The Twelve Monsters of Christmas

[Shane Ivey]

The Twelve Monsters of Christmas

A monster a day for Monsters and Other Childish Things. Merry Christmas!

On the first day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
A corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

SPOOKSTER
by Connor Ivey (age 8), with help from Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: Spookster is a kid-sized skeleton with no ribcage and two extra arms that he stole from somebody else's grave. His spine and parts of his limbs have blue-green zombie skin and sinews and cold blood. His skull has glowing red eyesockets, and his right arm has a charred black wooden hand that's always on fire.

PERSONALITY: Spookster is not too bright -- he doesn't have much of a brain -- but is very protective of his adopted kid. He loves practical jokes, loves fire, loves Halloween, loves scaring people and hates bullies. He really, obsessively hates bullies. I mean he just can't stand them.

FAVORITE THING: Playing pranks.

WAY TO HIDE: Indoors, he crawls along the ceiling -- people tend to instinctively not look up when he's up there -- or in air ducts. Outdoors, he digs a grave for himself with his four bony arms.

BITS AND PIECES

1-2: Cracked bony legs with cold blood and zombie sinew, 6d. Defends,Tough, Useful (walk on walls), Wicked Fast.

3-4: Cracked bony arms with zombie sinew and one charred wooden hand that's always on fire, 5d. Attacks, Burn, Gnarly x3, Useful (soften and melt metal).

5-6: Extra skeleton arms, 7d. Attacks, Gnarly, Useful (dig kid-sized hole).

7-8: Spinal column with cold blood and zombie sinew, 5d. Awesome x2, Tough x3, Useful (attach and detach spare arms and legs; "heals" width ñ 1 dice on a limb that's been disabled if he can find spare parts).

9-10: Cracked bony skull with glowing red eyesockets, 6d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (raspy voice that can call monsters to life from drawings or TV shows to attack and defend using its skull dice), Useful (glowing red eyes see in the dark).

Tomorrow's monster: Gnarlytoes.

[Shane Ivey]

On the second day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

GNARLYTOES
by Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: Gnarlytoes looks a little different every time you see him. If you catch him from the corner of your eye he's this kind of hunched, oily black furry shape with a long snaky neck that has three crazy round eyes over an even crazier smiling mouth full of odd-shaped teeth. But the next time you see him he's shrunk a little; then the next time he's got just two eyes; then he's got a normal kind of neck; then he's not black and oily at all but more like a regular kid. But he always has the same high, growly voice, and he always has a crazy happy smile that says he knows all about every little thing that you don't quite understand, and he thinks it's the funniest joke in the whole entire universe.

PERSONALITY: Gnarlytoes is happy! It's always kind of hard to figure out exactly why, though, because his explanations don't make much sense. He talks like a bad college philosophy class, but every aphorism is a punchline that only he gets. "If the mechanism of perception is physical, but the understanding of perception is mental, and the mental is entirely internal, then how do you know anything that you perceive is real? Hoo! I know! That's a good one."

FAVORITE THING: Gnarlytoes just loves it when humans try to wrap their brains around concepts that are too big for them. And when humans wrap their brains around, say, telephone poles that are too big for them, that's pretty funny too. Gnarlytoes loves a joke.

WAY TO HIDE: Gnarlytoes changes his shape all the time. He always looks pretty creepy, but he can easily look like a creepy smiling fifth-grader, Youth Scout pack leader or stray dog instead of a creepy smiling monster.

BITS AND PIECES

1-3: Twisty legs with gnarled toes, 8d. Attacks, Defends, Awesome x2, Gnarly x3, Tough x1.

4-5: Gnarly three-fingered hands, 6d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (pilfering secret things and secret thoughts), Awesome x2.

6-8: Hunched shifty body, 10d. Useful (change shape), Awesome x2, Tough x3.

9-10: Snaky smiling face with three happy eyes and big happy teeth, 6d. Attacks, Useful (seeing secrets), Awesome x2, Gnarly x1.

[Shane Ivey]

On the third day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

CHO LENG
By Benjamin Baugh

APPEARANCE: Cho is about the height of a ten-year-old girl, but built heftier like an itty'bitty linebacker. Calling her "solid" is a charitable way of saying "horse-faced fatty" but you wouldn't want to say it in her hearing, as she's pretty sure she's a looker. She wears baggy clothes and a hoodie all the time, and can pass for a homely human if nobody looks to close. Her tendency to growl deep in the back of her throat like a panther discourages the kind of close examination which might reveal her stumpy tail, furry limbs, or collection of truly formidable teeth. She doesn't know it, but Cho is an orphan girl from the abominable plateau-dwelling people of the Elder Earth.

