Sean E. Britten

All There in the (Monster) Manual are stories based on creatures from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Over 2022 I released a different story fitting the theme every single week and I’ve now expanded to Dungeons & Dragons’ Monsters of the Multiverse and even the Pathfinder Bestiary. Could be fantasy, science fiction, horror, or something else entirely! Check them out on the main page of the website.

This Week’s Inspiration: Bone Devil

The aliens come with offers of peace and prosperity that sound too good to be true. Maybe they are, that’s not Paul’s job to find out. His job is simply to help the aliens relate better to humans so they can spread their message, but how to do so when everything about them inspires absolute terror?

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At least ten feet of spikes and bony exoskeleton and predatory angles towered over Paul. Clear fluid dripped down fangs as long and sharp as kitchen knives. Weakness filled his muscles or he would have tried to run. The alien extended a hand toward him, each finger ending in razor talons a handspan in length.

“Mr Paul Stenner, it is my very genuine pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the monster said.

Paul avoided the talons as he wrapped a hand around two of the alien’s fingers. Given the difference in their sizes and the alien’s unfamiliarity with the gesture, the handshake was awkwardly performed. The creature nevertheless attempted the greeting with unfailing politeness. Its grip was immensely powerful but gentle, like a gorilla cradling a kitten.

“My true name would be unpronounceable in your tongue,” the alien said, teeth gnashing. “But if it would be amenable, you may call me Absalom.”

“It’s marvellous to meet you, Absalom,” Paul said. “The president asked me personally, well, his secretary asked me personally, to meet with you today. I’ve handled public relations, crisis management, image repair, for a great many politicians and public figures of human renown. It’s an honour to be working with you and your-, people.”

Paul was an unassuming man in appearance. His hair, tinged red, was thinning on top and his face blandly handsome. Only his finely tailored suit and expensive watch denoted him as a man of some significance to those with an eye for recognising such things. Over the course of his career, Paul had prided himself on his impenetrable poker face. He’d sat across from senators and CEOs, A-list celebrities, generals, even royalty, as they’d casually confessed to the most terrible crimes and extraordinary depravities, and he’d never so much as raised an eyebrow. Murder, maimings, forgery, vast abuses of power and financial midsdeeds, pederasty, incest, zoophilia, and perversions that didn’t even have names, affairs, child abandonment, as well as other things that, if not moral failings, were bizarre beyond understanding, hobbies and fetishes and quirks too strange for the eyes of the general public. As they lingered outside the entrance to Absalom’s massive ship, baking in the desert heat, it took every inch of that professionalism to keep the innate terror off of Paul’s face.

Absalom, like all of their kind, wasn’t just enormously tall. Their body was covered in grey-white plates of natural armour that looked like bone afflicted with some sort of cancer. Besides their fangs and razor claws, spines bristled at the edges of those plates and radiated from every joint. They balanced on two flexing, digitigrade legs, as if about to spring or lunge. The resemblance their face bore to some kind of deformed human skull was inescapable. A dozen curving horns crowned the top of their head and their eyes, deeply buried in dark hollows, glittered with what looked like malevolence. Paul found himself staring and forced himself to look away. His heart fluttered against his chest.

“I trust you are not in distress?” Absalom said. “I notice your pulse rate is slightly elevated for one of your species.”

“You can sense that, huh?” Paul said. “It’s this desert heat, perhaps we should continue inside?”

“Yes, of course.”

The alien ship sprawled across a flat expanse of the Nevada desert. From above, it looked like a giant, silvery Tetris block the size of a shopping mall. When over two dozen of the ships landed across the globe three weeks ago, they’d caused quite the sensation. Nevada, Mexico City, Canada, England, South Africa, Australia, China, Japan, Russia, one even came down and hovered above the ocean off the shore of one of the Cook Islands. From what Paul understood, all of them disseminated from a much larger mothership in orbit just inside the circuit traced by Earth’s moon. Thankfully, they’d come in peace and none of the visited nations decided to shoot first out of reflexive fear. The human contingent at Paul’s back, however, ringed all around the Nevada ship, was largely military.

