Overview

Aberration Threats

AX.GHW.13.02

Aberrations are entities that do not belong to this reality layer. They are not supernatural in the way that fae, demons, or undead are supernatural; those categories evolved within or adjacent to the same metaphysical substrate as human existence. Aberrations come from somewhere else entirely: dimensional spaces, void-adjacent realities, the spaces between the Liminal and whatever lies beneath it, or configurations of existence so foreign that human cognition cannot fully process them.

The defining quality of an Aberration is wrongness. Not malevolence, some Aberrations have no apparent goals that could be called malevolent. What they share is a relationship to physical and cognitive reality that is incompatible with human presence. Standing near an Aberration produces symptoms that resemble nothing else in the threat compendium: sensory distortion, false memories, involuntary pattern-seeking, and in severe cases a persistent alteration of the affected person's relationship to reality.

Why Aberrations Are Different

Every other threat category can, in principle, be addressed through understanding. Fae have motivations that can be engaged. Demons have hierarchies and contracts. Undead have unfinished business. Cryptids have territorial behaviors. Even the most alien-seeming threat in the other categories operates on recognizable logic once the hidden-world framework is applied.

Aberrations resist this. Their motivations (when they have them) are not mappable to human frameworks of want, need, or purpose. Their behavior does not follow consistent enough patterns for tactical exploitation. Their presence in this reality may be incidental, they drifted here through a boundary weakness, or purposeful in some sense that no existing tradition can fully articulate.

This has two practical implications:

1. Standard tradition countermeasures have limited effectiveness. Cold iron, blessed weapons, salt; these work on entities whose nature is adjacent to the human reality layer. Aberrations are not adjacent to it. Effectiveness varies widely (see individual entries), and high-threshold Mediumship or Force tradition abilities are generally more effective than material bane weapons.

2. Sanity cost is real. Sustained exposure to Aberrations produces a condition the hidden world calls Veil Fracture, a progressive destabilization of the individual's perceptual baseline. Mechanically: every scene in which a character takes Aberration ability damage or is directly affected by an Aberration presence effect, they take 1 persistent Wit damage that recovers only through a Long Rest in a completely normal environment. Characters reduced to 0 Wit by Veil Fracture are effectively non-functional until recovered.

The Boundary Problem

Aberrations are in this reality because something let them in. Hunting an Aberration without addressing the boundary weakness that allowed its entry is incomplete, the Aberration may be banished, but something else will come through the same gap. The full solution always involves both destroying or banishing the specific Aberration and closing the entry point.

Entry points are called Breaches. Breaches manifest as locations where reality is thin, spaces where Aberrations enter, where physics behaves inconsistently, where time seems discontinuous. Breaches range in size from doorway-scale (small Breaches admitting Minion-class entities) to building-scale (large Breaches admitting Champion or Legendary-class entities). Closing a Breach requires a Mediumship practitioner (Wit + Mediumship vs Threshold equal to the Breach's scale: 1–5) and takes 10 minutes minimum. An open Breach continues producing Aberrations and Veil Fracture effects in the area until closed.

Tradition Interactions

• Mediumship: Most effective against Aberrations. The Liminal layer is not the same as the void-spaces Aberrations come from, but it sits closer to those spaces than ordinary reality does. Mediumship practitioners can sense Aberrations at Near range without rolls, detect Breaches at Far range, and attack Aberrations using Mediumship tradition abilities with full effectiveness.
• Sacred Fire / Hollow Pact: Force traditions affect Aberrations at reduced effectiveness, attacks deal normal damage but healing, suppression, and banishment abilities are at -1D (these abilities work by invoking metaphysical authority within the human reality layer; Aberrations are not subject to that authority in the same way).
• Glamourist: Generally ineffective. Glamourist tradition operates on perception and Liminal resonance, Aberrations interact with perception in ways that make Glamourist abilities unpredictable against them. The GM may rule specific Glamourist applications work (True Sight reading an Aberration's true nature) but combat applications are not reliable.
• Pact-Shifting: No special effect. A shifted Skinchanger fights an Aberration the same way they'd fight anything else.
• Blessed/Silver/Cold Iron: No special effect on most Aberrations. See individual entries for exceptions.

Variant Rules

Graduated Veil Fracture Recovery

Standard: Persistent Wit damage from Veil Fracture recovers on a Long Rest in a normal environment.

