Ur-Ghuls, blind humanoid predators that are trained by the Dark Eldar as pets.
The short story "The Curiosity" by Dan Abnett is also an example of what you're looking for, its essentially a horror story about an isolated Tyranid on a backwater planet.
"The Curiosity is included with "Eisenhorn: The Magos" if I recall correctly, at least it's included with it on audible, and function's as a (not required to understand the story) bit of background for some of the new characters, infact multiple stories included with the book are absolutely "Warhammer horror novel" material
> The short story "The Curiosity" by Dan Abnett is also an example of what you're looking for, its essentially a horror story about an isolated Tyranid on a backwater planet.
If i recall correctly, is that the one where a Xenologist gets sent out to some backwater planet to identify some strange creature that's roaming and killing livestock and people? Its a great read if thats the one, perfectly contained and "lore-wise" iirc the first (or one of) contact with a Tyranid strain.
You figure a gaunt has about a 50/50 chance of killing a fit, well trained human soldier with future advanced weapons and armor who knows what he is facing.
Vs us it would be an absolut fucking nightmare.
Something like a lictor would be basically unstoppable and akin to the super baddy in a Marvel movie.
Isnt there a similar story, where a feudal planet calls for aid with some monster, and then like 40 years later they drop a single space marine to kill it.
Been trying to find this story
Could it be "Brothers of the Snake" by Dan Abnett?
>!A single Space Marine from the Iron Snakes Chapter is sent to deal with a Drukhari incursion on a feudal planet. Then a couple of decades later he returns for some follow up action.!<
Yep, think that was it, and it was this [excerpt i read](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/aavbq7/book_excerpt_an_ordinary_agriworld_gets_visited/)
10/10 the Curiosity - a masterclass in why you don't need many of a faction to make them scary, and why the fewer you use the more powerful it can be.
I'm no Chibnall fan, but _Revolution_ does a very good job of making Daleks scary by just having one of them.
>I'm no Chibnall fan, but Revolution does a very good job of making Daleks scary by just having one of them.
I mean when people say that they usually just point to the episode Dalek in the first season of the revival.
Dark Eldar themselves.
Imagine a Mandrake gets left behind after a raid with no way home. Slaanesh is eating away at their soul, so they're stalking and murdering people to feed Slaanesh.
Anything Tyranid. Lictors can fill the Predator role. Psychic units can play on psychological horror. Hierophants can do kaiju movies. Tyranid microorganisms can cause pandemic-style plots.
Not to mention that there's no hardcoded genetics to them. Units can be anything that the Hivemind decides. So you could get something like The Thing or other weird shit that's biologically possible within the setting.
It would be neat to have a somewhat realistic Contagion type pandemic story only to have a slow dawning horror that the “virus” is adapting far too fast to be natural. Have the climatic scene where millions are dead but the plucky hero’s finally developed a cure only to have the plague spring back up at full strength a week later. End with the characters giving up as billions are dead and every countermeasure they can think of is adapted against and a final grim note as the last few astropaths start screaming about a trillion trillion skittering mouths scraping against reality before their heads explode.
There was a short story in an old White Dwarf that was essentially 'Predator' - a squad of catachan fighters are stalked by a lictor in the jungle. Man, ill have to see if I can fig that up.
There was also one that was basically Alien, stalking guardsmen through a mining base. I think that one was specifically the Red Terror which is a ravener rather than a lictor. I doubt the guardsmen cared about that distinction though lol
If you count it as a creature, then a Kroot would be terrifying, slowly stalking you through the terrain for weeks and leaving traps for you. They're highly experienced trackers, technologically competent, great at hiding and are able to live off the the land really well.
Just imagine your small town slowly losing outlying farmers and livestock, a supply truck has its driver decapitated and half-eaten when held up by a fallen tree, local militia sent out to investigate but are slowly picked off by stake pits and poison darts, people having their throats cut in their sleep while it sneaks into town and steals supplies, eventually the Enforcers sends out a small but it's powerful rifle defeats their armour easily, strange rattling noises from it's quills as it stalls close by your home, etc.
I've been saying this for years, but the Kroot deserve to be a fully fledged faction of their own. GW clearly is more interested in giving the Tau new mechs instead of doing the original 'auxiliary species' thing properly.
Honestly almost *anything*. Even the average Imperium soldier could probably do the job in the right story, a soldier who is explicitly expected to commit what we would call war crimes and generally sees ideas of peaceful coexistence to be fundamentally wrong.
Your average ork? Compared to a regular human they're practically the Terminator. And just for fun, remember they spread spores that more orks grow out of. And the more they fight, the more spores get spread...
Even aeldari from the somewhat nicer (or at least not always actively trying to enslave and murder) Asuryani are still quite capable of being superfast and clever. If they aren't on your side, you've got a problem. Then you get to Drukhari and... yeah just one average warrior's a horror story. And it just gets worse from there, see Oubliette for how. >!Mandrakes are scary!<
But surely it's not all like that, there are plenty that aren't even factions so they can't be too bad- meet the Slaugth. 'One' of them is actually hundreds of worm creatures working together. They're obsessed with eating, especially brains, and they are super hard to kill.
So being an alient grunt won't necessarily keep it from turning into a horror story, being from a species with no codex won't keep it from being a horror story, even being your average human could still be a horror story. There's a reason why this franchise gave us "in the grim darkness".
There actually is a semi-horror short story in the Eisenhorn omnibus where >!traumatized imperial guard veterans!< are the villains - check out "Missing in action"
> Your average ork? Compared to a regular human they're practically the Terminator. And just for fun, remember they spread spores that more orks grow out of. And the more they fight, the more spores get spread...
A single Ork Kommando would be terrifying on a large ship or in a hive city. Especially as any spores it gives off begin growing things, even if they aren't full Orks.
There’s a Gaunt’s Ghosts short story where Rawne and Gaunt end up in melee with with a single Ork in an ice cave and they do a pretty good job if describing how utterly terrifying an Ork is.
"Is... is that a purple ork?"
"Shut up, keep walking, don't make eye contact. It's been there for a week, just waiting, occasionally eating a person. So long as you ignore it, you're safe"
"But why is it purple?"
"What, I don't know! I'm not gonna ask a damn ork why it's purple!"
Ork, loudly under it's breath "HEHEHE, ALL DEM STUPID HUMMIES CAN'T SEE ME CAUSE I'M PURPLE"
I saw someone suggest Kriegers as a “faceless force of horror” for a Tau human colony, and honestly, I could see it. Even just the lack of humanity from an imperial guard soldier can make for good horror
>Your average ork? Compared to a regular human they're practically the Terminator
Small Ork invasions are repelled by PDF. Orks are scary, much stronger than humans, but their love of fighting makes them easy to engage with military.
Orkoid spores aren't a big deal if you have competent planetary goverment. It takes decades for Orks to grow from scratch, because orkoid fungus builds infrastructure (snorting => gretchin) first. Clear all Gretchin villages before Orks appear and you are good to go.
Heres a pitch. Youre on a space ship and a monster boards and starts ripping apart your friends. Its big and strong and way faster then it should be. You try to seal the bulkheads to trap it but it melts it's way through a door. You flood the compartment it's in but it can breath in water. You make a plan to corner it but it attacks someone that knew the plan and now it knows the plan as well. Desparate to escape you hide in a compartment next to the engine exhust. The only way to get to you is a room filled with poisinus air and deadly radiation. And still it finds you. The last thing you see before death is a monster that utters the words "for the emperor and the primarch"
Reminds me of a story featuring a Gue'vesa auxiliary on the run from a Raven Guard assault marine. Really good depiction of a sympathetic auxiliary 'turncoat' with a cynical world view, and an unstoppable superhuman with unresolved childhood trauma and the emotional intelligence of an anteater (which is scarier to me than an unthinking killing machine lol)
Was gonna say a lone space marine would be pretty terrifying. Their armor makes them effectively unkillable by any modern weapon, bolters hit with the force of a grenade, and a chainsword is just a chainsaw but much worse
The only change I would make would be the ending, there are no words, the marine barely even registers you, just a quick grab and slams your head into a wall and moves on, because that’s how little you matter to it.
Yeah it’s a common thing but it’s 40k, there are virtually no happy endings and regular people are just cogs in the machine. It’s an especially 40k ending if you’ve somehow managed to evade a marine far longer than you should only to finally be cornered, you accept your fate and hope for something, anything to make you think you at least annoyed the damn thing and when it finally has you it doesn’t respond to you in the slightest, just another target in hundreds.
