TEXT: ~Credits~
  WRITING and Design:  
  Eric Cagle
  DEvelopment & editing: Robert J. Schwalb
  art direction: Robert J. Schwalb  
  and hal mangold
  Proofreading: Jay Spight
  Graphic Design: Kara Hamilton  
  and Hal Mangold
  LAYOUT: kara hamilton
  ILLUSTRATIONs: Eric Lofgren and Mirco Paganessi
  Horriic Parasites is ©2017 Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
  All rights reserved.
  Shadow of the Demon Lord, Monstrous Pages, Horriic Parasites,
  Schwalb Entertainment, and their associated logos  
  are trademarks of Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
  Schwalb EntErtainmEnt, llc
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  info@schwalbentertainment.com       www.schwalbentertainment.com
  Monstrous Pages for  
  Shadow of the  Demon Lord
  Lurking in dark alleyways or hiding in plain sight on bustling 
  streets, the enigmatic and damned creatures known as 
  harvesters stalk and murder the innocent to fulill peculiar 
  needs. Named for their acts of killing and surgically removing 
  organs, bones, and skin from their victims, harvesters have 
  been horriic parasites on civilization for millennia. 
   Harvester bodies are literal patchworks of organs, limbs, 
  and bones, none of which are their original parts. When 
  an organ begins to fail, a harvester removes the damaged, 
  diseased, or aged one, replacing it with one from a 
  healthy “donor.” This grotesque practice grants them near 
  immortality as they do not appear to age in any traditional 
  sense—some harvesters are hundreds, even a thousand,  
  years old—dying of only when they are caught and killed 
  or when they are unable to replace a critical, failed organ. 
  Because harvesters never venture away from cities and  
  towns, there is always ready supply of fresh organs from  
  the unwitting populace.
  This entry in the Monstrous Pages series examines the
  harvesters and lays bare their secrets, revealing their origins, 
  practices, and place in the lands of Rûl. Using the lore and 
  rules in Horriic Parasites helps you make harvesters even more
  dangerous and terrifying!
  
  2
  Harvester Origins
  Untold centuries ago, a group of nobles, priests, 
  fantastically rich merchants, and other entitled, 
  elite individuals formed a secret society dedicated to 
  expanding their personal wealth and power. While 
  the meetings always had a libertine air to them, with 
  exquisite food, concubines, and illicit substances, 
  they were relatively harmless. This all changed when 
  one of their number, whose name is lost even to 
  the harvesters, brought a curious idol and heretical 
  beliefs with her after an excursion in the wilds of the 
  Northern Reach.
   Preaching and cajoling, this messiah of sorts 
  convinced the others to begin worshipping the deity 
  in order to release the rest from civilized morals and 
  ethics—in turn, the deity began to bequeath boons 
  and fortune, making the worshippers richer, more 
  powerful, and more depraved.
    The society soon devolved into practicing 
  increasingly debauched, violent, and decadent rites. 
  In time, ritualistic cannibalism became the norm, 
  as was the wearing of victims’ skin as clothing and 
  organs as decoration. Their sanity stripped away, 
  the members’ doom was set into motion when they 
  petitioned their foul god to destroy and “harvest” 
  the other Old Gods of the land for feast and 
  entertainment. One or more of these Old Gods heard 
  the chants and took umbrage.
   The Curse of Flesh: No one knows the exact 
  moment in time, but a terrible curse by these Old 
  Gods descended on them—a curse to live forever 
  as mere meat and gristle, just as they treated their 
  victims before. Their own now-forgotten deity was 
  banished or destroyed, stripping them of their power. 
  In addition, each member of the society (or more 
  properly, cult) discovered that they could no longer 
  feel physical sensations in a meaningful way—no 
  pain, no caress, no awareness of wind on their face—
  but became acutely aware of their own body’s internal 
  processes. Every heartbeat was a noticeable thud in 
  their chest, every morsel of food could be tracked as 
  it dissolved, oozed, and crept through their stomach 
  and intestines, and every breath was a mechanical 
  exercise in mere inlation and delation. They became 
  acutely aware when their organs begin to fail, which 
  accelerated at an alarming speed after the curse was 
  levied. They also ceased aging in a traditional sense.
