Sunrise Generation - Monsters and Creatures
These are all the notes I had on the monsters. I had also a separate document with specific, boring notes on what statblock from Mythras or Hârn to use for each, but it's dry and the guidelines here are enough to get what they are.
Curupira (Kuru-pee-rah)
Stats - Use Orcs.
A man walks into the forest with his back straight for the hunt and gets lost. Over time, his hair grows wild and permanently reddened by the blood of the hunt, his condition becomes haggard and crazed, and he cannot walk with his back straight anymore. He's turned his life to the jungle and became a curupira, sometimes called caipora.
The curupiras live in troops and are little better than monkeys. They're fiercely territorial and will injure anyone who seems to pose a threat to their game animals; tobacco pacifies them.
They say the oldest curupiras morph into something huge and wild, never referred by name.
"Elfs and Dwarfs"
Stats - Use Elfs but: Double STR and CON; base skills also include Lore (Astronomy), Lore (Magic), and Healing; Transformation into Giant Snake takes 1 whole round, and it can stay like that for 12 hours; Never loses consciousness due to wounds.
It is said that beneath the Serras there live a magical people called the Mouros. Taller than most men, wearing mostly red, with dark skins and long hairs and beards. - their womenfolk are the only redheads in this land. They can turn into huge serpents but may never touch metal, except gold.
Their intentions and stories are unknown, those who deal with them say that the punishment for revealing the secrets of the Mouros is death. Whatever magical knowledge they might know is kept tightly shut underground, but pieces of it are revealed to those who would befriend them.
Many a man has approached them with the intention of befriending only to never again be seen alive.
Mapinguari, or Greater Curupira (mah-peen-gwarEE)
Stats - Isnashi, Monster Island. Or Gorilla but scarier.
Larger than a man. It has no face.
A veritable gorilla of red hair, the mouth grown so big as to open its entire belly. It tears a path of devastation through the forest, screaming louder than you would think possible
Steel does not wound it. The only time this world is safe from it is when it sleeps at night.
Devil Parrot
Stats - As Goblin.
Whenever a parrot stops singing, it starts laughing instead as it eats other, smaller parrots; it gorges itself on their tiny bones and grows and grows.
After reaching a certain point, it starts becoming almost human-like. Its legs become long and good for running, its feathers grow hard and good for grasping, but the parrot is cursed away from the sky and can never fly again.
Instead, it lives a life of angry irony, feasting on human flesh and killing for fun, laughing its horrible laugh. It torments people for laughs; murders of Devil Parrots sometimes descend the mountains and swarm villages, turning their lives into hell.
Smaller Devil Parrots usually play pranks such as throwing rocks at travellers or putting gunpowder inside smoking pipes. Some can never grow past this point.
Devil Parrots often cut other parrots' tongues, so that they too become Devil Parrots. Those who are rescued and shown compassion can become grateful household protectors.
Ogre
Stats - Use Ogres; particularly big ones are Hill Giants.
Whenever a particularly evil person goes to hell, the Devil enlists them in their army as a venue for redemption. They are given size and power to mete out Divine Punishment upon those deserving, and are necessarily twisted by the experience - many horns and eyes, wild hair and beard, and strange skin colours are all expected among ogres. Ogres are taller than the tallest men around and many times as strong, but the strongest stay in hell.
However, the most unruly and despised of them often escape hell and come to our world to bring disaster and party. This often includes human flesh, but ogres are notorious for loving alcohol, particularly sugarcane whiskey. These ogres can be reasoned with and many even lead fulfilling lives.
More often, however, a particularly despicable human attracts the attention of evil spirits with their dark and depraved appetites. The spirits often present a bargain: their soul for power. And so the human becomes a creature of hell on earth, bent on victimising the world.
Slimes
Stats - Use slimes, oozes, or jellies in general.
A shambling, jelly-like pile of assorted belongings, these are the remains of someone who was killed by drowning, or drowned by neglect. They are mindless and seek only to drown the living; some say they're attracted to the heat of a body, since they live an existence of permanent watery cold.
It is said that, if you squint on calm nights, you may see people as big as cities staring back at you from the darkness beyond the sea. Don't stare at them for long.
Dry Body
Stats - Use Ghoul.
When men are exceedingly wicked, they turn into ogres. When men are irredeemable, they turn into Dry Bodies.
These are people who did something so evil, or did so many evil acts with such reckless abandon and not even a whisper of repentance, that Hell didn't want them after dead; not even eternal punishment would be enough to whip them into repenting, so they're spat out of Hell to wander forever.
You may find the Dry Body seemingly dead on the side of the road in bright daylight, only for it to shamble up and run after you; or you may hear its screams of pain and anger on the fields right at the strike of midnight. The Dry Body is known to make terribly evil traps and even injure itself gravely for the chance of doing evil upon someone.
You may hit the Dry Body all you want, it will never die permanently; but it doesn't heal itself either.
Werewolf
Stats - Use Orc but unaffected by damage or pain
A thin man, covered in hair, with an expression twisted in unnatural pain comes up on the road. The Werewolf is a man who doesn't act like a man; he sways gently before dashing after his victims, he eats from the ground on all fours, and he doesn't seem to feel pain; his entire life is pain enough.
Werewolves come out at night and prefer to eat the weak, tearing down anything in their way.
Werewolves are creatures of sin, and are born from it. Incest and rape begets werewolves, but so does cannibalism. Some are born Werewolf, but most turn into it. Some even revel in the metamorphosis.
The only way to seriously wound a werewolf is with molten wax from the candle of a church.
Zombies and Skeletons
The dead of unpunished crimes shake in anger. When enough of them get together, they possess either the recent or long dead. They don't hunger for flesh though, they hunger for a new vessel; the chosen can become an avatar of their vengeance willingly or be forced upon.
Particularly violent swarms may, instead of raising many different bodies, cobble themselves together into one huge Rattling Horror.
Either way, they cannot be killed, but the proper rites may pacify them.
Boitatá, the Fire Wurm (boi-tah-TAH)
Once upon a time, the forest was dark and enveloped in rain. A long night had fallen upon it. In those dark days, the Great Serpent emerged from its grotto. It took advantage from being the only thing that could see in the dark and it chose to eat the part that it liked the most of all the blind creatures stumbling around the jungle: the eyes, and with them came the memories.
The serpent gorged itself on eyes and memories until it became fat and slow, and then it returned to its grotto. Over the many eras and times of darkness, the Boitatá has gone and found new eyes to eat - new perspectives from which to see the world - and it has become a veritable erudite. It knows everything there is to be known, and it is known to help those who seek it, but it always demands payment.
Knowledge for knowledge.
An eye for an eye.
Kings of All - Animals have kings, and they're huge.
Hauntings - No stats. Ever.
Domestic animals: Dogs (also carry burdens), opossums (as pigs / cats), toxodonts (as cattle), muscovy ducks (as chickens), llamas (for burdens, fibre). Though I went back on the toxodonts as cattle later.
Eating include rice, cassava, peanuts, maize, bananas, pineapples, yams, peppers, fish, meat, also butterfly larvae, certain ants.