Slow Recovery: Veil Fracture recovers at 1 point per Long Rest, not all at once. This creates a lasting consequence for Aberration exposure that compounds across multiple encounters. A character who has fought three Aberration encounters in quick succession may carry significant Wit impairment through the rest of the arc.

Trauma Track: Veil Fracture above 3 persistent Wit damage creates a lasting behavioral consequence (specific phobia, compulsive pattern, intrusive perception) that does not clear with rest and requires active treatment (a Mediumship practitioner's Threshold 3 therapeutic intervention, representing days of work). This variant is appropriate for horror-forward campaigns.

Breach Geography

Optional: The GM maps Breaches as persistent locations rather than encounter-specific phenomena. A Breach that is closed by one party may reopen weeks later if the underlying dimensional pressure has not been resolved. Characters may discover that an area has a deep Breach history, multiple closures over decades, each requiring more effort than the last as the boundary weakens. This variant supports long-form campaign structure with Aberrations as an ongoing environmental threat rather than individual encounters.

The Unwritten as Environmental Pressure

Optional Alternative: Rather than deploying The Unwritten as a single climactic encounter, the GM uses it as environmental pressure throughout an arc, signs of its approach, partial manifestations that produce localized effects, the race to find and close the entry Breach before full manifestation. In this variant, the characters never face The Unwritten directly; they solve the problem by closing the Breach before it fully arrives. This works well for groups that prefer investigation-resolution over combat-resolution at scale.

Plot Hooks

The Basement: A residential building in the city has been producing complaints for two months, unexplained sounds, objects moving, residents leaving without notice. Maintenance found something in the basement that nobody can describe clearly. Investigation reveals a stationary Reality Fracture in the utility sub-level, open for approximately six weeks, currently at Threshold 3 closure difficulty and growing. The building has 47 occupied units. The Veil management challenge: a building full of witnesses who have all been experiencing Ambient Veil Fracture symptoms. The practical challenge: closure requires getting a Mediumship practitioner into Close range of the Fracture while it is actively damaging them.

The Consultant: A research team at the Aldersham Institute has been using experimental equipment to study "dimensional boundary phenomena"; they thought they were doing theoretical physics. Three weeks ago something started following one of the researchers home. The researcher has been sleeping in their office. The Stalker has been in the building for two weeks, feeding on the researcher's isolation. The complication: the researcher's equipment is still running, and it is generating a low-level Breach signal that the Stalker is tethered to. Destroying the equipment closes the Breach but the researcher has three weeks of research they're not willing to lose.

The New Neighbor: A Mind Feeder has been in a medium-density residential neighborhood for four months. Twelve residents are in medically unexplained catatonic states. The Feeder has been careful, spreading its feeding across a large enough population that no individual has been drained to the point of complete coma, maintaining its social integration as a resident. The characters arrive after the twelfth catatonia case draws a Grimoire Compact field researcher's attention. The Feeder is now aware that investigators are present and has begun planning its departure, but it will feed one more time before leaving. The characters have one scene to identify which of thirty-plus residents the Feeder is.

The Countdown: A classified BUA file has been accessed by an unknown party. The file contained documented evidence of a deep Breach in an industrial area outside the city, a Breach that has been partially sealed for forty years, held in check by a standing Mediumship ward that requires renewal every five years. The renewal was due three months ago. The BUA team assigned to renewal disappeared. The characters are either hired to find the team or find the file independently. When they reach the site, the ward is failing and the Breach is expanding. The Hollow has begun to emerge. They have approximately forty minutes before it reaches the surrounding civilian area.

Breach Closure Quick Reference

Breach Type	Threshold	Time Required	Practitioners Needed	Notes
Minor (Spawns only)	1–2	10 minutes	1 Mediumship	Spawns dissolve on closure
Standard	3	10 minutes	1 Mediumship (+1D assist available)	Most common field scenario
Major (Spawns + active entity)	4	10 minutes	1–2 Mediumship	Active entity may contest
Voidwalker-level	4	Full Round (in combat)	1–2 Mediumship	Voidwalker contests actively
The Hollow	4	Full Round (in combat)	1–2 Mediumship	Structural damage accelerates
The Unwritten entry	5	1 full minute (in combat)	2–3 Mediumship	Unwritten actively contests; Void Cascade during closure

Force tradition attacks (Sacred Fire, Hollow Pact) can suppress active entities for 1 round per hit, buying closure time. Suppressed entities cannot contest Breach Closure for that round.