   Unless otherwise damaged through trauma or 
  disease, the organs of a harvester shrivel and shutdown 
  on their own accord after only a few months. Skin starts 
  to lake and disintegrate anywhere from six to nine 
  months, while bones need to be replaced every one to 
  two years. Paranoid in the extreme, harvesters spend 
  most of their time stalking new victims to gut and add 
  to their collections, ensuring that replacements are 
  always on hand.
   A Malign Solution: Cursed to live seemingly 
  forever inside their own failing bodies, the cult fell 
  apart with individuals drifting to various cities. In 
  time, they discovered a “solution” to their dilemma—
  they could harvest the organs from healthy, living 
  humans and transplant them into their own bodies. 
  Inured to pain, harvesters became adept at carving 
  open their chests, removing diseased or damaged 
  organs, and sewing them into place, all without 
  experiencing shock or death by blood loss (another 
  curious side efect of the curse).
   In order for a transplant to be successful, a 
  harvester must use an organ that was pulled from a 
  still-living victim. An organ harvested from a corpse 
  is instantly rejected, causing the harvester something 
  akin to “discomfort” and reduced capacity. Over time, 
  harvesters learned bizarre and loathsome forms of 
  alchemy to preserve their collections—a harvester lair 
  is lined with glass jars full of viscera, teeth, muscle, 
  and skin, loating in brackish ochre or vibrantly green 
  toxic luid. 
   Patchworks of Meat: Each harvester has their own 
  unique twist, gaining new abilities after centuries of 
  experimentation, using the organs of non-humans 
  or from victims that were able to harness magic. 
  Although each harvester retains a humanoid form 
  (the better to blend into the crowd), no two are alike, 
  with swatches of diferent skins stitched together 
  in a web of scars and sutures. A harvester’s leg 
  may be longer than the other, giving a harvester a 
  curious limp. Asymmetrical arms ending in hands 
  with diferently shaped ingers hang from their 
  mismatched shoulders.
   Harvesters are fanatical, almost pathological about 
  hiding their bodies from view. To help with healing 
  and to keep their freshly installed organs in place, 
  harvesters often wrap their bodies in bandages 
  and rags, which weep and leak. They don heavy 
  coats, gloves, and hats, regardless of the weather or 
  temperature to help blend in and keep their knitted 
  forms in place. If questioned, harvesters eloquently 
  lie, often claiming they are survivors of a terrible 
  ire or animal attack, thus requiring the clothing for 
  modesty’s sake.
   Amalgam of Personalities: When a harvester 
  successfully transplants an organ, it brings along 
  more than just gristle and blood. Trace memories 
  and fragments of personality get pulled along as well. 
  While harvesters always retain their own sense of 
  self and personality, each new organ transfers bits 
  of the donor’s quirks, demeanor, tastes, and laws. 
  Harvesters long learned how to deal with these shifts 
  in their personalities and relish them, reliving hints of 
  memories they themselves never experienced, while 
  forgetting portions of their original history. In many 
  ways, a harvester isn’t a single entity, but a compilation 
  of many. Harvesters refer to themselves in
  
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   plural terms, using “we” and “us” in conversation and 
  their speech often slips into diferent accents, genders, 
  and even apparent ages.
   This difusion has an additional side efect: 
  harvesters cannot remember their true origins or 
  memories from the now-distant era beyond a few, 
  vague fragments. They have become creatures of the 
  now, with thoughts dwelling only on the hunt and the 
  desire to remain alive.
   Few, but Deadly: Only the harvesters themselves 
  know their total numbers throughout the world, but 
  relatively few remain. Because they are so dependent 
  on having a ready supply of victims, harvesters rarely 
  venture outside the walls of towns or cities. They 
  are smart and cunning enough to know that large 
  numbers in a single location would result in too 
  many mutilated bodies and suspicious investigations. 
  A small town might support one or two harvesters 
  at most, while the largest metropolis can only host 
  anywhere from a dozen to a score.