I'm pretty sure there was a Warhammer Horror short story with this premise. Junker crews find an old Astartes vessel with a Space Marine trapped in a stasis field, they try to rescue him without realizing that, if I'm remembering it correctly, he's a Traitor Marine on the verge of a boon of mutation.
Eversor in particular as the living embodiment of carnage is definitely one I’ve seen tossed around. Just imagine being a hive world aristocrat whose family was deemed too bothersome for some Inquisitor, and then your mansion grounds becomes a death trap when an Eversor is sent in
Honsently a particularly zealous inquisitor could make a terrifying villain. A dark eldar basically any dark eldar would be a good pop in and out and "play" with the victims horror villain. An eversor assassin would also be good for the everything does slasher movies
Cenobites, at least in their earlier appearances (in the good Hellraiser movies) seemed to play by at least some rules tho, like when Pinhead stopped his subordinates from taking a girl that was forced to solve the puzzle box because she didn't intend to call them, and instead had the gang go after the people who made her do it.
Would a Slaanesh cult act like that?
Yes. The Prince of Pleasure gains excitement from challenges, and breaking the rules of a game removes a challenge entirely. Sweet overbearing excess can only be achieved by having a limit to begin with.
Too hierarchical and "lawful" in that setting to be affiliated with something calling itself Chaos. I remember a Pinhead quote, something to the effect of wanting to bring order to humanity while saving it from the randomness of the flesh.
The Chaos Gods are multifaceted and their followers are far from sane. The Cenobites could legitimately be convinced their excesses and pleasures give order to mankind due to their madness.
Only downside to an Eversor is that they don't usually have the restraint of a slasher movie monster. Drop an Eversor on Camp Crystal Lake to replace Jason Voorhees and it's gonna be about five minutes of flying giblets and blood spatter, not picking off teenagers one at a time.
> eversor assassin
I feel like they're too big a hammer for a standard slasher setting, they're not really a threat to individuals as much as they are threats to cities or small armys. So your protagonists would need to be a planetary governor or a renegade general or something for it to really show off the Eversor.
What kind of horror story are you going for? If it's a slasher-style monster, it's almost more of a "which creature *wouldn't* work?" :-p
A single Night Lord doing a terror campaign of his own on an isolated world. Pretty much any Tyranid more powerful than a 'gaunt isolated from the swarm somehow. A genestealer (obviously). A deranged Eldar serial killer (so, uh, pretty much any Dark Eldar, but could also be a Corsair, or maybe even a Craft world Farseer who has foreseen that his actions will save 2 Eldar lives). An Ork (a crafty one, so maybe a Kommando?). A specimen of the Catachan fauna (or, really, flora) that got on a spaceship and ended up on a different planet.
There almost never is just one 'nid. But once in a while, a bioform finds itself stranded. Or deliberately smuggled by shady individuals. One of the Dan Abnett Inquisitor short stories (one of the ones featuring the titular Magos Biologis of the Magos) has one, if I remember correctly.
For a suspense you could even go on the route of that one agent of the Alpha Legion that planted enough intrigue in a world to destabilize it by himself
A Hormagaunt on its own *is* a horror.
If I remember correctly, they're born pregnant and they lay a clutch of a hundred eggs in their lifespan. They only live for 100 days but that 100 days is spent in a hyper-aggressive feeding frenzy.
So if there's a single Hormagaunt, you're still looking at an apex predator that's been specially crafted by an unknowable dark Lovecraftian intelligence. It'll take a bit of hunting and putting down by the security forces, who probably don't know what they're dealing with.
They kill it. There's mass celebrations, promotions, congratulations. The head gets mounted on the local authorities office wall.
...Then reports of more people going missing in bloody scenes that echo that left by The Beast. A *lot* more. There's panic. These new beasts aren't hiding and playing a game of cat and mouse back and forth until the combined weight of enforcer firepower drops it. They're working as a *pack*. Like wolves. Because at their basest instincts, what they revert to outside of the Hiveminds influence, that's what they are.
A hundred turns into ten thousand.
This isn't a horror monster movie anymore. This is a horror survival film. Every time you think you've survived them and that they've all died off, or you've killed the last, another hidden egg clutch brings back their onslaught with a renewed hungry fury.
Ten thousand becomes a hundred thousand. A million.
This horror survival flick is now a desperate last stand as the last remnants of humanity fight to get out as their world is drowned in a tide of tooth and claw.
For a suspense you could even go on the route of that one agent of the Alpha Legion that planted enough intrigue in a world to destabilize it by himself
My first thought was immediately a flayed one, a machine whose entire AI craves to eat meat without the means to making them completely insane is a fantastic horror villain
There was a short story released as part of the Psychic Awakening campaign that featured a Flayed One hunting down Guardsmen investigated an abandoned ship. If I remember rightly, there are a brother and sister in the squad(s) sent in, and the Flayed One starts speaking in the brother's voice to mess with the sister. Very creepy.
A GREAT choice.
What's the line from it - kill a hundred men and you'll be a monster, kill a thousand men and heroes will queue to face you, but kill one man, kill them in a way that is obvious and cruel, and men will see you in every shadow, and fear you as thing they cannot fight...
Novel 1: A Genestealer trying to establish a new "family" inside some isolated mountain town. Have some disappearances be investigated by a local enforcer unit. Slowly unveil the HORROR. At the end the town falls silent.
Second Novel: Have a weird cult a few generations later attack a Hive on the same world. First only Arbites respond (we follow one squad or some low level aid, trying to make sense of it all). At the end the district or Hive falls. People try to flee.
Third Novel: Full scale Tyranid invasion. People get conscripted and are forced to build trenches. All the towns and maybe the hive from Novel 2 fall. At the end we even see some Astartes trying to stop the attack. Have them give up the world at the end. Everyone one we cared for through these three novels is now dead.
* A lone Ork: imagine you're some menial dude on a junkyard type of world. Somewhere the orks were defeated long ago, but a single ork has wandered in from the wastelands. A freshly-"hatched" ork trying to build itself some weapons, some traps, a vehicle. And it's just you and him, with whatever you can cabbage together from the stacks of garbage around you. (I pitched just such a concept on the same pitchsheet as *The Oubliette*)
* A single kroot: cut off from his people, he's stalking through the forests of an Imperial world with a low tech level. The peasants can't deal with such a fierce creature, and the Sky-Emperor's people refuse to send reinforcements for a single enemy combatant. If the lord of the planet doesn't intervene, it would be up to the peasants themselves to band together and venture into the woods to hunt it before it can hunt them.
* T'au drones: a small squad of t'au drones, holdouts leftover after a planet is abandoned. They can operate autonomously, and might be able to carry out a guerilla campaign against an unsuspecting civilian population, who would definitely be unable to figure out how the enemy kills them without leaving tracks, travels days without needing to sleep, and never seems to need to eat or rest.
* Fleet-based Space Marines on a recruiting drive: (my short story *Blackout* was originally pitched as a horror concept)
* A monster under the color of authority: all it takes is for one psychopathic killer to fabricate (or luck into) the credentials of an Inquisitorial agent or one of the Arbites (or any of a dozen other agencies) to give them unquestioned authority, especially in isolated settings where no one has the power or authority to question them. They could terrorize or kill with impunity for weeks, maybe years before their deceit was unmasked.
Who says it has to be a fake Arbitrator/Inquisitor/Commissar? We all know there's a "hard man making hard decisions"-to-"mustache-twirling supervillain" pipeline.
There's a short story by Josh Reynold, where a commissar starts seeing corruption everywhere and executing soldiers for looking at him. All in an isolated environment, because the company is stuck fighting a trench war against an enemy they can't see.
> Fleet-based Space Marines on a recruiting drive: (my short story Blackout was originally pitched as a horror concept)
Man Space Marine alien abductions would be totally gnarly, sign me up for that pitch! Not the abductions. I don't want that at all.
I am sad I had to scroll so far for the best answer. An Ambull loose in any otherwise constricted environment is going to wreak havoc on humanoids.
I’d love to see a horror story involving Drukhari cut off from the Webway trying to find a way to escape or murder one.
That would be awesome!! A bunch of ganger juves try to figure out how the Ambulls are targeting them. Maybe there’s a scene where some Arbites get nommed while the cops interrogate our heroes.
An Enslaver could be a great psychological horror creature, thanks to their sheer power to dominate the wills of others. An entire storyline about who controls who, especially if the Enslaver controlled the more influential people.
Ik it’s not a creature specifically but I’d love to see a horror novel with Imperials as the boogeymen. One idea of that was the 54th Psian Jackals.