As Paul walked up the ramp and onto the ship he felt somewhat relieved by what he saw. He wasn’t the first human to make the trip of course, there had been diplomats, scientists, military personnel and politicians already on board. Not the president, not yet, as no one was sure what they would do if the aliens simply shut the doors and took off with him on board. The aliens reportedly didn’t like having too many people aboard their ships at once but they were otherwise welcoming. Even after being briefed though, Paul hadn’t been certain of what to expect and he was pleased to find it all looked relatively normal. A long corridor stretched ahead of him, doorways, consoles and other furnishings all oversized, built for Absalom’s kind and not for humans, but easily grasped in terms of function. The walls were painted in what might be murals. Some could have been nature scenes but mostly they looked like complex geometric patterns. Their colours appeared dull and chalky, badly faded, and he wondered if they might have been more vibrant through the aliens’ eyes.

On the other hand there were the aliens themselves. As they headed deeper into the ship, more of Absalom’s people moved up and down the corridor, and in and out of doorways and intersections. They acknowledged Absalom and the human with small bows. Paul kept his face neutral but his pulse ran and sweat seeped down the back of his neck. Some rodentine part of his brain, left behind by an ancient mammalian ancestor who evolved to live underground as dinosaurs roamed above, screamed at him to run, to run, to run, to bury himself in a deep, deep hole, because he was surrounded by nothing but predators.

“I’m happy to take you anywhere on the ship that you would like to go,” Absalom said. “How can I best assist you in these ‘public relations’ your leader thinks would be beneficial to our cause?”

Absalom’s voice had a choppy quality, almost robotic. As if the consonants and vowels had been hacked up and pieced together like magazine letters in a ransom note. It was remarkable that their lipless mouth, with its gnashing fangs and whipping tongue, could speak legible English at all.

“Perhaps you could explain what you and your people are hoping to achieve here on Earth.” Paul found himself mirroring the alien’s formal, slightly stilted mode of speech. “I’ve seen the broadcasts of course, and I’ve been briefed by the White House, but I’d like to hear it in your own words.”

“Yes, in simple terms, we are here to help. We believe our technology could benefit humanity by eliminating factors such as disease, famine, and your environmental challenges. To help you realise your full potential as a species before you join the wider galactic community.”

“Why?”

Absalom hesitated. “You are asking why?”

“There is a saying among human beings, Absalom. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. That’s not to cast aspersions on your people, of course, but to understand the kind of cynicism you’re facing.”

“We were hoping to help you because you are fellow sentients. We desire to see any sentient beings we come across happy and healthy and capable of reaching their full potential.”

“Compassion.”

“Yes, as far as we understand your concept of compassion. We do not have an equivalent word in our language.”

“Our people, human beings, you have to understand that we fear things that are different. And your people are very, different.”

“We have studied many of your fictional narratives regarding first encounters with other species. Yes, they appeared largely negative.”

Paul again tried not to stare at Absalom’s dripping fangs, their skull face. Their exoskeleton with its spikes that could impale him in a dozen places at once with a hug. He suppressed a shudder and wondered which fictional narratives specifically the alien was referring to. They’d probably seen plenty of human movies with creatures like themselves shot and blown up, thrown out of airlocks, frozen, dropped in acid, and killed in any number of ways. And still they had come. He wondered if part of the alien might want revenge for all of those fictional outrages.

“How do you best believe we might bridge this gap and create trust between our two species?” Absalom asked.

“In your case, I think what we need to do is establish some common ground. So my people can see you as people just like them, even if we don’t look the same.”

“Yes, I am at your service. Please, how might I best help you accomplish that goal?”

“Take me through a regular day in the life of one of your species. What would be the first thing you, Absalom, do in the morning?”

“In that case, the first thing I do in the morning would be awaken in my quarters aboard this ship. I would expel waste and perform my morning ablutions.”

“Perfect, can you take me there?”

“My quarters?”

“Yes, exactly. We want to help people relate to you, you sleep, you get up and go to work just like them. You put your pants on one leg at a time just like them, so to speak.”

“Yes, of course.”

