Equal parts horse and lobster, the xallion’s head consists of a ‘face’ full of feelers around a vertical slash for a mouth, boiled-white eyes, and crusty shell plates that run down its neck, along its back, and end where a tail of grasping tentacles begins. The rest of its powerful, quadrupedal body is covered with mucus-slicked hair. Its four legs appear sturdy, but their boneless nature becomes evident whenever the limbs warp and curl to move swiftly across unsteady terrain. In fact, it looks like the horror should topple when at full gallop, but it rarely does. Horror on the Hoof. Cultivated by the Gloomriders , xallions used to run free somewhere deep in the far realms. They are not vicious by nature, despite being carnivores, and once bonded to a creature are unsettlingly affectionate. Occasionally a feral herd will find their way to the material plane, where they blend in with the local wild horse population. It’s not long before they find their way into the hearts and minds...

The gloomrider wears a battered, black duster that bears a moist sheen; the mucus coating the gunslinger’s chalky skin saturates the fabric and exudes a cloying scent, not unlike sweet tobacco. Its ‘fingers’, a squirm of four tendrils, anxiously twitch a mere breath away from the butt of twin revolvers in slaad-skin holsters. These strange shooting irons bear cylinders of scintillating crystals and spit chunks of chaos-spawned stone. The drifter’s face consists of a single orifice that serves as the mouth, nose, and sensory organ. More small tendrils spiral from the opening, petrified back in the general shape of a head. Thankfully, the gloomstalkers wide-brimmed hat usually obscures the unsettling visage. The rest of the uninvited horror’s attire matches its profession with a fancy vest covered with deep-speech sigils, black trousers, naga-hide boots, and spurs crafted from dead stars. The last accessory makes their every step jangle with soul-jarring tones not born of this sphere. ...

The Swineherd is more parasite than man now. It still bears a human face of limpid flesh from which its squid-like mantle sprouts. The meaty, pink tube contains all of its still-humanoid guts and comes to a sharp point at the end which is all that remains of fused leg and foot bones. A squirm of tentacles curls away from the swineherd's chin. These six appendages are each as long as a man’s arm with tips adored by bone hooks that were once phalanges. Scourge Shepherd. Once, the swineherd was a humanoid. That was until the coming of The Pariah . In the grand aberration’s presence, the parasites within the swineherd’s livestock mutated into horrific, squirming horrors. Alas, they were still nigh-undetectable and it wasn’t long before the parasites made their way into human hosts. Within a victim, the little creatures burrow their way into the victims’ brains, all the while excreting toxins that break down their bones and putrefy the flesh. The mental deterioration also makes ...

Dozens of skeletal hands crawl over one another, all eager to overwhelm their victim and them apart until only a fresh pair of fleshless extremities is ready to join the swarm. Close inspection of the stark white bones reveals primordial sigils scratched into each phalange which stretch and move in a pale mirroring of flexing muscles when the swarm is on the go. Eldritch Couriers: The core of each Herald of Iv is the hands of those who struck bargains with the inscrutable Croupier of Iv and reneged on their half of the uncanny deal. These foolish mortals were strangled by their very own hands, now strange entities instead of a mere body part. After the victim dies the skeletal hands skitter from their cage, the skin and meat blooming open like a flower. From there they join a Herald of Iv swarm or start their own. These strange collections hand-deliver what goods the Croupier of Iv promised and carry off whatever horrible item the elder evil demands as payment. They are also outer ...