   Harvesters are insanely territorial and carve out 
  speciic districts or locations where they are the 
  undisputed masters—no other harvester may collect 
  in another’s territory without explicit permission  
  or, more commonly, through some sort of deal. 
  Frequent violators of the pact are in turn hunted 
  down, their scavenged body parts torn from their 
  bodies and cast away.
   Cities of Meat, Abattoirs as Homes: Dependent on 
  humanoids to provide them the body parts necessary 
  for living, harvesters rarely leave the borders of their 
  cities or towns. They are masters at inding secluded, 
  forgotten, or unappealing locations to hole up and 
  practice their craft of experimentation and foul 
  surgery. Harvesters prefer places where the cries of 
  the dying or stench of blood would go unnoticed—
  beneath butcher stores, sewers, or in forgotten 
  basements of sanatoriums or hospitals. Particularly 
  brave harvesters might set up a secret lair on the very 
  outskirts of a village, preying on stragglers or children 
  that wander too far from their minders.
   If a harvester inds it must lee a city (inevitably 
  due to being ousted from its territory by a rival or 
  leeing an angry mob), it prefers to board crowded 
  ships where the occasional traveler might “accidently 
  fall overboard” and have his organs harvested in the 
  lowest bowels of the vessel. Once a harvester arrives 
  in its new town or city, it quickly establishes a new lair 
  in the seediest, most dangerous neighborhoods where 
  bodies typically go missing without notice.
   Organ Collections: The life of a harvester consists 
  of one thing—inding suitable replacement body 
  parts. As a harvester grows older, even fresh organs 
  collected from a young healthy victim begin to break 
  down in the span of months, thus requiring new 
  organs and continuing the never-ending cycle.
   Harvesters measure wealth not in gold, but in the 
  size and variety of organs it has in its stash. Harvester 
  society, as it exists, focuses on small groups meeting 
  in dark, hidden locations, swapping body parts 
  or bartering for new ones. Jars of pickled organs, 
  hands, eyeballs, skin and more are paraded around 
  before the bidding begins—with payment in coin, 
  information, ofers of ceding territory or, most 
  commonly, other parts.
   Descendants of the Damned: Over the years, the 
  numbers of harvesters dwindled dramatically, but 
  came to a steady plateau. Roughly half the number 
  consists of the original cult from ages ago, but the 
  rest are relatively recent additions. Through trial 
  and error, the harvesters discovered that they could 
  create new harvesters through two, equally horrifying, 
  methods. The irst came about when curious, bored, 
  or experimental-minded harvesters would replace 
  their old, failing organs (after removing the healthy 
  ones from the donor) inside the bodies of their 
  victims. In exceedingly rare circumstances, the  
  victim would not only live, but would slowly 
  transform into a harvester themselves over a period 
  of agonizing, pain-wracked weeks. In most cases, 
  the host harvester, consumed by curiosity, raises and 
  teaches this new brood in its terrible ways, instructing 
  them on the harvester curse and the best ways to ind 
  victims for collection. Of course, these newly made 
  harvesters are quickly ejected from the city, lest they 
  became rivals.
   The second, more horriic, method involves 
  a harvester murdering a pregnant woman and 
  transplanting her swollen, still-living womb inside the 
  harvester’s body to serve as host. Ninety-nine times 
  out of a hundred, the child dies and the harvester 
  must carve out and eject the fetus from its body. 
  Against all odds, a handful of these foster pregnancies 
  “take hold” resulting in a child that appears seemingly 
  healthy and normal until the age of puberty, at which 
  point the harvester curse will set in and the cycle of 
  murder and transplantation begins again. Children 
  “raised” in this manner possess an instinctive bonding 
  towards their progenitor and other harvesters, making 
  them exceedingly loyal servants. Since gender is a 
  meaningless concept to harvesters, any one of them 
  may attempt this process and almost every individual 
  attempts it during their long, cursed, immortal life.