Paul hurried to keep up with the alien’s longer strides. The two of them climbed into a pod much like an elevator, sized for the larger beings, which whisked them off to another part of the ship. The corridors were a little narrower and with less furnishings but similar to the entryway. More chalky murals covered the walls. Paul was relieved to see fewer of the hulking aliens wandering around but then realised that meant he and Absalom were all alone, with no witnesses. He avoided looking at the alien’s face and tried to keep his hands from shaking.

“My quarters,” Absalom said.

The door, at least twelve-foot-tall and half as wide, slid open at a touch. As soon as he glanced inside, Paul recoiled with a short scream.

“Jesus Christ!”

Another alien, or the corpse of another alien, lay bent and broken across the floor of Absalom’s room. It appeared to have been in some kind of fight, huge, bloodless rents ripped open in its chest and arms. Its skull face, identical to Absalom, was turned in the direction of the doorway. The sockets that should have housed its eyes were completely hollow, gouged out.

“Apologies, I am very sorry, friend Paul!” Absalom said. “This morning, I moulted before coming to meet with you. I expected the cleaning droids would have serviced my quarters by now.”

“Moult-, moulted?”

“Yes, some beings on this planet also do the same, correct? My species, at certain times, sheds the outer layer of their exoskeletons in order to heal or grow.”

Absalom picked up the ‘dead’ version of themself and hauled it easily aside. By the way it moved, it was obvious the exoskeleton was completely hollow. Heart thundering, Paul tried to calm himself as he studied the rest of the room. Mostly it looked clean and serviceable, with more of those faded murals and a console against one wall. There was no closet, the aliens wore no clothes except for a wide belt lined with pouches, and no bed. Looking up, Paul noticed a collection of wicked hooks dangling from the ceiling. They resembled butcher hooks for hanging meat, or torture victims.

“What are those?” Paul asked.

“The hooks?”

“Yeah, those.”

“Those are for sleeping.”

“Sleeping?”

“Yes, I’m given to understand your species sleeps laying down on your sides or your spines. You can see why that would not work for us.” Absalom gestured at the jagged spikes radiating from their back. “My people, we sleep standing up. It is more comfortable if we have something to hold us, however, like so.”

Absalom demonstrated their sleeping position for Paul’s benefit. Their insectile limbs slotted through the curves of two hooks. Another fit around the alien’s neck. Letting the strength go from their legs, they dangled as if dead and crucified.

“Jesus,” Paul said.

“That is the second time you have invoked the name of your deity. Do you need to pray?”

“No, no, that’s alright, thanks. So, let’s say, what do you do after you’ve woken up and finished your routine here in the cabin?”

“From here I would typically go to the dining hall for my morning meal. What you would call breakfast, friend Paul.”

“Great, let’s do that then.”

“Yes, as you wish.”

The dining hall was only a few minutes walk from Absalom’s quarters. In spite of the scare with the moulted exoskeleton, Paul thought he was handling the situation well. He didn’t have much insight into how to humanise Absalom’s people just yet, however. As they got closer to the dining hall, they began seeing more and more of the aliens.

“Mealtimes can be very important in human cultures,” Paul explained as they walked. “Everyone eats, right? Families come together during meals. A lot of diplomatic events revolve around dinners where people from different countries can share one another’s cuisine. You might say the path to a human’s heart is through their stomach.”

“Metaphorically speaking?”

“Uh, yes, metaphorically.”

“I see, yes, our timing is fortunate then. We are just in time for midday meal.”

As soon as the doors to the dining hall opened, Paul’s ears were battered by gut wrenching screams. He physically staggered. The noise was an assault. The room sounded like a stadium full of caterwauling mountain lions.

Braving a look inside, Paul saw dozens of aliens massed around a hall half the size of a football field. It didn’t look so different from a cafeteria in a high school or large office building. They lined up along one wall to receive their meals and then ate, standing, around benches taller than Paul’s head. He couldn’t see what was on the tables but looking at the aliens in the line he saw them scooping fistfuls of pink and wriggling creatures onto metal trays. Those creatures were the source of the terrible wailing.

Cringing, Paul’s head shrunk to his shoulders as he followed Absalom into the room. He resisted the urge to shield his ears and then had to do the same not to cover his eyes as he watched the aliens at the table nearest to them feeding. Skewering the pink animals on their talons, they dropped them one by one into their gaping maws.