PERSONALITY: Grumpy and moody. Cho feels like she doesn't fit in (because she doesn't), and is always trying to get her kid to "ditch these losers and come throw rocks at cars with me!" She has a sharp tongue and isn't afraid to use it. Most people have a sense when they've gone too far and said something too mean, but Cho doesn't. This is in part because she's not really people, but in possibly greater part because, at heart, she's sort of a jerk.

FAVORITE THING: Meat. Rare. Raw. Cho is the opposite of a vegan. She tries to get special meat products that look like vegetables. The idea of eating a plant . . . well, how gross is that? One of these days she's going to bite somebody, and then she's going to realize just what kind of meat she likes best.

WAY TO HIDE: Cho can pass for a regular kid. An unfortunate-looking kid, but so long as she doesn't have to dress out for gym, nobody is going to look close enough to notice the hideous prehuman horror.

BITS AND PIECES

1-2: Devious Brain, 6d. Defends, Useful (figure out how to mess with people), Useful (spot weaknesses), Awesome x2.
3-4: Short Stout Legs, 6d. Useful (chase you down), Useful (pounce on you), Useful (sneak up behind you), Tough x1.
5-6: Horn-Nailed Hands, 6d. Attacks, Useful (unbreakable grip), Useful (delicate touch), Awesome x2.
7-8: Thick Lumpy Body, 8d. Defends, Tough x2.
9-10: Wide Toothy Face, 6d. Attacks, Useful (amazingly mean), Useful (bite through anything), Useful (sniff like a wolf), Gnarly x1.

[Shane Ivey]

On the fourth day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

MR. CUDDLES
by Becca Ivey (age 10), with help from Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: Mr. Cuddles is a cute little spider monkey, about the size of a Chihuahua, with a long tail and very sharp claws. He can't talk, but communicates with his kid via sign language.

PERSONALITY: Playful and funny, but dangerously competitive. He dislikes most other monsters, preferring to keep all the limelight himself. He really dislikes people and monsters who are cruel to children.

FAVORITE THING: Ripping out the eyeballs of someone who's been mean to a child. Or who has managed to annoy him. Stepping on Mr. Cuddles' tail when he's letting you jump rope over it is one good way to lose your eyeballs. There are plenty more.

WAY TO HIDE: He shrinks and grows a little bit as needed. When he doesn't want to be seen, he crawls into his kid's pocket.

BITS AND PIECES

1-2: Quick sneaky feet, 5d. Defends, Useful (creep silent and unseen), Awesome x2, Wicked Fast x2.

3: Stretchy prehensile tail, 3d. Useful (stretch, grab and swing), Awesome x2.

4-7: Crazy-fast razor-sharp eyeball-grabbing claws, 8d. Attacks, Useful ("My eyes!": a hit that disables the hit location of the victim's eyeballs removes said eyeballs, causing blindness and a freakout check), Useful (put eyeballs back again), Awesome, Gnarly x4, Wicked Fast x5.

8-9: Soft but surprisingly resilient body, 6d. Tough x4.

10: Screechy monkey face, 5d. Useful (stunning screech).

[Shane Ivey]

On the fifth day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Fiiiiive burnt-to-the-point-that-they're-unrecognizable thiiiiiiings!
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

GRIMHOOK THE RAVAGER
by Jon Ivey (age 12), with help from Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: Grimhook is a firetruck-sized black dragon with long grasping talons and great shadowy wings. His enormous fanged mouth breathes neon-red fire and his eyes glare burning red.

PERSONALITY: Aggressive, hungry, secretive, greedy. Everything that's not his kid or himself is either food, treasure, or kindling. For some reason his kid tries to lump all kinds of strange things into the treasure category so they don't get eaten or burnt -- houses, schools, cars, classmates, teachers....

FAVORITE THING: Burning people that his kid doesn't like or doesn't trust, and eating people that he's set on fire.

WAY TO HIDE: Grimhook folds his wings around himself and melts into his kid's shadow.

BITS AND PIECES

1: Sinewy haunches and feet, 4d. Defends, Tough x1.

2: Long hooklike talons, 4d. Attacks, Useful (grab, pilfer and tickle).

3: Vast shadowy wings, 4d. Defends, Useful (flight).

4-6: Huge scaly black body, 10d. Defends, Useful (always toasty warm), Tough x4.

7-10: Fire-breathing maw with immense fangs, 7d. Attacks, Useful (long range), Area x4, Burn, Gnarly x4, Tough x3.