   Harvesting a Messiah: While few harvesters have 
  anything resembling a faith since their own foul god 
  was cast by vengeful ones long ago, there are a few 
  that hold a relatively new, twisted ideology. These 
  harvesters believe that by collecting and transplanting 
  organs and lesh from among the living, they may 
  in time become a “perfect being” that can overturn 
  the curse and make them a living, breathing, normal 
  human once again. However, none of these disciples 
  agree on what is the correct collection to create this 
  
  4
  messiah. Some believe only the organs of priests  
  will work, while others see the internals of unsullied, 
  sin-free children as their path. A tiny majority thinks 
  the solution lies outside the meat and gristle of man, 
  hunting down elves, dwarfs, and stranger creatures 
  to reap their bounty and create something new and 
  diferent. So far, these experiments have created 
  unusual, and in some cases, fantastical efects, 
  but none can claim that this perfect being has 
  appeared… yet.
  Customizing Harvesters
  Each harvester is a unique combination of guts, 
  sinew, and bone, and thus they come in a wide 
  variety of forms. Particularly adventurous harvesters 
  experiment with non-human body parts, occasionally 
  granting special powers, even with the risk of 
  shortened lifespans.
  Redundant Organs
  Some harvesters learn how to add additional, 
  redundant organs inside their body. This grants them 
  an unholy robustness and fortitude, making them 
  faster, stronger and much harder to kill through 
  trauma. However, the increased demand to keep 
  blood lowing through these extra organs takes a toll 
  on the harvester’s mental acuity and focus. 
   
  INCREASE BY 1 DIFFICULTY STEP
  Health +20
  Strength +1, Intellect –1, Will -1
  Speed +1
  Infused
  Harvesters that repeatedly replace their organs 
  with victims that were able to use magic ind they 
  can manifest some of this latent magical energy 
  themselves. Regardless of the original source of 
  the magic from these organs, however, the infused 
  harvester’s magic only afects itself and a single 
  tradition—Alteration. In addition, this unnaturally 
  obtained magic saps the harvester’s physical  
  strength and coordination as it struggles with this 
  arcane power.
   
  INCREASE BY 1 DIFFICULTY STEP
  Defense –1
  Strength –1, Agility –1
  MAGIC 
  Power 1
  Alteration comprehension (2), distort appearance (2), 
  enhance senses (1), spider climb (1)
  Sample Harvesters
  Considering that their very forms are comprised 
  of the organs of dozens or hundreds of victims, 
  harvesters come a bewildering array of variations. 
  These variations are less about sub-species as they 
  are the predilections, willingness to experiment, and 
  availability of lesh and organs to rely on. Harvesters 
  consider themselves “experts” and connoisseurs of 
  anatomy, making each one truly unique.
  Flesh Tailor
  The cities and towns of Urth swarm with a variety 
  of lesh. Diferent cultures, factions, and races 
  intermingle, each one deined by their outward 
  appearance—their skin. Certain harvesters become 
  obsessed with collecting the lesh of their victims, 
  much in the way a vain noble dotes and frets over 
  increasing their varied wardrobe of ine clothing.
  Flesh tailors are consummate 
  stalkers, picking out “interesting 
  looking” individuals to kill and lay. 
  
  5
  They stitch together the “best” features of these 
  victims to create suits of patchwork skin, wearing 
  them with abominable pride. A lesh tailor may kill 
  a young, attractive human female simply to harvest 
  her nose or murder a goblin to slice of a particularly 
  unique ear to add to its ever-evolving suit of lesh.
   Unlike most harvesters, lesh tailors shun weapons 
  and use their scalpel-like talons to lay their victims. 
  With a simple swipe, the skin peels from targets in 
  horriic ways to be collected when the deed is done—
  survivors of a lesh tailor’s attacks come away deiled 
  and mutilated.
   Flesh tailors hide their forms beneath heavy 
  clothing, but never their face, which they change from 
  month to month, depending on the harvester’s mood. 
  Indeed, lesh tailors commonly carry a spare face 
  or two (preserved in bottles of foul chemicals) at all 
  times, swapping them out in minutes to change their 
  appearance and slink away when suspicion is high.
   Flesh tailors speak High Archaic.
