Welcome to day 4 of my Halloween monster series. Today, I’m tackling the shapeshifting aliens of the film They Live, whose name in the novel was The Fascinators.
Fascinator
The aliens have a vaguely similar body structure to humans, enough that they can convincingly disguise themselves. However, they have blue skin, bulging eyes, and no lips. It is said that they adapted their bodies to look humanoid for the invasion of Earth, therefore what is shown in the movie might not be their true form or perhaps they just don’t have any and take the appearance of the dominant species of every planet they take over. This alien species does not have a specific name; in the end credits of the movie two actors playing the aliens are referred to as “Male Ghoul” and “Female Ghoul”, while in the source material short story Eight O’Clock in the Morning and its comic book adaptation Nada (which the movie was based on) they are named the “Fascinators”.
Fandom
Fascinator
Medium monstrosity, unaligned
Armor Class 11
Hit Points 9 (2d8)
Speed 30 ft.
| Str 13 (+1) | Dex 12 (+1) | Con 10 (+0) | Int 16 (+3) | Wis 12 (+1) | Cha 16 (+3) |
Skills Deception +7
Senses Pereception 11
Languages Common
Challenge Rating 1/4 (50 XP)
Innate Spellcasting. The fascinator’s innate spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 13, +5 to hit with spell attacks). It can cast the following spells:
At will: disguise self
1/day: dimension door
Actions
Handgun. Ranged Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, range 50/150 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (2d6 + 1) piercing damage.
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Again, this is another example of a Creature whcih is woefully under-powered in its CR Rating. Using correct EHD Calculation, these are actually CR4, becuase they have 10 EHD of D8 Hit Dice and abilities. Technically, they don’t have magical abilities, but Psionic [ ie., Manifested power of Mind.abilities ].
Regards,
Christopher Simpson.
I think you accidentally gave this creature the senses of the Graboid.
Nice catch! Thank you, we’ve updated that with a correction.