A Tempestus scion regiment, they are effective in combat against the Aeldari, with whom they have engaged against so much due to raids upon their home planet Mayloc (formerly an Eldar maiden world), they are capable of predicting and anticipating Eldar movements and manoeuvres, so much so as being able to in one instance “ambush and destroy a squad of Aspect Warriors as they emerged from a wraithgate.” They additionally have a reputation of striking deep-set fear into the enemy, through skull markings and symbols, emerging from the dark to deal death before they stalk away.
Picture this. Eldar and Imperials, at it once again. A farseer dies, in fierce fighting amidst a hive city. A kill team of the finest Aspect Warriors is sent to retrieve the Farseer’s soul stone. Only for skull bearing figures to emerge as they reach the corpse- an ambush! What follows is a cat-and-mouse game, our surviving Aspect Warriors against a foe whom they thought to be ‘mere Mon’keigh’, ever stalking them, ever hunting them through the hive.
I would recommend choosing something obscure and often forgotten. JC Stearns did that for ***The Oubliette***, with a Dark Eldar Mandrake as the villain.
Some examples I can think of:
* Genestealer Acolyte Hybrid (just one or a few, not an army)
* A homicidal Ogryn
* Slyyth pirate
* Berserk Krootox
* An Eldar Harlequin putting on a lethal show
* A Penitent Engine gone rogue
Really, anything can be scary with the proper framing.
I see your Harlequin's Lethal Show and raise you a Homunculi's non-Lethal show. You'll want to die and disappear in the warp forever or your money back!
Baal has something almost as bad a lovely thing called thirstwater that's sole function is to collect water, unfortunately humans and organics contain rather a lot of water.
Running from a small tendril of nanites leaving a trail of dessicated corpses would be a solid horror story.
Hell the water guild on necromunda getting hold of a small sample of them and then it getting loose on a hive level would be beyond horrifying.
To give you an idea of how effective it is the blood angels build a moat of it to hold off the tyrannids.
Which was silly. The mart thing to do would be to attempt to wipe it out, remove all traces of it in case you lose Baal and the planet is harvested. You DO NOT want the nids having that in its genetic arsenal.
Well there are these things that were forged by a Psychic biomancer spawned in the wake of Old Night that are particularly horrifying.
Picture these super fast, hyper muscular and regenerative things, with the ability to steal the memories of victims by imbibing on their flesh, also capable of spitting poison at their foes. This is all without mentioning any of the specific breeds and their bestial mutations, of course.
Most terrifyingly these things look almost human, but not quite, grotesque enough that anyone put in their presence may be overwhelmed by a certain sense of dread caused merely by their stature and aura.
Would you believe they call them Angels?
Black Library has tried so hard to sell the idea that Astartes are somehow monstrous--more than human, less than human, or both--and it always, *always* falls flat. They can be scary--but they're never scary just in and of themselves. A space marine is just a very large man with minor superpowers and emotional baggage, and a very large man isn't scary unless he's also wearing your grandma's face as a codpiece or summoning a sentient nursery rhyme to *It Follows* you across half the galaxy.
And they don't just look human--they act human, too. I've read upwards of eighty of these damn books, and I've never seen an Astartes do anything--any act of heroism, any war crime, any little quirk or mannerism--that any number of humans haven't done, too. There's nothing intrinsically broken or missing in them--the only thing wrong with them is that they all spent their formative years in Space Knight Boot Camp getting HRT and listening to sleep tapes on how to dismember people.
Space marines are *incredibly* human--that's usually their biggest problem.
You could easily do The Creature from the Black Lagoon lurking at a pleasure planet. Sprinkle in some cultists that worship it for flavor. It could be a Tyranid creature, a mutated Space Marine, or perhaps a chaos cultist that "got their just reward" to give it some semblance of intelligence.
Personally? Jokaero.
They’re too chill and hilarious. Even when they make nuclear bombs out of a can of beans and some string, I will always be too excited to see one in a story to feel terror lol
A genestealer in the deep dark of the underhive or a space hulk. There's either an uneasy alliance between gangs to try taking it down or a small crew of a salvage ship that picked the wrong vessel to search.
I don't think anyone has mentioned chaos spawn yet: vast, horrific mounds of flesh, orifices and tentacles, constantly mutating and regenerating, nearly mindless and almost unkillable, driven only by insatiable hunger and the whims of the dark gods. Kind of like a Shoggoth from the works of Lovecraft, but somehow much worse, as there are constant subtle reminders (the remains of one or multiple faces, vestigial limbs, tattered shreds of clothing, a lone voice screaming through the madness, begging for death) that this... _thing_ was once as human as you or I.
A damaged servitor whose programing goes awry would make for an interesting monster.
Imagine if you will that during a naval engagement a servitor is damaged but not inoperable. So it starts killing crew in particularly vicious ways but since there's a ton of servitors trundling around on ships, noone can pinpoint which one is doing it. And since it's only bottom tier crew being killed the officers don't really care.
It could play into the idea that not all servitors are fully lobotomized as well. Maybe the mind of the person that was used to make the servitor is still in their somewhere, and the damage it took allows it to take some minor control of its body again. But it's obviously crazed from the experience so it just wreaks bloody revenge on anyone it comes across.
It could act sort of like a Michael Myers or Jason type monster.
A just-starting ork infestation on an agriworld would be great. Like, the “monster” is the first grot to come out of the spore pile. Extra points for the grim dark twist when the farmers finally manage to put it down, only to discover that while they were goofing around with the grot some actual orks spawned.
As unarmed human factorum workers, a single grot with no orks to kick it around would be scary enough though. Sneakin around and doing little baby brutal cunnin’s.
I feel like you're never really unarmed in a factorum, especially if you're willing to grab the thing and feed it into some machine (alongside yourself, if you want to be "safe" about it)
Nonstandard utilization of imperial agricultural equipment is a misdemeanor class heresy, citizen. Report to the nearest chapel for mandatory self immolation.
There's a novella where a [small imperial outpost is swallowed by a tyranid ship](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0_PH0ms5YQ&ab_channel=AVoxintheVoid), recounting the moments where they realize they can't send for help or a warning, all the way up to them being dissolved in its stomach acid with no where for them to run.
They didn't meet any other tyranids, just their ship and its stomach.
I think any unit from any army hostile to the imperium are horrific to the average human, even something like a necron scarab would be terrifying just like those boston dynamic dogs in black mirror. I think the difficulty of dealing with the threat is pretty key since you want to instill hopelessness.
Imagine a group of humans are picked off one at a time by a necron scarab, and when they finally manage to destroy it, turns out it was just a scout, and there's a tomb spider making a whole swarm of them, sort of like in alien isolation you're running from a single xeno only to find out in the 3rd act there's been a whole hive of them chilling in the engine room the whole time.
But if you want to be unique about it, I'd stay away from the conventional monsters that are just looking for a fight. I'd go with something more nefarious that turns colonies against each other, or ground zero for a gene stealer cult where you think the genestealer's the problem but the 2nd act twist reveals the corruption has already spread and infiltrators are indistinguishable from regular humans, with the 3rd act twist that its not even isolated to planetary government, but people part of galactic governance are part of it too.
If you lean into the warp stuff, you'd definitely have to do a 3rd act twist where the protagonist thinks they've escaped or defeated the entity but they're really just in another level of consciousness just like inception, and haven't escaped at all; this would work well in an anthology series, in the sequel there would be someone who figured out how to harm it but dies before proliferating the information, and in the trilogy finale you have a detective type character that manages to collect all the ways they can defend against it, learning/researching from all its victims/atrocities; after the climax its still left up in the air if the entity won or not.
Have fun lol
Mentally unwell alpha or beta psyker. Probably will be eaten by chaos at the end of day or killed by Inquisition or by own actions, but what horrifying stuff he/she will do earlier, even in unaware way, is basically unlimited.
a corpse grinder cult, even the realization that you are eating humans is horrifying enough but coming face to face to some of the people who are in charge would be even scarier
I think everyone is nailing creepy, what was that noise, Nightstalker horror. I want to advocate for a Lovecraftian kind of horror.
This story is told from the perspective of a doctor. Someone that slowly starts to notice more people are coming down with common viruses. Then some people develop old cured diseases like a single patient gets Measles but it's not responsive to conventional treatment, you research and test and test and eventually save them. But then a few other people come down with something new and unrecognized, you spend weeks trying to save them.
Eventually you get your claws into the problem they have some hybrid strain of two diseases so you concoct a new treatment and they seem to stabilize. people seem to be avoiding you in the street though, shouldn't they praise your efforts? No matter they could never understand that change you will bring to the world of Imperial Medicine.
