The crayon glides along the sheet of paper before the child, scraping away with a rough noise as it does so. Movement after movement, a picture takes shape. A figure composed of a circle for a head, a rectangle for the body, and some lines for the limbs. The crayon dots down and scribbles a bit more, giving the creation eyes. A swift, curving line forms the mouth. The child looks at it and smiles, holding it up to the light to better survey it. With joy, and not a small amount of pride, they put the picture back down, grab a different crayon, and get to work drawing a similar but slightly larger figure.
These actions continue in a pattern akin to this for some time. There's helpful labels on each of the drawings as well. The smallest one, drawn in grey, is clearly meant to be the child. The two larger ones, one green, one orange, are likely their parents. The four legged brown one, made of ovals, is a dog of some sort. But there's something in the scene that very, very clearly doesn't belong. Something on the page, a nightmare made material. One needs only look at it to know that whatever is down on the page is a monster. The question that remains thus is why has the child drawn this? Why were they so compelled to draw a nightmare of this sort, this amalgam of features roughly placed on paper with colored wax?
But my friend, you know well the answer to that question. After all, the horror on the page? The nightmare they gazed at in order to put that down on paper? That thing they drew? My friend...
That's
you. And you are going to protect and care for this child. Even if you have to slaughter everything preventing you from doing so in the process. For you are Nightmare. You are Terror. You are a monster. And there will be
nothing that will harm this child if you have anything to say about it. Before we truly begin though...
What monster
are you exactly?
[]-Vampire
You remember the child stumbling into your mansion's basement while you slept. You were rather taken with them and were rather cross when those men broke in after them. Cross, cranky, and still quite sleepy which explains why you did what you did. In hindsight, probably not a good thing to do in front of a child... (Starts with 2 Alarm, 4 Horror, 3 Trust, and 10 Satiety. As a Human-esque monster, you find it very easy to prevent Alarm being raised and to raise Trust. You feed on blood, human blood to be exact. You can not go out in daylight without thick, protective clothing.)
[]-Werewolf
The feeling of the wind rushing through your fur. Of your claws raking into the elk's hide, through the flesh, into the vitals. Of the blood, rushing across your tongue, the meat following soon after. Of the shock as you saw the child stumble into the clearing, clearly terrified at the sight of you. Of seeing what they were running from. Of the exhiliration as you struck it down, grabbed the child, ferried them to safety. Of making them some hot cocoa in the morning as they stared at you in fear. This... Is probably the worst kind of way to introduce yourself to someone if you're being frank about it. (Starts with 2 Alarm, 4 Horror, 3 Trust, and 10 Satiety. As a Human-esque monster, you find it very easy to prevent Alarm being raised and to raise Trust. You "feed" by transforming into a wolf-like creature and running loose. You are cursed to always transform at night.)
[X]-Boogie
You crept from behind the closet door to see the woman with the knife. Barely stopped her scream as you grabbed her by the neck with your slender, shadowy arms and snapped it, the noise muffled by the strange dark mist that makes up your form, a substance composed of belief, magic, and fear. You remember seeing the child staring at you and the corpse in wide-eyed fear. You probably shouldn't have panicked and started trying to puppet the dead woman to make them think they were dreaming, that was a bad move on your part you're not going to lie. (Starts with 0 Alarm, 6 Horror, 3 Trust, and 10 Satiety. As a Shadow Creature, you find it extremely easy to prevent the spread of Alarm, however find it difficult to raise Trust or lower Horror. You feed on fear in all its forms with fear you generate being the most filling. You have the ability to appear from any shadows behind people.)
[]-Abomination
The red sigils, the flowing robes, the gleam of the knife. A cult, with a book of magics most foul and heinous. A child, in the wrong place at the right time. The attempt at sacrifice. The truth of your being, pouring out and into the world as it ripped the cultists apart. Of the child's breathless sleep as you stole away into their body, pitying the nightmare they'd just been through as you walked the body out. You should probably have realized that humans don't normally wake up covered in blood but it's been a while since you had a presence in this reality, you can forgive yourself for forgetting to get the body to wash itself off. (Starts with 3 Alarm, 3 Horror, 3 Trust, 10 Satiety. As an Eldritch Being, you find it unfortunately easy to raise Horror and Alarm, however, the powers at your disposal make protecting and aiding the child absurdly easy. You feed on music, both listening to it and creating it. You have a number of horrific powers to unleash upon the world in defense of your charge.)
[]-Windigo
The biting cold and the pain it brings the Food is second only to the fear brought to them by the ceaseless, screaming hunger that is your entire existence. You watch as the Small One crouches, shivering. The Food that is threatening them moves to strike them, catching a glimpse of you leaping at them as they move to do so. Their scream is swift and short as your claw grabs them by the head and pops the flesh like an overripe melon. You fall upon the carcass, the meal small but enough for now. Watch as the Small One scrambles away from you, still shivering. You pause and think before proferring a piece of your food. They are hungry as you are, yes? (Starts with 0 Alarm, 6 Horror, 3 Trust, 10 Satiety. As a Windigo, you find it extremely easy to raise Horror, but Alarm is very slow to rise. You feed on human flesh exclusively. You are completely immune to most forms of harm and actually immune to the cold.)
[]-Angel
People always look at you in a weird way whenever your angelic body comes into an area. By which you mean they tend to start screaming and never really
stop, which is frankly annoying. Being composed of a thousand perfectly geometrical shapes aligned roughly into a humanoid shape if that shape were similarly composed of nothing but eyes that exist in seven dimensions is HARDLY your fault. You're not the one who gave the apes the incorrect idea about the true nature of the angelic host. And you certainly don't know why this small child is screaming at you after you saved their life from the wolves. After all, there's a certain amount of splatter to be expected when you hit something with a sword the size of a tree! (Starts with 4 Alarm, 2 Horror, 3 Trust, 10 Satiety. As an Angel, you find it extremely easy to raise Trust and extremely easy to raise Alarm and Horror. You're not exactly hard to notice which means you're thankful for never needing to eat. Your powers are vast. So are you, meaning you're kind of slow in all honesty.)
[]-Grey
That is the last time you let a Xeno drive the fucking ship. One second you're out, drunk, collecting cows and making circles in crop fields to mess with the natives, next second Xris has crashed the pod into a primitive shelter on the side of a mountain. Worse yet, the moron got himself KILLED along with the rest of the crew! You're the only survivor, which explains why you got upset to find someone throwing a child at you. Really quite upset, honestly, which is why you pulped the ape's head. Who throws a child at a drunk, seriously? You hadn't been banking on the kid knowing advanced sonic warfare techniques though, nor on your computer injecting its map contents into their head! You're starting to really hate this planet. (Starts with 4 Alarm, 4 Horror, 3 Trust, 10 Satiety. As a Grey, you find it stupidly easy to raise Alarm but have a comparatively simple primary victory goal of fixing your ship and getting your FUCKING MAPS BACK! You can eat basically anything that's made of protein and alcohol. You're extremely advanced in tech and your lithe form belies how rawly powerful you are physically.)