Movement: 90' (30')
—Fly: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 3
Hit Dice: 1
Attacks: 2 (1 talons, 1 beak); or 1 feather volley
Damage: 1d4 / 1d4; 1d8
Save: L2
Morale: 12
Stymphalides are sometimes called Stymphalian birds or birds of Ares, but they aren't actually birds at all. They're self-replicating robots, resembling something like a cross between a heron and a mosquito, made of bronze knives. The blades that form their wings aren't merely decorative: They're able to launch them at opponents. The Stymphalides got their name from the flock encountered by Herakles at Lake Stymphalis in Arkadia, but the Argonauts also fought a group tasked with guarding the Amazonian shrine to Ares in the Black Sea.
Ares (or one of his servitors) designed the Stymphalides as weapons of terror. They consume human flesh (indeed any animal flesh), filtering essential metals and nutrients from it. They excrete a waste product toxic to animals and crops (Poison Class 1 in Mutant Future terms).
11 comments:
Really liking your science fiction makeovers of classic monsters! :-)
Wow. A cross between a heron and a mosquito made of bronze knives. That sounds absolutely terrifying. It makes Hitchcock's Birds wimpy by comparison. Very cool Trey.
@Dariel - Thanks!
@Tim - I only wish I could have found an illustration for it!
You could make a movie of these flying blades but only for SyFy!
This is a grade A critter, imo, and I could see using it in a variety of settings. Well done.
@Fran - As long as there are ladies in bikinis (and of coure their would be) they'd jump in a minute!
@Aos - Thanks! I noticed I left out of the description that they can shoot their "feathers" like thrown knives, but hoepfully that came through in the states.
Great blend of classic and scifi features...this is a wonderful series and deserves to be compiled into a sourcebook eventually.
I would think that their 'waste product' is suffused across their surface so that all of the wounds that the Stymphalides inflict are poisoned or at least almost guaranteed to become septic. Nasty creatures indeed.
Man, this is continuing to be a dynamo of good ideas.
@seaofstarsrpg - Ooh. Very unhygenic!
@Jack - Thanks, man!
In a near-Thanksgiving Champions game a decade ago, I had the dastardly villains The Gourmand and The Cassowary team up to unleash an army of colossal, bronze-feather-launching, cybernetic turkeys on poor Fair City.
Yep. Stymphalian turkeys.
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