slip and fall, targets carrying torches or other open flames are automatically set on fire. 1 use per day.)

Earthborn: Genomoi take minimum damage from things ill-suited to breaking rock, like blades and fire. If damaged, however, their naptha blood leaks out, causing the Genomos to take double damage from fire. 

Star Angel

HD 2 (10 HP), AC as chain, 6 morale

Not an angel, or a star. A neon-lit crinoid the size of a bull swimming through the air, raking everything with abrasive feather-like fronds. They're not from here, they're not from anywhere. Do not leave a telescope uncovered on a moonless night, lest something decides to look back at you.

Movement: Swims through the air at a leisurely pace, speeding up only if threatened or when in pursuit of prey. Not stopped by solid walls- it phases through them like it's pushing through gelatin.

Morality: Well beyond that.

Intelligence: As smart as most people. Difficult to distract.

Attacks: +3 to hit, one rake against all adjacent targets (1d6+2) or one grapple attempt against a single target (+3 MOVE, grappled targets are shredded for 2d6+2 damage on the subsequent round.)

From Beyond: Star Angels are unright things. All air within a 20’ radius of a Star Angel is treated as water with all the penalties to movement that implies, but without the threat of drowning. If you don't have such rules close at hand, I'll just say that this imposes a -1 penalty to all physical actions to those wearing light armor, -2 to those wearing medium, and -4 to those wearing heavy. You can walk 5’ per round, or swim at your normal walking speed on a successful MOVE test.

Observator Bird

HD 2 (7 HP), AC as leather, 6 morale

It is understood by most scholars that vision is made possible by the emission of "seeing-rays" from the eyes, and that the visual range of spellcasting is tied to these emissions. The eye, clerics say, is the seat of the soul, and to perceive something is an act of worship.

As for why this particular kind of bird has so many eyes, and why it can fire lasers from them: a Wizard did it.

Movement: Not a particularly adept flyer. Spends more time perched in high places than it does in the air.

Morality: Predatory, but lazy.

Intelligence: Clever but gullible. Easily able to find advantageous spots to shoot from and can flush out covered opponents with fire, but will still fall for most ruses.

Attacks: +2 to hit, three wavering heat rays (1d6, ignites flammable objects.)

Sentry: Observator Birds are covered front and back with eyes (which, in case you were wondering, gives them a very odd muscle and skeletal structure.) Unless you can somehow hide yourself from a 360° field of vision, it is impossible to surprise an Observator Bird.