“This is how you eat?” Paul said.

“Actually, today is a special treat,” Absalom said. “Think of it as your ‘Taco Tuesday’, although I’m afraid a translation to your language would not work in quite such a pithy fashion.”

Paul looked pale. “Oh my God, they’re like hairless cats with human faces.”

Absalom’s glittering eyes studied the creatures being eaten and then looked back at Paul. The screaming never stopped, echoing off the walls of the large room.

“Yes, you are correct, I suppose there is some resemblance.”

“You eat them, live?”

“We evolved to eat live prey, yes. These prey animals are grown in a lab aboard the ship, however. I could show you if you would like? Obviously the animals they are cloned from are not sentients, and these are grown with only brain stems to keep them alive just long enough to go from the lab to plate.”

“But, the screaming?”

“Yes, they are programmed, such as it were, to do that. As I understand you humans say, the first bite is with the ear.”

“That’s eye, the first bite is with the eye. It means if the food looks good, we think it will taste good.”

“Yes, I see, thank you for the correction. For us, the same sentiment applies to the sound our meal makes.”

Paul would have thought he’d get used to the noise. Instead, the constant shrieking, along with the snap of jaws and popping and crackling of bones, chipped away at his resolve inch by inch. Much longer in this room and he’d run from the ship, screaming.

“Do you mind if we move on? To someplace a little less noisy?”

“Of course, but, friend Paul, would you mind if I had a quick bite? I hadn’t eaten before you boarded and it all sounds so good.”

“No problem,” Paul said, voice shaking.

Absalom stopped by the nearest table where one of the aliens offered their tray. Knifing several of the catlike creatures with their claws, Absalom’s jaws unhinged. In fairness, the alien animals didn’t appear to show any additional fear or distress. Their wriggles and cries never changed. Paul quickly tore his eyes away. It was like watching a box of kittens being tossed into a woodchipper.

Paul’s legs wobbled as he stumbled from the dining hall. Thankfully, the noise vanished the moment the doors slid shut. Absalom’s tongue flicked across their fangs, cleaning out loose scraps of meat.

“Do you believe a diplomatic meal might be a worthwhile endeavour?” Absalom asked.

“Let’s, ah, let’s put that one on the backburner for the minute.”

“Very well, is there anything else you would like to see next?”

“Uh, I don’t know, what would you do after breakfast on a typical day?”

“As a communications officer, I have quite a varied number of tasks.”

Paul straightened, trying to recover his composure. “What about for fun? What would you do to relax?”

“You would like to see our recreation facilities?”

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

They walked to a travel pod and were whipped away to another part of the ship. Absalom didn’t explain anything about what to expect. Soon as the doors slid open, a wet wave of heat slapped Paul in the face. A metallic stink filled his nostrils and another horrible racket battered his eardrums. In spite of his hesitation, he followed Absalom out of the pod.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

Jets of flame illuminated a thick, reddish fog hanging over swampy pools that had been somehow picked up and set down inside the spaceship. Aliens wallowed in the dark and discoloured water, thick and red and boiling, belching steam into the air.

“It looks like blood,” Paul said, speaking really only to himself.

“That would be the high iron content,” Absalom said. “Actually, I believe it would be quite toxic for your people. It simulates natural conditions on our homeworld.”

Sweat pooled down Paul’s back. Flames jetted from rocklike foundations to cast orange bursts of light across the room. Black orbs carried trays holding more of the catlike creatures with aliens snatching at them as they passed. Shrieks lanced through the noise filling the space, a grinding, industrial roar that had no tune at all that Paul could discern. Hell, this was Hell. The heat, the flames, the blood red waters, the alien demons. Thick as the air was, he began to feel woozy. That metal stench made him lightheaded and his legs went weak.

“I believe I should remove you from these facilities, friend Paul,” Absalom said. “I do not think the atmosphere in here is as conducive to your health as it is to ours.”

Absalom reached for Paul with one taloned hand. Paul, a little drunk on the fumes, wrenched away and almost screamed. He managed to regain control of himself just in time and allowed the alien to guide him back to the travel pod.