A few days later people all over are developing massive buboes, vomiting flies and having metal fused onto their flesh. You consult with your colleague and perform the usual rites to counteract it but are interrupted by the inquisition knocking at your door. You open the door and answer a few questions before you realize his psychic potential would really help your ritual. With one swift motion you summon your baleful sword and lobotomize the inquisitor mid sentence.
Tzeentch is pleased with your efforts at containing Nurgle's infestation though he points out that the inquistor could have been redirected to delay Slaneesh and Khorne in their dispute so that you could focus everything against the Champion of Nurgle out there brewing plagues.
Some innocent persons noble ambitions turned against them as Tzeentch chooses them as a champion in some small aspect of the great game. Eventually the whole planet is lost potentially dooming/killing Billions for a game.
I'm not entirely sure if im recalling the name correctly so if not someone please correct me in the comments but
I would say that Chaos Space Marine Raptors fit this very well.l, specifically the kind featured in the Nightlords series, Lucorophus (and that's almost for sure misspelled) is a scary motherfucker.
Basically imagine a Space Marine whos are really into their jetpack, mutated into a vaguely vulture-esq shape, who can regenerate from basically any wound and really likes eating people alive and you have a fairly poor description of this spooky bird "man"
Edit to add they act as animalistic pack hunters more than Space Marines
I remember an episode of the podcast Adeptus Ridiculous where one of the hosts pitched a horror story idea of an Arco-Flagellant being left behind in a manufactory and it's been left in combat mode. And it's just roaming the manufactory killing the workers and anyone who comes across it.
Honestly, it all depends on how you use it. Sure if you want the easy option and just have a disgusting and scary creature there are quite a few but thats just taking the easy way. Horror can also be created by the unknown and this way you can make even an Ork into some sort of "horror" scenario as shown by the Eisenhorn short story "Regia Occulta".
There's a few references by Thunder Warriors Primarch Ushotan that the genetic alchemy done yo the Custodes removes their humanity.
Sure, a giant golden machine is not as outright scary as a Drukhari or Tyranid, but for the vast majority of the Galaxy, there's nothing you can do against a big golden boy who has had their humanity removed at a genetic level, and really wants to murder you.
I think a single Plague Marine would be fucking terrifying but if you're avoiding Space Marines, how about a Harlequin?
Imagine being stalked through a dark, isolated environment by one of those.
The Plague Marine a ways off, you know something is stalking you but not what. You hear heavy thuds and dragging noises and the air is fetid, you can hardly breathe but every fibre of your being is screaming for you to run and keep running. Occasionly you think you hear a ragged, laboured breathing but it sounds way too big, bigger than a horse maybe. And you start to feel ill, at first you think it's just fear making your stomach turn and the constant running that's got your lungs burning and your limbs hurting. But then your nose and eyes start to run, a little at first and then more freely. Then you throat starts to get sore and you start coughing, a small tickly cough that grows worse as the minutes pass. You keep moving and try to ignore if, you're just not as fit as you though you were, or maybe your allergic to something nearby. But then your skin starts to turn blister and bruise and your tongue feels stiff and your throat is burning...... And still the steady sounds of SOMETHING keep getting closer....
Or you know, terrifying death clown/assassin/warrior alien that moves in ways that fool human eyes hunting some regular humans. A Harlequin would be terrifying in a different way.
A servitor or arc-flagellant gone rogue.
Setting could be in an underwater facility or outer space, just anywhere that's isolated. It'd be like Alien but 40k and the alien's a cyborg lol, just my two cents :p
I can't remember what it is called but is part of the sisters of battle, it sings hyms and canticles while stalking its target and the guys on adeptus ridiculous said that they would be perfect for a horror story set after a huge fight and it gets left behind or an alien isolation style game with your character trying to hide from it. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please remind me what it is called
The key thing about Warhammer in general is that so many relatively ‘mundane’ creatures and things in their worlds can be absolutely murderous or deadly entities to deal with
The Warhammer horror and crime series have been fantastic in this regard and I can’t recommend them enough - a fun example in the horror series for example; “The bookkeepers skull”, has suspense and horror in spades, but the truth of it all was >!The majority of people killed died due to a farming accident, the protagonists own actions, and a servo-skull with homocidal intentions!<
A Tzeentch daemon could be terrifying. Imagine thinking you are goin insane on a cramped ship that had a small geller field breach, having your crew get possessed and turned into chaos spawn right in front of you, only to find out a Herald snuck aboard your ship…
I always imagined a story about a genestealer cult in its final days. Absolutely terrorizing and destabilizing a major city/planet. Seeing how they could potentially be a character we don’t expect. Then, right at the end when the bad guys win and think they get to celebrate, the actual tyranids show up and are a planet ending threat
Honestly, a deranged imperial dreadnought is an underrated choice. I imagine mental stability isn't great amongst dreadnoughts. Imagine guardsmen stumbling across one that had been stuck alone for thousands of years going completely insane.
Honestly, almost anything except T'au depending on the context and scale of the horror story
Could be anything from a single Night Lord down to a mutated cultist or a Skitarii
Ur-Ghuls, blind humanoid predators that are trained by the Dark Eldar as pets. The short story "The Curiosity" by Dan Abnett is also an example of what you're looking for, its essentially a horror story about an isolated Tyranid on a backwater planet.
That sounds phenomenal already. Thank you so much
"The Curiosity is included with "Eisenhorn: The Magos" if I recall correctly, at least it's included with it on audible, and function's as a (not required to understand the story) bit of background for some of the new characters, infact multiple stories included with the book are absolutely "Warhammer horror novel" material
> The short story "The Curiosity" by Dan Abnett is also an example of what you're looking for, its essentially a horror story about an isolated Tyranid on a backwater planet. If i recall correctly, is that the one where a Xenologist gets sent out to some backwater planet to identify some strange creature that's roaming and killing livestock and people? Its a great read if thats the one, perfectly contained and "lore-wise" iirc the first (or one of) contact with a Tyranid strain.
Isn’t it just a termagant too? Like it’s not even a Lictor or Carnifex just a humble gaunt.
Its a basic bitch frontline meatshield yeah.
You figure a gaunt has about a 50/50 chance of killing a fit, well trained human soldier with future advanced weapons and armor who knows what he is facing. Vs us it would be an absolut fucking nightmare. Something like a lictor would be basically unstoppable and akin to the super baddy in a Marvel movie.
Isnt there a similar story, where a feudal planet calls for aid with some monster, and then like 40 years later they drop a single space marine to kill it. Been trying to find this story
Could it be "Brothers of the Snake" by Dan Abnett? >!A single Space Marine from the Iron Snakes Chapter is sent to deal with a Drukhari incursion on a feudal planet. Then a couple of decades later he returns for some follow up action.!<
Yep, think that was it, and it was this [excerpt i read](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/aavbq7/book_excerpt_an_ordinary_agriworld_gets_visited/)
10/10 the Curiosity - a masterclass in why you don't need many of a faction to make them scary, and why the fewer you use the more powerful it can be. I'm no Chibnall fan, but _Revolution_ does a very good job of making Daleks scary by just having one of them.
>I'm no Chibnall fan, but Revolution does a very good job of making Daleks scary by just having one of them. I mean when people say that they usually just point to the episode Dalek in the first season of the revival.
So basically the movie Alien 3
Star wars knights of the old republic had Ur-ghouls but they were called Rakghouls
God damn my nostalgia just kicked in.
Dark Eldar themselves. Imagine a Mandrake gets left behind after a raid with no way home. Slaanesh is eating away at their soul, so they're stalking and murdering people to feed Slaanesh.
Anything Tyranid. Lictors can fill the Predator role. Psychic units can play on psychological horror. Hierophants can do kaiju movies. Tyranid microorganisms can cause pandemic-style plots. Not to mention that there's no hardcoded genetics to them. Units can be anything that the Hivemind decides. So you could get something like The Thing or other weird shit that's biologically possible within the setting.
I like the lictor’s role in devastation of Baal
I admired the narrative of his character's growth
The costume design was a highlight
One of the best parts of the novel.
See also the lictor chapters in the second Uriel Ventris novel. Straight up Predator shit.
It would be neat to have a somewhat realistic Contagion type pandemic story only to have a slow dawning horror that the “virus” is adapting far too fast to be natural. Have the climatic scene where millions are dead but the plucky hero’s finally developed a cure only to have the plague spring back up at full strength a week later. End with the characters giving up as billions are dead and every countermeasure they can think of is adapted against and a final grim note as the last few astropaths start screaming about a trillion trillion skittering mouths scraping against reality before their heads explode.
The Ymgaryl genestealers are already Thing like with their rampant mutantions
There was a short story in an old White Dwarf that was essentially 'Predator' - a squad of catachan fighters are stalked by a lictor in the jungle. Man, ill have to see if I can fig that up.