  FLESH TAILOR 
  DIFFICULTY 50
  Size 1 horrifying harvester
  Perception 13 (+3); shadowsight
  Defense 15; Health 50
  Strength 13 (+3), Agility 15 (+5), Intellect 10 (+0), Will 13 (+3)
  Speed 12
  Immune gaining Insanity
  ATTACK OPTIONS 
  Talons (melee) +5 with 2 boons (2d6 plus Flay on attack 
  roll 20+)
  Flay A living creature of lesh and blood takes 1d6 extra 
  damage and becomes impaired for 1 round. If the target 
  is already impaired, it instead takes 1d6 extra damage.
  SPECIAL ACTIONS 
  Change Face When a living creature of lesh and blood 
  becomes incapacitated from an attack made by the lesh 
  tailor, the harvester can use a triggered action to steal its 
  face. The triggering creature dies and each creature that 
  is not a harvester that can see the lesh tailor must get a 
  success on a Will challenge roll or gain 1 Insanity.
  Skittering Dance The lesh tailor uses an action or a 
  triggered action on its turn to move up to its Speed. This 
  movement does not trigger free attacks.
  Humour Drinker
  While all harvesters must collect and surgically 
  implant the organs of the living, a few ind particular 
  pleasure in the intoxicating taste of blood, bile, 
  phlegm and other luids that slosh around inside the 
  human body. Over time, as they sup on the life-giving 
  luids of their victims, humour drinkers become 
  addicted and obsessed with the unique lavors and 
  even powers that come from draining a victim dry.
   Much like vampires, humour drinkers possess long, 
  piercing fangs used to puncture the skin and drain 
  their victims of their essential luids—not simply 
  blood. Unlike vampires, harvesters are neither undead 
  nor do their victims feel the ecstatic, incapacitating 
  rapture of this kiss. When a humour drinker’s fangs 
  sink deep, it sucks in quarts of luid, immediately 
  exsanguinating and drying out the creature as it lails 
  and moans in horror and utter pain. The humour 
  drinker’s body bloats and distends as it drinks from 
  the vessel, its belly growing while folds of fat rich 
  from bodily luid, spill out from its clothing.
   A humour drinker that hasn’t feasted in the past 
  month resembles an extremely tall, gaunt human, 
  with patchy, bleached skin, sunken eyes, and sharp 
  facial features. As a humour drinker imbibes the 
  luids of a victim, however, it bloats and grows folds 
  of rosy lesh, a distended belly, and lapping jowls, 
  doubling its girth. After such a feast, a humour 
  drinker becomes vibrant, jovial and almost giddy. This 
  new found “fat,” both physical and emotional, quickly 
  dissipates in the weeks to come, making the harvester 
  increasingly foul tempered and bitter. Since humour 
  drinkers attempt to blend in as they stalk like the rest 
  of their kin, this turn in personality means they must 
  retreat into the shadows to ind prey, lest the unwitting 
  prey sense their hunger and raise suspicions, armed 
  with torch and pitchfork.
   Humour drinkers speak High Archaic.
  HUMOUR DRINKER 
  DIFFICULTY 100
  Size 1 horrifying harvester
  Perception 12 (+2); shadowsight
  Defense 12; Health 75
  Strength 18 (+8), Agility 12 (+2), Intellect 10 (+0), Will 11 (+3)
  Speed 13
  Immune gaining Insanity
  ATTACK OPTIONS 
  Hands (melee) +8 with 1 boon against Agility (the target 
  is grabbed and the humour drinker can use a triggered 
  action to attack with its fangs)
  Fangs (melee) +8 with 1 boon (3d6 plus Exsanguinate)
  Exsanguinate A living creature of lesh and blood must 
  get a success on a Strength challenge roll with 2 banes 
  or take 2d6 extra damage and become impaired for 1 
  minute. If the creature is already impaired, it takes 2d6 
  extra damage. Each time a creature takes damage in 
  this way, the humour drinker gains a +5 bonus to Health 
  and makes attack rolls and challenge rolls with 1 boon 
  for 1 hour. If the bonus reaches +15, the humour drinker’s 
  Size increase by 1 and it deals 1d6 extra damage on all 
  attacks.
  SPECIAL ACTIONS 
  Skittering Dance The humour drinker uses an action or a 
  triggered action on its turn to move up to its Speed. This 
  movement does not trigger free attacks.