[Shane Ivey]

On the sixth day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Six brains a-bulging,
Fiiiiive burnt-to-the-point-that-they're-unrecognizable thiiiiiiings!
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

SOCRATES
by Rachel Ivey (age 35 yesterday -- happy birthday!) with help from Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: Socrates is a bookworm. Really. He's a giant pulsing sticky pink segmented worm-thing with a gaping brain-sucking maw and he likes books. But he does NOT wear any stupid glasses because they would fall right off, and he doesn't have eyes anyway.

PERSONALITY: He loves to learn things. Books and computers are great, because they contain all that learning pre-digested and ready to absorb. But brainwaves are good, too. And brains. But brains are kind of a short high -- TONS of information all at once, but once you take it out of the skull it's less knowledge and more mush.

FAVORITE THING: Information. Weren't you paying attention?

WAY TO HIDE: Socrates folds himself inside out (or is it the other way around?) and becomes a normal-looking book bag, suitable for toting to school. School is good. Lots of learning going on at school. In bookbag form he can store things like pencils, paper, calculators and schoolbooks. Sometimes when you open him up looking for something, though, you pull out something else entirely; dad's laptop, for instance, or volume after volume from mom's legal library, or a cerebellum that Socrates says he was saving for later.

BITS AND PIECES

1-2: Whiplike acid-stinger tail, 6d. Attacks, Awesome, Burn, Gnarly x2.

3-5: Posterior pulsing worm-tube body, 10d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (hold and squeeze), Tough x3.

6-7: Anterior pulsing worm-tube body, 7d. Defends, Useful (store and regurgitate sometimes-useful things), Tough x2.

8-10: Brain-sucking worm maw, 9d. Attacks, Useful (suck width ñ 1 Brains dice from a human -- they return at one die per round -- or stun a monster for width ñ 1 rounds), Useful (calculate odds and act on them when they're favorable even if you don't really want him to), Useful (add stolen Brains dice to its maw dice and its kid's Brains dice), Awesome x2, Sharing.

[Shane Ivey]

On the seventh day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Seven shapes a-shifting,
Six brains a-bulging,
Fiiiive burnt-to-the-point-that-they're-unrecognizable thiiiiiiiings!
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

CLAYDOUGH
by Connor Ivey with help from Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: In his usual form Claydough is a kid-sized humanoid figure, liquidy and constantly shifting. But you rarely see him like that because he copies the shapes of things around him. He doesn't copy humans or mundane objects very well -- he tends to retain some of that liquid shiftiness -- but he's great at looking like completely unnatural things like other monsters and shapes from drawings and T.V.

PERSONALITY: As monsters go, Claydough is very nice. He smiles a lot with whatever passes for his mouth at the time. He's kind to most people, and even with bullies and cruel humans he's most likely to simply take some huge shape and scare them straight.

FAVORITE THING: Playing video games. No, really. He can make one of his hands turn into a handheld game player, and he can turn himself into a kind of wiggly T.V. for one of the bigger consoles. But turn off the "vibration" mode, because he doesn't like that.

WAY TO HIDE: Claydough turns into a crayon to hide. It's more melty than most crayons, but it's still easy to overlook.

BITS AND PIECES

1-2: Wobbly adaptive legs, 6d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (copy width ñ 1 qualities from another monster for width ñ 1 rounds), Awesome x2.

3-5: Wiggly adaptive arms, 8d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (copy width ñ 1 qualities from another monster for width ñ 1 rounds), Awesome x2, Spray, Wicked Fast x2.

6-8: Shifty body, 10d. Defends, Useful (grow to the size of a dumptruck), Useful (shrink to the size of a fly), Tough x3.

9-10: Elastic shapechanging face, 7d. Useful (look like anything), Useful (take terrifying shape), Awesome x2.

[Shane Ivey]

On the eighth day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Eight faces freezing,
Seven shapes a-shifting,
Six brains a-bulging,
Fiiiive burnt-to-the-point-that-they're-unrecognizable thiiiiiiiings!
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

ICE-OLATOR
by Connor Ivey with help from Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: Ice-olator looks a lot like his kid, but he's made of ice with dark blue ice hair. He can change the shape of his body parts, turning his hands to swords or shields and his feet to skates, and he can melt to water and back again.

PERSONALITY: Protective but sneaky. He tries to stay hidden until there's trouble.

FAVORITE THING: Dousing people in freezing-cold water when they least expect it.

WAY TO HIDE: He melts into a water puddle, or fills a water bottle for easy storage in a backpack.

BITS AND PIECES

1-2: Ice feet, 8d. Defends, Useful (skate fast over water or ground), Wicked Fast.