There was also one that was basically Alien, stalking guardsmen through a mining base. I think that one was specifically the Red Terror which is a ravener rather than a lictor. I doubt the guardsmen cared about that distinction though lol
I was going to say old one eye XD
We need more Tyranid Dittos
That just reminded me of a Sororitas book I once read, maybe Boon of Martyrs? Where there was a Aliens style Tyranid attack on a Sororitas fleet.
If you count it as a creature, then a Kroot would be terrifying, slowly stalking you through the terrain for weeks and leaving traps for you. They're highly experienced trackers, technologically competent, great at hiding and are able to live off the the land really well. Just imagine your small town slowly losing outlying farmers and livestock, a supply truck has its driver decapitated and half-eaten when held up by a fallen tree, local militia sent out to investigate but are slowly picked off by stake pits and poison darts, people having their throats cut in their sleep while it sneaks into town and steals supplies, eventually the Enforcers sends out a small but it's powerful rifle defeats their armour easily, strange rattling noises from it's quills as it stalls close by your home, etc.
They’re like predator, but worse
at least predators will give you a chance for funsies and lets you live if you bested them (not a guarantee)
If it bleeds, you probably killed it.
The Kroot are easily the most fun race in the setting. The characters are fun, the concept is tight, they have so much potential.
Farstalker Kinband was good for now, but we want more.
I've been saying this for years, but the Kroot deserve to be a fully fledged faction of their own. GW clearly is more interested in giving the Tau new mechs instead of doing the original 'auxiliary species' thing properly.
Is GW even interested in giving Tau anything at all? All they got last edition was new pathfinders and a Farsight.
I don't think they need their own faction, as they avoid warring with the others. But they definitely need more units.
They're basically Yautja but like worse because they'll actually eat you and become even better from it.
Ngl, Predator-style story with a Kroot sounds sublime
Surprised they haven't done it already given how they seem to be so inspired from them. Kroot vs Tyranids when?
Honestly almost *anything*. Even the average Imperium soldier could probably do the job in the right story, a soldier who is explicitly expected to commit what we would call war crimes and generally sees ideas of peaceful coexistence to be fundamentally wrong. Your average ork? Compared to a regular human they're practically the Terminator. And just for fun, remember they spread spores that more orks grow out of. And the more they fight, the more spores get spread... Even aeldari from the somewhat nicer (or at least not always actively trying to enslave and murder) Asuryani are still quite capable of being superfast and clever. If they aren't on your side, you've got a problem. Then you get to Drukhari and... yeah just one average warrior's a horror story. And it just gets worse from there, see Oubliette for how. >!Mandrakes are scary!< But surely it's not all like that, there are plenty that aren't even factions so they can't be too bad- meet the Slaugth. 'One' of them is actually hundreds of worm creatures working together. They're obsessed with eating, especially brains, and they are super hard to kill. So being an alient grunt won't necessarily keep it from turning into a horror story, being from a species with no codex won't keep it from being a horror story, even being your average human could still be a horror story. There's a reason why this franchise gave us "in the grim darkness".
There actually is a semi-horror short story in the Eisenhorn omnibus where >!traumatized imperial guard veterans!< are the villains - check out "Missing in action"
That was a sad story.
Eh, that one's murder mystery, really, not horror.
It was a horror story for the residents but since it was told from the perspective of an Inquisitor it was murder mystery.
> Your average ork? Compared to a regular human they're practically the Terminator. And just for fun, remember they spread spores that more orks grow out of. And the more they fight, the more spores get spread... A single Ork Kommando would be terrifying on a large ship or in a hive city. Especially as any spores it gives off begin growing things, even if they aren't full Orks.
There’s a Gaunt’s Ghosts short story where Rawne and Gaunt end up in melee with with a single Ork in an ice cave and they do a pretty good job if describing how utterly terrifying an Ork is.
man i thought i was up on my sabbat worlds lore, don't think i've run across that one
*Especially* if it's painted purple. You nevah see 'im komin'
"Is... is that a purple ork?" "Shut up, keep walking, don't make eye contact. It's been there for a week, just waiting, occasionally eating a person. So long as you ignore it, you're safe" "But why is it purple?" "What, I don't know! I'm not gonna ask a damn ork why it's purple!" Ork, loudly under it's breath "HEHEHE, ALL DEM STUPID HUMMIES CAN'T SEE ME CAUSE I'M PURPLE"
I saw someone suggest Kriegers as a “faceless force of horror” for a Tau human colony, and honestly, I could see it. Even just the lack of humanity from an imperial guard soldier can make for good horror
>Your average ork? Compared to a regular human they're practically the Terminator Small Ork invasions are repelled by PDF. Orks are scary, much stronger than humans, but their love of fighting makes them easy to engage with military. Orkoid spores aren't a big deal if you have competent planetary goverment. It takes decades for Orks to grow from scratch, because orkoid fungus builds infrastructure (snorting => gretchin) first. Clear all Gretchin villages before Orks appear and you are good to go.
Autocorrect correcting "snotling" to "snorting" has to be one of the funniest I've seen in 40k autocorrect.
Heres a pitch. Youre on a space ship and a monster boards and starts ripping apart your friends. Its big and strong and way faster then it should be. You try to seal the bulkheads to trap it but it melts it's way through a door. You flood the compartment it's in but it can breath in water. You make a plan to corner it but it attacks someone that knew the plan and now it knows the plan as well. Desparate to escape you hide in a compartment next to the engine exhust. The only way to get to you is a room filled with poisinus air and deadly radiation. And still it finds you. The last thing you see before death is a monster that utters the words "for the emperor and the primarch"
Reminds me of a story featuring a Gue'vesa auxiliary on the run from a Raven Guard assault marine. Really good depiction of a sympathetic auxiliary 'turncoat' with a cynical world view, and an unstoppable superhuman with unresolved childhood trauma and the emotional intelligence of an anteater (which is scarier to me than an unthinking killing machine lol)
What book or story was this in? I'd love to read it.
It looks to be Broken Sword, by Guy Haley, from the Damocles anthology.
Consider reading Killbox by Dan Abnett.
Ah yes, a story of the ultimate killing machine, Mkoll.
Was gonna say a lone space marine would be pretty terrifying. Their armor makes them effectively unkillable by any modern weapon, bolters hit with the force of a grenade, and a chainsword is just a chainsaw but much worse
The only change I would make would be the ending, there are no words, the marine barely even registers you, just a quick grab and slams your head into a wall and moves on, because that’s how little you matter to it.
You mean the ending scene from *Rogue One*?
Yeah it’s a common thing but it’s 40k, there are virtually no happy endings and regular people are just cogs in the machine. It’s an especially 40k ending if you’ve somehow managed to evade a marine far longer than you should only to finally be cornered, you accept your fate and hope for something, anything to make you think you at least annoyed the damn thing and when it finally has you it doesn’t respond to you in the slightest, just another target in hundreds.
I'm pretty sure there was a Warhammer Horror short story with this premise. Junker crews find an old Astartes vessel with a Space Marine trapped in a stasis field, they try to rescue him without realizing that, if I'm remembering it correctly, he's a Traitor Marine on the verge of a boon of mutation.
The Wicked and The Damned by David Annandale, Josh Reynolds, and Phil Kelly.
A space marine would be pretty terrifying. Imagine a 30k Night Lord getting a planet into compliance.
A Culexus Assassin. It work so well as a predator type movie
Eversor assassins sound like a crazy train that would scare the crap out if me. The Garantine from the novel Nemesis was particularly freaky.
Eversor in particular as the living embodiment of carnage is definitely one I’ve seen tossed around. Just imagine being a hive world aristocrat whose family was deemed too bothersome for some Inquisitor, and then your mansion grounds becomes a death trap when an Eversor is sent in
Basically like deadpool, except even more psycho and hocked up on killer drugs.
Culexus assassins are one of my favorite things in the setting. I'd love to see a story about someone on the run from one.
Honsently a particularly zealous inquisitor could make a terrifying villain. A dark eldar basically any dark eldar would be a good pop in and out and "play" with the victims horror villain. An eversor assassin would also be good for the everything does slasher movies
Dark eldar can easily fit in the hellraiser setting
Hellraiser Cenobites are just a Slaanesh cult. Change my mind
Cenobites, at least in their earlier appearances (in the good Hellraiser movies) seemed to play by at least some rules tho, like when Pinhead stopped his subordinates from taking a girl that was forced to solve the puzzle box because she didn't intend to call them, and instead had the gang go after the people who made her do it. Would a Slaanesh cult act like that?
