The twisted creeper is a scourge, a testimony to the evil ordinary men are capable of, given time and murky shadows to act in. Twisted creepers might tangle with a lone PC, but are far more likely to pick their victims from vulnerable communities. This villain often commits the acts personally, striking from concealment, to fulfill internal drives. (This “personal touch” differentiates them from most Brass Knuckles and Cloaked Blades.)
Twisted Creepers
Unlike either Brass Knuckled villains or Cloaked Blades, the twisted creeper tends to use their own hands. They hold the knife, slip drugs in their victims’ drinks, or build sound proofed lairs to hold their stock of prisoners. Their acts create misery, often without a greater scheme in mind
Some twisted creepers act in response to twisted urges, while others torment their victims for the rush of power, or find that practicing their passion fills a yawning void at the center of their being. A few think themselves brilliant and may taunt police and investigators who pursue them. 
Several twisted creepers might be gathered together for greater mischief–but it will rarely be a creeper who gathers up his fellows. Other villains may find creepers useful tools, or terrific distractions, though they’re certainly not ideal to throw at PCs as strike forces.
Manifestations:
- A vampire, who kills a specific type of victim on a regular schedule. Or a bloodsucker who kidnaps humans and locks them away to bleed like penned cattle for regular sustenance.
- A serial killer who sends the police (or PCs) tantalizing clues about the victim they’ve selected. Or pictures of the victim they just kidnapped. Sometimes the clue is horrific; a victim’s pinky finger anonymously delivered.
- A narcissistic rock star, cheered by throngs of fans, is eagerly anticipated in every city. Rumors swirl that at least one fan doesn’t make it home from each show, but the pattern is more subtle than that. Is the rumor just posturing for publicity, or a challenge to investigators?
- A mage is brainwashing followers, building a deadly cult. Or victims are being lured, drugged, and driven out to a hidden barn where the sorceress awaits the equinox to sacrifice them to gain terrible powers…
MO: The twisted creeper targets the powerless, never offering a fair fight. The creeper isolates victims, sometimes by trickery, often with patience–and strikes once, overwhelmingly. Drugs, or a vampire’s seductive bite sedate the victims a creeper captures; other victims die before they realize they’re being attacked.
Traits: In gaming, twisted creepers are often intelligent–when they aren’t, the PCs can quickly track them back to their lairs, which are often only sturdy enough to keep prisoners contained. Usually creepers have no authority, relying on obscurity and the powerlessness of their victims to keep them out of police crosshairs.
Advantage: The twisted creeper is a mystery, often with a clock built in–you have to act quickly, or the creeper will seize another victim. Clues can be basic or incomplete at first, with additional clues coming from later crime scenes if the players get stuck.
If the PCs are known to the twisted creeper, their friends and family are likely targets of these villains. The PCs may be too strong to strike at directly, or too wary to catch off guard and attack using the creeper’s honed tactics, but the twisted creeper can cause quite a bit of anguish to loved ones before they’re caught.
Even in a “normal PCs” game, creepers are unlikely to send PCs to the hospital. When confronted with overwhelming force, most creepers will freeze or stall–allowing a victory without a long fight scene.
Relative Power: These villains are no match for a well honed group of PCs; in fact, those who take prisoners could probably be overwhelmed by even their victims, if they weren’t drugged, shackled, or worse.
Turned Tables: Once the PCs know who is responsible for the crimes, they usually have an overwhelming advantage, making them the hunters. The tension comes from the PCs imagining what is happening to the victim; against most creepers, the PCs don’t fear for themselves, they chastise themselves for the pain their hesitation and missed leads cause the victims.
If they’ve misjudged their foe, they might rush into a situation expecting to overcome a base thug or a cowardly creeper… and be surprised when their foe is far more dangerous than they’d imagined.
Twisted Creepers in Your Games
Twisted creepers are common in novels and crime shows. They can be a threat to the lone investigator, or a character temporarily out of contact with their partner–but a pack of gun toting (or spell flinging) PCs is rarely something they can handle.
Kicking the creeper up a notch in power can alter that; ordinary police confronting a vampire for the first time may be very surprised at their foe’s surprising strength… or investigators may be amazed when mesmerized victims fight on the twister creeper’s behalf.
What was the last twisted creeper you used in your game? Were they a direct threat to the PCs, or did they strike at friends and family of the heroes?
One of my most memorable ‘creepers’ was years ago in a 2e Shadowrun game I GMed. A female orc assassin named ‘Malice’ who would harass the PCs on occasion after they inadvertently canceled one of her contracts. Her specialty was demolitions and she liked to make things go BOOM!
After a few close calls, and lots of collateral damage, the PCs finally decided they had had enough and called in some favors and tracked her down in her lair. I was quite amused that it didn’t occur to anyone until the Decker was turned into chunky salsa that her lair might have a few traps and surprises waiting for those foolish enough to break in.