3-4: Left hand, 5d. Defends, Awesome x2, Sharing, Tough x2.

5-6: Right hand, 5d. Attacks, Awesome x2, Gnarly x2, Wicked Fast.

7-8: Melty body, 10d. Useful (melt and flow through gaps).

9-10: Frozen kidlike face, 5d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (freeze things solid), Awesome x2, Burn (creeping ice).

[Shane Ivey]

On the ninth day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Nine campers bleeding,
Eight faces freezing,
Seven shapes a-shifting,
Six brains a-bulging,
Fiiiive burnt-to-the-point-that-they're-unrecognizable thiiiiiiiings!
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

VISCER
by Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: A gaunt, seven-foot-tall man in ragged, filthy brown and gray clothes. His face is always obscured but not always in the same way. Sometimes he wears a shadowy hood, sometimes a burlap sack, sometimes a metal faceplate, sometimes a hockey goalie's mask. He always sports some kind of metal implement in his hand, whether it's a machete, an axe or a fist full of scalpels. He talks in a snarling, breathy, happy (but in a bad way) rasp.

PERSONALITY: Viscer came around right after his kid, then very young, started paying attention to the gruesomely violent torture-porn horror movies his parents let him watch. Maybe Viscer gravitated to his kid because of all the dismemberment-heavy nightmares, or maybe he took this particular form because he figured if it was that frightening to his kid, it must be pretty scary to everybody else. Nobody can say. Viscer got his name after telling his kid, "I am killer, stalker, eviscerator! Terror to all -- but never to you," and the kid couldn't quite pronounce that last one.

FAVORITE THING: Evisceration. He hangs out at butcher shops a lot since his kid won't let him get away with disemboweling humans very often.

WAY TO HIDE: Blink or turn your back, and he's disappeared into a nearby door, window, air vent or sidewalk drain. Or is he -- right behind you?

BITS AND PIECES

1-2: Long rangy legs in filthy farmer's boots, 6d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (stalking), Gnarly, Tough.

3-4: Grasping stinking left hand, 7d. Attacks, Defends, Wicked Fast x2.

5-6: Slashing bloody right hand, 7d. Attacks, Gnarly x2, Spray.

7-8: Ragged coat-clad body, 8d. Defends, Useful (debilitating stench), Tough.

9-10: Terrifyingly masked face and wild gray-brown hair, 6d. Useful (inspire horror), Awesome x2, Tough x2.

[Shane Ivey]

On the tenth day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Ten knives a-knifing,
Nine campers bleeding,
Eight faces freezing,
Seven shapes a-shifting,
Six brains a-bulging,
Fiiiive burnt-to-the-point-that-they're-unrecognizable thiiiiiiiings!
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

NANNY NIGHTMARES
by Shane Ivey

APPEARANCE: A kind little hunched old lady -- she looks a lot like Mother Theresa, in fact -- carrying a battered basket that's always overflowing with homemade candies and cookies. Unless she's angry. Then she's a snarling, grasping, bloodthirsty hunched old lady with a basket full of homemade knives and thumbscrews.

PERSONALITY: Nanny Nightmares considers herself her kid's caretaker and babysitter. She always makes sure her kid eats properly, does homework, shows up on time, and gets rewarded with yummy treats. When her kid is bad, Nanny Nightmares sends just enough bad dreams to discourage misbehavior.

FAVORITE THING: Making good kids happy. Things that don't make good kids happy make her very, very angry. So do kids who aren't good.

WAY TO HIDE: In daylight she doesn't need to hide; who's going to bother a nice little old lady? At night she never sleeps, but creeps under her kid's bed or into the nearest closet to watch and wait.

BITS AND PIECES

1-2: Shuffling old legs in a simple old skirt, 8d. Defends, Useful (suddenly just appear), Tough.

3-4: Left hand holding out a cookie or something much sharper, 6d. Attacks, Gnarly x3, Wicked Fast.

5-6: Right hand with basket full of treats or torture, 6d. Attacks, Useful (charm with treats), Useful (terrorize with torture), Gnarly, Sharing.

7-8: Hunched, fragile, unsteady body in a musty floral shirt, 8d. Defends, Tough x2.

9-10: Mild or murderous wrinkled face wrapped in a fraying wool shawl, 6d. Useful (see emotions and surface thoughts), Useful (impart dreams or nightmares), Awesome x2, Sharing.