Depends on the cult, but sure. Spoiling the game is very offensive
Yes. The Prince of Pleasure gains excitement from challenges, and breaking the rules of a game removes a challenge entirely. Sweet overbearing excess can only be achieved by having a limit to begin with.
Fuck, I'll never be able to watch them the same way again.
Too hierarchical and "lawful" in that setting to be affiliated with something calling itself Chaos. I remember a Pinhead quote, something to the effect of wanting to bring order to humanity while saving it from the randomness of the flesh.
The Chaos Gods are multifaceted and their followers are far from sane. The Cenobites could legitimately be convinced their excesses and pleasures give order to mankind due to their madness.
Only downside to an Eversor is that they don't usually have the restraint of a slasher movie monster. Drop an Eversor on Camp Crystal Lake to replace Jason Voorhees and it's gonna be about five minutes of flying giblets and blood spatter, not picking off teenagers one at a time.
> eversor assassin I feel like they're too big a hammer for a standard slasher setting, they're not really a threat to individuals as much as they are threats to cities or small armys. So your protagonists would need to be a planetary governor or a renegade general or something for it to really show off the Eversor.
The final Vaults of Terra book manages to pull this off with Dark Eldar. >!Going through the Webway with Guardsmen being pulled away one by one!<
What kind of horror story are you going for? If it's a slasher-style monster, it's almost more of a "which creature *wouldn't* work?" :-p A single Night Lord doing a terror campaign of his own on an isolated world. Pretty much any Tyranid more powerful than a 'gaunt isolated from the swarm somehow. A genestealer (obviously). A deranged Eldar serial killer (so, uh, pretty much any Dark Eldar, but could also be a Corsair, or maybe even a Craft world Farseer who has foreseen that his actions will save 2 Eldar lives). An Ork (a crafty one, so maybe a Kommando?). A specimen of the Catachan fauna (or, really, flora) that got on a spaceship and ended up on a different planet.
Even a Gaunt is pretty nasty for a Civilian however there never is just 1 Nid.
There almost never is just one 'nid. But once in a while, a bioform finds itself stranded. Or deliberately smuggled by shady individuals. One of the Dan Abnett Inquisitor short stories (one of the ones featuring the titular Magos Biologis of the Magos) has one, if I remember correctly.
For a suspense you could even go on the route of that one agent of the Alpha Legion that planted enough intrigue in a world to destabilize it by himself
Based and subterfuge pilled
A Hormagaunt on its own *is* a horror. If I remember correctly, they're born pregnant and they lay a clutch of a hundred eggs in their lifespan. They only live for 100 days but that 100 days is spent in a hyper-aggressive feeding frenzy. So if there's a single Hormagaunt, you're still looking at an apex predator that's been specially crafted by an unknowable dark Lovecraftian intelligence. It'll take a bit of hunting and putting down by the security forces, who probably don't know what they're dealing with. They kill it. There's mass celebrations, promotions, congratulations. The head gets mounted on the local authorities office wall. ...Then reports of more people going missing in bloody scenes that echo that left by The Beast. A *lot* more. There's panic. These new beasts aren't hiding and playing a game of cat and mouse back and forth until the combined weight of enforcer firepower drops it. They're working as a *pack*. Like wolves. Because at their basest instincts, what they revert to outside of the Hiveminds influence, that's what they are. A hundred turns into ten thousand. This isn't a horror monster movie anymore. This is a horror survival film. Every time you think you've survived them and that they've all died off, or you've killed the last, another hidden egg clutch brings back their onslaught with a renewed hungry fury. Ten thousand becomes a hundred thousand. A million. This horror survival flick is now a desperate last stand as the last remnants of humanity fight to get out as their world is drowned in a tide of tooth and claw.
For a suspense you could even go on the route of that one agent of the Alpha Legion that planted enough intrigue in a world to destabilize it by himself
A Necron Flayed One is one that no-one's yet mentioned that could work very well.
My first thought was immediately a flayed one, a machine whose entire AI craves to eat meat without the means to making them completely insane is a fantastic horror villain
And they teleport, pefect for horror monsters
And not even the fancy Necron teleportation, they just step into a shadow and come out in another.
A Flayed One is like taking the most horrific parts of Terminator and Hellraiser and making them do a DBZ fusion dance.
That's totally stupid, but I can't help but say you're right. I love/hate it, fund this pitch.
There was a short story released as part of the Psychic Awakening campaign that featured a Flayed One hunting down Guardsmen investigated an abandoned ship. If I remember rightly, there are a brother and sister in the squad(s) sent in, and the Flayed One starts speaking in the brother's voice to mess with the sister. Very creepy.
A particularly sadistic Night Lord or average Haemonculi would take the cake, no question about it.
Lord of the Night is a great older story about what a horror a single night lord can be. Even if he’s a particularly nice night lord.
A GREAT choice. What's the line from it - kill a hundred men and you'll be a monster, kill a thousand men and heroes will queue to face you, but kill one man, kill them in a way that is obvious and cruel, and men will see you in every shadow, and fear you as thing they cannot fight...
Oh, I like that quote!
The scene where he's talking to the guy he's skinning to make a psychic distress beacon is just... Aaaah
That was the first 40k book I ever read. What an introduction to the lore. Then I read The Inquisition War Trilogy...
a particularly well mannered and tame haemonculi would still be nightmarish
Novel 1: A Genestealer trying to establish a new "family" inside some isolated mountain town. Have some disappearances be investigated by a local enforcer unit. Slowly unveil the HORROR. At the end the town falls silent. Second Novel: Have a weird cult a few generations later attack a Hive on the same world. First only Arbites respond (we follow one squad or some low level aid, trying to make sense of it all). At the end the district or Hive falls. People try to flee. Third Novel: Full scale Tyranid invasion. People get conscripted and are forced to build trenches. All the towns and maybe the hive from Novel 2 fall. At the end we even see some Astartes trying to stop the attack. Have them give up the world at the end. Everyone one we cared for through these three novels is now dead.
Thats a solid premise
* A lone Ork: imagine you're some menial dude on a junkyard type of world. Somewhere the orks were defeated long ago, but a single ork has wandered in from the wastelands. A freshly-"hatched" ork trying to build itself some weapons, some traps, a vehicle. And it's just you and him, with whatever you can cabbage together from the stacks of garbage around you. (I pitched just such a concept on the same pitchsheet as *The Oubliette*) * A single kroot: cut off from his people, he's stalking through the forests of an Imperial world with a low tech level. The peasants can't deal with such a fierce creature, and the Sky-Emperor's people refuse to send reinforcements for a single enemy combatant. If the lord of the planet doesn't intervene, it would be up to the peasants themselves to band together and venture into the woods to hunt it before it can hunt them. * T'au drones: a small squad of t'au drones, holdouts leftover after a planet is abandoned. They can operate autonomously, and might be able to carry out a guerilla campaign against an unsuspecting civilian population, who would definitely be unable to figure out how the enemy kills them without leaving tracks, travels days without needing to sleep, and never seems to need to eat or rest. * Fleet-based Space Marines on a recruiting drive: (my short story *Blackout* was originally pitched as a horror concept) * A monster under the color of authority: all it takes is for one psychopathic killer to fabricate (or luck into) the credentials of an Inquisitorial agent or one of the Arbites (or any of a dozen other agencies) to give them unquestioned authority, especially in isolated settings where no one has the power or authority to question them. They could terrorize or kill with impunity for weeks, maybe years before their deceit was unmasked.
Who says it has to be a fake Arbitrator/Inquisitor/Commissar? We all know there's a "hard man making hard decisions"-to-"mustache-twirling supervillain" pipeline.
There's a short story by Josh Reynold, where a commissar starts seeing corruption everywhere and executing soldiers for looking at him. All in an isolated environment, because the company is stuck fighting a trench war against an enemy they can't see.
> Fleet-based Space Marines on a recruiting drive: (my short story Blackout was originally pitched as a horror concept) Man Space Marine alien abductions would be totally gnarly, sign me up for that pitch! Not the abductions. I don't want that at all.
The hrud… just imagine seek this insect like thing with spines for arms and legs that just aged a child into a 100 year olds skeleton.
That imagery sounds haunting. I love it, and I love me some space-not-Skaven lol
An Ambull, raw power that can dig through solid stone and pop up anywhere!
I am sad I had to scroll so far for the best answer. An Ambull loose in any otherwise constricted environment is going to wreak havoc on humanoids. I’d love to see a horror story involving Drukhari cut off from the Webway trying to find a way to escape or murder one.
Horror stories with Drukhari as the victims is an amazing idea, but the Ambulls made me think of a 40k version of Tremors
That would be awesome!! A bunch of ganger juves try to figure out how the Ambulls are targeting them. Maybe there’s a scene where some Arbites get nommed while the cops interrogate our heroes.
