Stalker from Beyond

AX.GHW.13.02.02

Type: Aberration, Standard

Power Package: Standard (6D)

Veil Risk: High, its transit creates physically impossible evidence: footprints in sealed rooms, security footage gaps, structural damage consistent with no known animal

Size: Medium (roughly human-sized, but proportions shift, limbs too long, joints wrong)
Attributes: Body 3D · Speed 3D · Wit 1D
Talents: Athletics 2D · Notice 2D · Stealth 2D
Health: 33 (20 + 3 + 10)
Defense: 2 (1 + (3+0)÷3)
Saves: Body 5D · Speed 4D · Wit 2D

Attacks

Rending Strike (Primary Action): Body + Athletics vs Defense, 5 damage; causes bleeding (target takes 1 damage at start of each of their turns until the wound is addressed, Speed action to apply pressure)
Phase Transit (Free Action, 1×/round): The Stalker moves up to Near range, passing through any non-iron solid barrier in the process. This movement does not trigger opportunity attacks.

Special Abilities

Dimensional Tracking: Once the Stalker has located a living target, it can track them across dimensional and physical barriers. It knows the general direction of its target at all times. Losing a Stalker requires either destroying it or closing the Breach it came through, evasion is temporary.
Reality Drag: The Stalker's presence warps local physics slightly. All characters within Near range experience a subtle wrongness, sounds arrive slightly delayed, peripheral vision shows things that aren't there when looked at directly. All Notice and Wit + Lore rolls within Near range of an active Stalker take -1D from the perceptual distortion.
Veil Fracture (Minor): Characters who take damage from a Stalker's Rending Strike take 1 persistent Wit damage in addition to the physical damage. This is the contact effect of a Stalker's physical touch on human cognition.
Slow Dissolution: Stalkers that are significantly damaged (below half Health) begin dissolving, their geometry becomes increasingly inconsistent, Phase Transit becomes involuntary, and they may partially phase into walls before fully dissolving. At 0 Health, they dissolve completely. They leave no physical remains.

Tactics

Stalkers hunt. They do not swarm, they do not communicate with other Aberrations, and they are not producing anything; they found a target through the Breach and are pursuing it. The target may be someone who touched the Breach site, someone who attracted attention from the other side for unknown reasons, or a completely random victim. The lack of discernible targeting logic is itself disorienting.

Stalkers do not retreat. They do not respond to threat displays. They continue approaching their target until destroyed. If the target is separated from the group, the Stalker will wait in an adjacent space (phased through a wall) until it can get the target alone.

Destruction/Banishment

Conventional weapons work but the Stalker's Phase Transit means melee engagement is difficult to maintain; it keeps repositioning. Mediumship attacks are highly effective and prevent Phase Transit (a Stalker hit by a Mediumship attack cannot use Phase Transit on its next turn). Blessed weapons deal +1 damage (minor metaphysical effect from their reality-anchoring quality). Closing the Breach from which the Stalker emerged banishes it regardless of its current distance from the Breach.

Scene Materials

Investigation: targeting, someone has been singled out; establish who and why (or accept that there may not be a why). Evidence: impossible entry points, wounds that the victim cannot explain, the target's increasing anxiety before any character interaction. Combat: the Stalker does not fight conventionally; it phases through cover, approaches its target specifically, and ignores other characters unless they physically block it.