  Organ Filch
  Throughout the Empire’s lands, one can hear stories 
  of corpses discovered in alleys and sewers, the bodies 
  dimpled with cavities left from the harvesting of their 
  organs. Some whisper of necromancers or vile cultists, 
  but those who have encountered the harvesters 
  before recognize these tell tale signs as being the 
  acts of the vile organ ilches. Like other harvesters, 
  organ ilches depend on materials stolen from living 
  victims to extend their lives, but organ ilches focus 
  
  6
  their eforts on stealing the lungs and hearts, kidneys 
  and stomachs to replace those same organs that seem 
  always on the verge of failing. Thus the organ ilches 
  prowl the dark streets, watchful for vagrants and 
  drunks and addicts on whom they spring to get the 
  meat they so desperately need.
   Organ ilches shroud their bodies in bloodstained 
  tarps, in some halfhearted efort to conceal the awful 
  truth of their forms. Under the covering, they wrap 
  their gaunt bodies tight with linens to help hold their 
  slippery guts inside their thin, failing lesh, and wear 
  elaborate headgear itted with numerous lenses to 
  sharpen their weak eyes in order to extract organs 
  with the precision their work demands.
  ORGAN FILCH 
  DIFFICULTY 10
  Size 1 horrifying harvester
  Perception 14 (+4); shadowsight
  Defense 12; Health 15
  Strength 11 (+1), Agility 12 (+2), Intellect 14 (+4), Will 13 (+3)
  Speed 12
  Immune gaining Insanity
  ATTACK OPTIONS 
  Scalpel (melee) +2 with 2 boons (2d6)
  SPECIAL ATTACKS
  Extract Organ  
  The organ ilch steals 
  an organ from one 
  incapacitated or 
  defenseless living 
  creature it can 
  reach. The target 
  creature dies and 
  the ilch gains 
  a +2d6 bonus to 
  Health that lasts until 
  it completes a rest.
  SPECIAL ACTIONS
  Skittering Dance The ilch uses 
  an action, or a triggered 
  action on its turn, to move up 
  to its Speed. This movement 
  does not trigger free attacks.
  Tear Thief
  The greatest threat harvesters face is the deterioration 
  of their bodies, a fate accompanied by a growing 
  numbness that spreads throughout their physical 
  forms. To combat this tendency, harvesters created  
  a special concoction made from the tears of the  
  living that can awaken, if for a brief time, new  
  feeling in their wrecked lesh. A steady supply of  
  tears is required to make the elixir and so it falls to  
  the tear thieves to spread pain and sufering in the 
  hopes of plucking the sweet, sweet drops from their 
  victims’ eyes.
   Tear thieves cover their bodies in dark suits or 
  dresses, usually in an old-fashioned style. All cover 
  their eyes with dark lenses to conceal the glint of 
  madness seen in their glassy depths, and they use 
  long thin knives to prick the lesh or eyes in the hopes 
  of coercing the prized luids to low. 
  TEAR THIEF 
  DIFFICULTY 50
  Size 1 horrifying harvester
  Perception 14 (+4); darksight
  Defense 17; Health 50
  Strength 12 (+2), Agility 17 (+7), Intellect 10 (+0), Will 12 (+2)
  Speed 12
  Immune gaining Insanity; blinded
  Hide in Shadows The tear thief can attempt to hide when 
  it is at least partially obscured by shadows, even if it is 
  being observed.
  ATTACK OPTIONS 
  Long Knife (melee) +7 with 2 boons (3d6 plus Extract Tears)
  Extract Tears A living creature must get a success on a Will 
  challenge roll with 1 bane or gain 1 Insanity and the tear 
  thief heals 1d6 damage. If the total of the challenge roll  
  is 0 or less, the tear thief also plucks out one of the 
  target’s eyes.
  SPECIAL ACTIONS 
  Skittering Dance The tear thief uses an action, or a 
  triggered action on its turn, to move up to its Speed. 
  This movement does not trigger free attacks.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Shadow of the Demon Lord/Monstrous Pages/SotDL - Monstrous Pages - Horrific Parasites.pdf