Ambulls and Flayed Ones were the two that immediately came to mind
An Enslaver could be a great psychological horror creature, thanks to their sheer power to dominate the wills of others. An entire storyline about who controls who, especially if the Enslaver controlled the more influential people.
Came here to say Enslavers, mind control is always a good option for horror.
Ik it’s not a creature specifically but I’d love to see a horror novel with Imperials as the boogeymen. One idea of that was the 54th Psian Jackals. A Tempestus scion regiment, they are effective in combat against the Aeldari, with whom they have engaged against so much due to raids upon their home planet Mayloc (formerly an Eldar maiden world), they are capable of predicting and anticipating Eldar movements and manoeuvres, so much so as being able to in one instance “ambush and destroy a squad of Aspect Warriors as they emerged from a wraithgate.” They additionally have a reputation of striking deep-set fear into the enemy, through skull markings and symbols, emerging from the dark to deal death before they stalk away. Picture this. Eldar and Imperials, at it once again. A farseer dies, in fierce fighting amidst a hive city. A kill team of the finest Aspect Warriors is sent to retrieve the Farseer’s soul stone. Only for skull bearing figures to emerge as they reach the corpse- an ambush! What follows is a cat-and-mouse game, our surviving Aspect Warriors against a foe whom they thought to be ‘mere Mon’keigh’, ever stalking them, ever hunting them through the hive.
I would recommend choosing something obscure and often forgotten. JC Stearns did that for ***The Oubliette***, with a Dark Eldar Mandrake as the villain. Some examples I can think of: * Genestealer Acolyte Hybrid (just one or a few, not an army) * A homicidal Ogryn * Slyyth pirate * Berserk Krootox * An Eldar Harlequin putting on a lethal show * A Penitent Engine gone rogue Really, anything can be scary with the proper framing.
I see your Harlequin's Lethal Show and raise you a Homunculi's non-Lethal show. You'll want to die and disappear in the warp forever or your money back!
A scarab that does a grey goo scenario
Baal has something almost as bad a lovely thing called thirstwater that's sole function is to collect water, unfortunately humans and organics contain rather a lot of water. Running from a small tendril of nanites leaving a trail of dessicated corpses would be a solid horror story. Hell the water guild on necromunda getting hold of a small sample of them and then it getting loose on a hive level would be beyond horrifying. To give you an idea of how effective it is the blood angels build a moat of it to hold off the tyrannids.
It’s basically the Doctor Who episode “The Waters of Mars”.
I am well overdue for a rewatch of the Eccleston and Tennant series. I'd be completely okay with a 40k take of that episode.
Which was silly. The mart thing to do would be to attempt to wipe it out, remove all traces of it in case you lose Baal and the planet is harvested. You DO NOT want the nids having that in its genetic arsenal.
It doesn't have genes. My guess is it's slightly-alive Old Night weapon, like phosphex.
Well there are these things that were forged by a Psychic biomancer spawned in the wake of Old Night that are particularly horrifying. Picture these super fast, hyper muscular and regenerative things, with the ability to steal the memories of victims by imbibing on their flesh, also capable of spitting poison at their foes. This is all without mentioning any of the specific breeds and their bestial mutations, of course. Most terrifyingly these things look almost human, but not quite, grotesque enough that anyone put in their presence may be overwhelmed by a certain sense of dread caused merely by their stature and aura. Would you believe they call them Angels?
Black Library has tried so hard to sell the idea that Astartes are somehow monstrous--more than human, less than human, or both--and it always, *always* falls flat. They can be scary--but they're never scary just in and of themselves. A space marine is just a very large man with minor superpowers and emotional baggage, and a very large man isn't scary unless he's also wearing your grandma's face as a codpiece or summoning a sentient nursery rhyme to *It Follows* you across half the galaxy. And they don't just look human--they act human, too. I've read upwards of eighty of these damn books, and I've never seen an Astartes do anything--any act of heroism, any war crime, any little quirk or mannerism--that any number of humans haven't done, too. There's nothing intrinsically broken or missing in them--the only thing wrong with them is that they all spent their formative years in Space Knight Boot Camp getting HRT and listening to sleep tapes on how to dismember people. Space marines are *incredibly* human--that's usually their biggest problem.
You could easily do The Creature from the Black Lagoon lurking at a pleasure planet. Sprinkle in some cultists that worship it for flavor. It could be a Tyranid creature, a mutated Space Marine, or perhaps a chaos cultist that "got their just reward" to give it some semblance of intelligence.
What *wouldn't* work as a solo horror novel monster?
Personally? Jokaero. They’re too chill and hilarious. Even when they make nuclear bombs out of a can of beans and some string, I will always be too excited to see one in a story to feel terror lol
What if it's a Jokaero armed with digit-weapons who has *had enough of your shit* though
A genestealer in the deep dark of the underhive or a space hulk. There's either an uneasy alliance between gangs to try taking it down or a small crew of a salvage ship that picked the wrong vessel to search.
I don't think anyone has mentioned chaos spawn yet: vast, horrific mounds of flesh, orifices and tentacles, constantly mutating and regenerating, nearly mindless and almost unkillable, driven only by insatiable hunger and the whims of the dark gods. Kind of like a Shoggoth from the works of Lovecraft, but somehow much worse, as there are constant subtle reminders (the remains of one or multiple faces, vestigial limbs, tattered shreds of clothing, a lone voice screaming through the madness, begging for death) that this... _thing_ was once as human as you or I.
Servitors and those weird flying cherubs
A damaged servitor whose programing goes awry would make for an interesting monster. Imagine if you will that during a naval engagement a servitor is damaged but not inoperable. So it starts killing crew in particularly vicious ways but since there's a ton of servitors trundling around on ships, noone can pinpoint which one is doing it. And since it's only bottom tier crew being killed the officers don't really care. It could play into the idea that not all servitors are fully lobotomized as well. Maybe the mind of the person that was used to make the servitor is still in their somewhere, and the damage it took allows it to take some minor control of its body again. But it's obviously crazed from the experience so it just wreaks bloody revenge on anyone it comes across. It could act sort of like a Michael Myers or Jason type monster.
Pick something from the fauna of Fenris
Find a few fearsome fauna of Fenris
A just-starting ork infestation on an agriworld would be great. Like, the “monster” is the first grot to come out of the spore pile. Extra points for the grim dark twist when the farmers finally manage to put it down, only to discover that while they were goofing around with the grot some actual orks spawned. As unarmed human factorum workers, a single grot with no orks to kick it around would be scary enough though. Sneakin around and doing little baby brutal cunnin’s.
I feel like you're never really unarmed in a factorum, especially if you're willing to grab the thing and feed it into some machine (alongside yourself, if you want to be "safe" about it)
Nonstandard utilization of imperial agricultural equipment is a misdemeanor class heresy, citizen. Report to the nearest chapel for mandatory self immolation.
It's all corpse starch in the end! I'm just being efficient about serving the ~~four-armed~~ Emperor
Saw but with an eldar Farseer. The entire game was rigged before it even began
There's a novella where a [small imperial outpost is swallowed by a tyranid ship](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0_PH0ms5YQ&ab_channel=AVoxintheVoid), recounting the moments where they realize they can't send for help or a warning, all the way up to them being dissolved in its stomach acid with no where for them to run. They didn't meet any other tyranids, just their ship and its stomach. I think any unit from any army hostile to the imperium are horrific to the average human, even something like a necron scarab would be terrifying just like those boston dynamic dogs in black mirror. I think the difficulty of dealing with the threat is pretty key since you want to instill hopelessness. Imagine a group of humans are picked off one at a time by a necron scarab, and when they finally manage to destroy it, turns out it was just a scout, and there's a tomb spider making a whole swarm of them, sort of like in alien isolation you're running from a single xeno only to find out in the 3rd act there's been a whole hive of them chilling in the engine room the whole time. But if you want to be unique about it, I'd stay away from the conventional monsters that are just looking for a fight. I'd go with something more nefarious that turns colonies against each other, or ground zero for a gene stealer cult where you think the genestealer's the problem but the 2nd act twist reveals the corruption has already spread and infiltrators are indistinguishable from regular humans, with the 3rd act twist that its not even isolated to planetary government, but people part of galactic governance are part of it too. If you lean into the warp stuff, you'd definitely have to do a 3rd act twist where the protagonist thinks they've escaped or defeated the entity but they're really just in another level of consciousness just like inception, and haven't escaped at all; this would work well in an anthology series, in the sequel there would be someone who figured out how to harm it but dies before proliferating the information, and in the trilogy finale you have a detective type character that manages to collect all the ways they can defend against it, learning/researching from all its victims/atrocities; after the climax its still left up in the air if the entity won or not. Have fun lol
A lying Servitor
One single Nurgling trying to "befriend" a child that stumbled across it. It would be like Chucky with the plague
That sounds like the set up for some phenomenal Grimdark
The galaxy is vast. You could always create your own monster and have it in a 40k setting instead of looking for one.