Eventually they found Malice and terminated her with extreme prejudice.
Sounds like she worked out really well. Yeah, one on one they’re dangerous, and it makes perfect sense that she’d be secure in her “fortress”, where she could set up her defenses.
She sounds like an interesting NPC to play. It sounds like she was tolerable for quite a while–or their “to do” list was too long to get to her for quite a while. Nice!
The best way I ever did this in a game was inspired by Glen Cook’s Red Iron Nights. A cursed object, recently uncovered, was compelling people to become serial killers. When one person was found and contained, the cured object would compel them to pass it along to another, leaving the last host effectively brain dead. What I think really made this work was that it was a more urban fantasy game, where the PC’s who were in the know had to interact with local authorities who were not, and were not allowed to be in the know.
THey finally managed to pin it down and contain it, but only after the group’s psychic was taken by the object after he tried to object read it. Which did not work out well for him…
Sounds like a very interesting mystery. They had to identify not just the crazy murderer(s), but the object causing it. That sounds like a good Warehouse 13 episode!
It worked out really well. The players were just the right level of frustrated. Doing it now, I’d have stretched this out as a subplot for a few games. They players thing they’ve stopped it, and don’t have to do anything about it for a session, and then it’s back. Play it up like a copy cat. Let them catch the new perp. If they don’t go paranoid mode, lather, rinse, repeat. Would just need to make sure it’s not stretched out too long of course. But yeah, it was a fun wrinkle to the normal murder mystery.
And I think you’re right, it would make a solid Warehouse 13 episode.
This reminds me of the movie Fallen with Denzel Washington. It must have made for a very fun adventure.
A lot like that actually. I’d forgotten about that movie. And it was a good adventure. Especially funny when the psychic went to object read the cursed object. I remember looking at him kinda dumbly, and he just shrugs and says “It’s what my guy would do.” Can’t fault him for playing his PC just to the hilt. lol
Nice article. I find that Twisted Creeper types make some of the best FRPG villains because the party comes to really hate them. The Brass Knuckles type is an obvious villain; he (or she) is powerful and power-hungry. Players understand his motive even if they don’t agree with the morality. Cloaked Blade is like a Brass Knuckles but with subtlety. It takes time and effort to identify the mastermind, but once they do the motives, again, are typically simple and direct. The Twisted Creeper is the type of villain I see players talking about even years later because he (or she) was just sick. Stopping that kind of villain involves equal parts sleuthing, moral outrage, butt-kicking, and trying not to throw up along the way.
One thing I disagree with in the article is the characterization of Twisted Creepers as relatively unpowerful. I think they’re much more compelling, good as recurring villains and/or long term plot drivers, when they have some power base that keeps them from being flattened the moment the party unravels the secret of their identity. The best creepers enjoy some measure of impunity to do the evil that they do. A creeper might be a police officer, a politician, a business executive, or even a rock star (as in the example above); or could be related to someone high up in one of these organizations.
This element of power is important. It prevents the party from solving the adventure by simply stomping on the villain after they identify him. Let’s continue with the example of the creeper as a rock star. A big-name musician is going to have a security detail. They don’t ask what he does behind the closed door but it’s their job to keep you away while he does it. A rock star is also going to have throngs of adoring fans, some of them in the government and media. Make a scene and you’ll find your picture on page A4 of the next morning’s paper under the headline “Hooligans Attack Rock Star After Concert, Are Arrested.”
The point is that a simple, frontal assault should be really tough. An overwhelming powerful party could pull it off but a lesser group will have to figure out how to separate the villain from the power base that protects him. In the case of the rocker, that might include identifying a member of his security detail who has deep misgivings about what goes on behind the doors he’s protecting and a scrappy music beat reporter who’s caught a whiff of foul play and is willing to look beyond the rocker’s status as, well, a rock star. Then, and only then, does the party have a way to collect evidence, catch the villain in the act, and make sure his evil deeds will be shown for what they are to the public.
That’s an interesting point, and kind of reinforces the “but if you kick up the power level, it’s not that simple”. Yeah, humans against weird stuff–or just powerful/protected humans can make a solo creeper an ongoing threat. Sure, a gun might solve it–but how are you going to get in a position to make that shot?
That does expand their use quite a bit; I was thinking of them as not enough to go up against a coherent party–ideal for partners or solos–but your examples salvage their use against parties too.
Whee! More of these! I love this series. One of the more effective monsters of the Twisted Creeper variety I ever created was a boogieman named Tayce, who could be called up via a nursery rhyme, based on Candyman and Freddy Krueger. The trick wasn’t stopping him when he arrived…the trick was figuring out how to stop him from appearing again afterward.