[Shane Ivey]

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Eleven infinite infinities,
Ten knives a-knifing,
Nine campers bleeding,
Eight faces freezing,
Seven shapes a-shifting,
Six brains a-bulging,
Fiiiive burnt-to-the-point-that-they're-unrecognizable thiiiiiiiings!
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

THE OUROBOROS WYRM (AKA ROBBIE THE INFINITE SERPENT)
By Benjamin Baugh

APPEARANCE: Robbie is a really long snake. Infinitely long, in fact. If you stretched him all the way out, he'd reach around the entire universe and end up looking over his own shoulder. Well. If snakes had shoulders. His body trails off out of sight, around a corner, down a hole, somewhere else. He's sort of quantum like that. Being infinite, he also exists in every moment in time as well as space, but can only pay attention to the one his kid is experiencing RIGHT NOW. Beyond this quirk of spatio-temporal biology, he's a giant stripy snake as big around as a whiskey barrel. (And for you kids out there who can't drink, and so have no idea how big a whiskey barrel is, trust me, that makes him plenty big. Big enough to swallow down a whole yak. You don't know what a yak is, either? Go watch Animal Planet, kid, this ain't a zoology lesson.) Hovering over his head he wears a Celestial Pearl that he got from a Chinese dragon that he thinks looks really cool, and which acts like a cosmic hall-pass when he wanders into other dimensions.

PERSONALITY: Robbie is a big friendly goof. He also has a very literal mind. Being an infinite serpentine string of cosmic fundament tends to give one a blind spot for irony and metaphor. He really wants to have a sense of humor, so he laughs a lot. Sometimes he even laughs at the right bits. Mostly, he's crazy curious about everything his kid does, and asks constant questions all the time.

FAVORITE THING: Figuring stuff out. When he finally realized what the infield fly rule was, he danced crazy-coils in the air over the city, and made everyone motion sick with the swirling stripiness.

WAY TO HIDE: Robbie creeps back around a corner, down a hole, or out of sight and just barely peeks out.

BITS AND PIECES

1-4: Loooooooooooooooooooong snaky body, 8d. Defends, Attacks, Useful (goes on forever), Area x5, Tough x5.

5-6: Double-hinged jaws, 6d. Attacks, Useful (swallow people and then throw them up in another time or place), Useful (taste the timespace continuum), Tough x2.

7-8: Celestial pearl, 6d. Attacks, Useful (like a celestial FBI badge), Useful (project healing fire), Awesome x2.

9-10: Fathomless amber eyes, 6d. Useful (see galaxies and microbes and supernovae and farts), Useful (see [but not hear!] the future), Awesome x2, Tough x1.

[Shane Ivey]

This is it! I hope everyone has enjoyed our holiday monsters.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my monster gave to me
Twelve feelers feeling,
Eleven infinite infinities,
Ten knives a-knifing,
Nine campers bleeding,
Eight faces freezing,
Seven shapes a-shifting,
Six brains a-bulging,
Fiiiive burnt-to-the-point-that-they're-unrecognizable thiiiiiiiings!
Four poked-out eyeballs,
Three rare steaks,
Two freaky feet
And a corpse from a freshly-dug grave.

STARRY LULU
By Shane Ivey and Benjamin Baugh

APPEARANCE: Multihued tentacles creep from out of sight, groping, reaching, prodding, grasping. Their rich stink hinting of unplumbed ocean depths and unthinkable cosmic space, Starry Lulu's feelers curl around her kid, bringing whatever the kid needs and keeping away unwanted things. Follow them as you might, you never quite reach their source, no doubt lurking through the aeons in some forgotten tomb; but would you really want to?

PERSONALITY: Even as monsters go, Starry Lulu is unknowable. Its tentacles appear from anywhere -- a drain, a ditch, a gopher hole, a desk's pencil drawer, the sleeve of your best friend's shirt -- and do their mostly-helpful thing, full of eldritch echoing whispers and disjointed watery dreams that only Lulu's kid can hear and see.

FAVORITE THING: Finding useful objects. Its kid never has to worry about losing toys, books, hairbrushes, or that gerbil that your parents said ran away but really it got stepped on and they buried it in the back yard. Starry Lulu loves to help.

WAY TO HIDE: The tentacles withdraw back into the darkness of whatever holes and folds sprung them.

BITS AND PIECES

1-3: Umber grasping tentacles, 10d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (grab and hold), Spray, Wicked Fast x2.

4-5: Burnt orange reaching tentacles, 6d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (produce things it thinks you need), Area x2.

6-7: Livid green probing tentacles, 6d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (wriggle through tiny gaps), Awesome x2.

8-10: Bilious ocher smashing tentacles 10d. Attacks, Defends, Useful (grab and hold), Gnarly x3.