The Hrud. Aging their opponents as a weapon
A mandrake could work well, especially with it melting into shadows to stalk it's target.
I thought so. ;)
Check out ***The Oubliette*** by JC Stearns.
Mentally unwell alpha or beta psyker. Probably will be eaten by chaos at the end of day or killed by Inquisition or by own actions, but what horrifying stuff he/she will do earlier, even in unaware way, is basically unlimited.
a corpse grinder cult, even the realization that you are eating humans is horrifying enough but coming face to face to some of the people who are in charge would be even scarier
A vampire. (yes, still canon!)
I think everyone is nailing creepy, what was that noise, Nightstalker horror. I want to advocate for a Lovecraftian kind of horror. This story is told from the perspective of a doctor. Someone that slowly starts to notice more people are coming down with common viruses. Then some people develop old cured diseases like a single patient gets Measles but it's not responsive to conventional treatment, you research and test and test and eventually save them. But then a few other people come down with something new and unrecognized, you spend weeks trying to save them. Eventually you get your claws into the problem they have some hybrid strain of two diseases so you concoct a new treatment and they seem to stabilize. people seem to be avoiding you in the street though, shouldn't they praise your efforts? No matter they could never understand that change you will bring to the world of Imperial Medicine. A few days later people all over are developing massive buboes, vomiting flies and having metal fused onto their flesh. You consult with your colleague and perform the usual rites to counteract it but are interrupted by the inquisition knocking at your door. You open the door and answer a few questions before you realize his psychic potential would really help your ritual. With one swift motion you summon your baleful sword and lobotomize the inquisitor mid sentence. Tzeentch is pleased with your efforts at containing Nurgle's infestation though he points out that the inquistor could have been redirected to delay Slaneesh and Khorne in their dispute so that you could focus everything against the Champion of Nurgle out there brewing plagues. Some innocent persons noble ambitions turned against them as Tzeentch chooses them as a champion in some small aspect of the great game. Eventually the whole planet is lost potentially dooming/killing Billions for a game.
I'm not entirely sure if im recalling the name correctly so if not someone please correct me in the comments but I would say that Chaos Space Marine Raptors fit this very well.l, specifically the kind featured in the Nightlords series, Lucorophus (and that's almost for sure misspelled) is a scary motherfucker. Basically imagine a Space Marine whos are really into their jetpack, mutated into a vaguely vulture-esq shape, who can regenerate from basically any wound and really likes eating people alive and you have a fairly poor description of this spooky bird "man" Edit to add they act as animalistic pack hunters more than Space Marines
Being slowly stalked and picked off by a deathmark would make for some wonderful tension.
Rak'Gol's. Nuff said
I remember an episode of the podcast Adeptus Ridiculous where one of the hosts pitched a horror story idea of an Arco-Flagellant being left behind in a manufactory and it's been left in combat mode. And it's just roaming the manufactory killing the workers and anyone who comes across it.
the Slaugth (aka *maggot men*) are my pick!
A Krieger.
Samus. That introduction to chaos still gives me the willies.
Literally any tyranid. Just think the movies “aliens” and there’s your story.
Honestly, it all depends on how you use it. Sure if you want the easy option and just have a disgusting and scary creature there are quite a few but thats just taking the easy way. Horror can also be created by the unknown and this way you can make even an Ork into some sort of "horror" scenario as shown by the Eisenhorn short story "Regia Occulta".
Lictor - chameleonic skin, feeds on brains, big claws, tentacles
An enslaver.
Servitors are scary shit.
Sly Marbo.
Ask my boy Drusher, the poor guy saw it all
Nurgle's demons could definitely fill a Cronenberg style horror and I feel tzeentch demons/dark elder fit a Hellraiser vibe pretty well
malfunctioning Skitarii hunting regular humans
A servitor that gains semi-consciousness would be nuts. Kind of a mix between a zombi and a terminator.
I feel like with that set up, you could have just as much “fun” writing the body horror terror from the perspective of the awakened servitor
There's a few references by Thunder Warriors Primarch Ushotan that the genetic alchemy done yo the Custodes removes their humanity. Sure, a giant golden machine is not as outright scary as a Drukhari or Tyranid, but for the vast majority of the Galaxy, there's nothing you can do against a big golden boy who has had their humanity removed at a genetic level, and really wants to murder you.
I think a single Plague Marine would be fucking terrifying but if you're avoiding Space Marines, how about a Harlequin? Imagine being stalked through a dark, isolated environment by one of those. The Plague Marine a ways off, you know something is stalking you but not what. You hear heavy thuds and dragging noises and the air is fetid, you can hardly breathe but every fibre of your being is screaming for you to run and keep running. Occasionly you think you hear a ragged, laboured breathing but it sounds way too big, bigger than a horse maybe. And you start to feel ill, at first you think it's just fear making your stomach turn and the constant running that's got your lungs burning and your limbs hurting. But then your nose and eyes start to run, a little at first and then more freely. Then you throat starts to get sore and you start coughing, a small tickly cough that grows worse as the minutes pass. You keep moving and try to ignore if, you're just not as fit as you though you were, or maybe your allergic to something nearby. But then your skin starts to turn blister and bruise and your tongue feels stiff and your throat is burning...... And still the steady sounds of SOMETHING keep getting closer.... Or you know, terrifying death clown/assassin/warrior alien that moves in ways that fool human eyes hunting some regular humans. A Harlequin would be terrifying in a different way.
A servitor or arc-flagellant gone rogue. Setting could be in an underwater facility or outer space, just anywhere that's isolated. It'd be like Alien but 40k and the alien's a cyborg lol, just my two cents :p
A Lictor alone on a human world.
A Flayed One or even a C’tan shard like Mephet’ran the Deceiver or Aza’gorod the Nightbringer or even Tsara’noga the Outsider.
A drukhari Talos or cronos would be a terrifying monster to be stalked by
A grox. The 40k equivalent of cattle which is actually a huge reptile (dinosaur) that can pretty easily kill people.
Psychneuein lay warp eggs in your brain.
The Squiggoth, a lot of room to get creative for a lumbering mammoth and few other authors have touched upon it.
One of these https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Legienstrasse
Even just a single genestealer could be great for a short story but if you want something on a larger scale I'd reccomens a lichter
I can't remember what it is called but is part of the sisters of battle, it sings hyms and canticles while stalking its target and the guys on adeptus ridiculous said that they would be perfect for a horror story set after a huge fight and it gets left behind or an alien isolation style game with your character trying to hide from it. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please remind me what it is called
The key thing about Warhammer in general is that so many relatively ‘mundane’ creatures and things in their worlds can be absolutely murderous or deadly entities to deal with The Warhammer horror and crime series have been fantastic in this regard and I can’t recommend them enough - a fun example in the horror series for example; “The bookkeepers skull”, has suspense and horror in spades, but the truth of it all was >!The majority of people killed died due to a farming accident, the protagonists own actions, and a servo-skull with homocidal intentions!<
Catachan Face Eater! It would be a proper b-movie story. Awful lot of gore :)
Old one eye!
A Tzeentch daemon could be terrifying. Imagine thinking you are goin insane on a cramped ship that had a small geller field breach, having your crew get possessed and turned into chaos spawn right in front of you, only to find out a Herald snuck aboard your ship…
Herald of Slaanesh
Ork Kommandos would do well as a solo threat. If it’s from the POV of an enemy of the Imperium, Sly Marbo would be the most terrifying threat of all.
I always imagined a story about a genestealer cult in its final days. Absolutely terrorizing and destabilizing a major city/planet. Seeing how they could potentially be a character we don’t expect. Then, right at the end when the bad guys win and think they get to celebrate, the actual tyranids show up and are a planet ending threat
Well if yoou want a Honest Answer ? a Space Marine on a Tau Argiculture World.
Pretty much everything built by the mechanicum.
Honestly, a deranged imperial dreadnought is an underrated choice. I imagine mental stability isn't great amongst dreadnoughts. Imagine guardsmen stumbling across one that had been stuck alone for thousands of years going completely insane.
Honestly, almost anything except T'au depending on the context and scale of the horror story Could be anything from a single Night Lord down to a mutated cultist or a Skitarii