The two of them returned to the front corridor where Paul had originally entered the ship. Dull coloured murals covered the walls around consoles and doorways. Paul’s face looked pale and bloodless, and sweat soaked through his suit. His mind, however, always kept turning. In spite of everything, he got no sense that Absalom and the other aliens were anything but genuine in their stated mission. Rightly or wrongly only time would tell, and it wasn’t his job to make policy based around that. But he had no idea how to tackle his actual role of humanising these creatures to the wider public. Along with their terrifying appearance, every aspect of their daily life seemed to induce an instinctive revulsion.

“Well, thank you for your time, Absalom,” Paul said. “It’s been very enlightening. I’ll be in touch soon with more questions.”

“Before you leave, friend Paul, I had something for you,” Absalom said. “A gift of sorts.”

“Oh?”

“My people are perhaps more literal than yours. When we were told you wanted to learn to see things through our eyes we thought you perhaps meant so literally. Our species sees in a different visual spectrum than yours so our science division designed these ‘glasses’ that allow you to see things as we do.”

From a pouch on their waist, Absalom produced what looked like a pair of thick and complicated glasses. They were miniscule in the alien’s taloned fingers. Paul accepted them with a large degree of hesitation.

“Thank you, Absalom,” Paul said.

Bracing himself for some fresh horror, Paul slipped the glasses onto his face. A red haze fell across his vision. Looking up at Absalom, there didn’t appear to be any change to the more horrifying aspects of their appearance although there were streaks of colour, bodypaint, on their exoskeleton that hadn’t appeared to Paul before. Glancing toward another couple of nearby aliens, he could see they also had colourful designs painted onto their bony shells. A way of quickly distinguishing one from another. As he looked around, however, it was the murals on the walls that really captured his attention.

Beauty, extraordinary beauty, surrounded Paul on all sides. Without the glasses, the walls looked chalky and dull but the glasses filled in details and empty patches. Symphonies came to life in colours and patterns. Maps of a universe beyond human understanding and experience. Tales of joy and sorrow and heartbreaking glory written in some kind of universal mathematics but expressed in art. Patterns of immense complexity and care, like the lifework of some alien gardener in a sprawling garden. Perhaps it was because his emotions were so raw after the anxiety of all he’d seen that morning but the radiance of it nearly brought Paul to tears.

“This is it,” Paul said.

“What is it, friend Paul?” Absalom asked.

“These murals are incredible!” Paul looked up and down the hallway, seeing them spread the length of the ship. “This is what we have to show people, your peoples’ artwork! Through your eyes! No one could ever believe that a species who lives surrounded by such beauty could ever be evil. Oh, this is gorgeous, amazing! Thank you, Absalom, thank you!”

With renewed sincerity, Paul and Absalom made plans to spread some of the aliens’ art to a wider audience alongside their designs to help the human race with their technology. Paul promised to make a full report to the White House and to be in touch again soon. Taking the glasses with him, he left the ship and returned to the military cordon.

Absalom waved goodbye, a gesture learned through their studies of human etiquette, and then triggered the ramp to close. As soon as the humans were out of sight, the alien stepped away and let out a series of intense shudders. Absalom’s expression didn’t change but the tremors were clear signs of distress. One of their shipmates, another communications officer who used the name ‘Concordia’ when speaking with the humans, happened to be lingering nearby.

“Friend Absalom, is all well? I understand you were elected to show one of the human beings around our vessel,” Concordia said in their own hissing tongue.

“Thank you, friend Concordia, yes, I will be quite alright,” Absalom said. “This morning, my anxiety over meeting with one of the humans was so great I could not eat. I even moulted out of season due to the stress! It was most embarrassing.”

“I understand completely. The humans are frail individually, even sort of cute in a grotesque way, but the way their minds work is most disturbing.”

“All those fictional narratives we studied to understand how they might react in a first contact situation, horrifying! What kind of sentient species considers violence a form of entertainment? To say nothing of their actual history, war, genocide, slavery and murder!”

“I know, leading one of them around the ship feels like carrying a living bomb,” Concordia sympathised.

“I wish to help them as much as we are able, but to have one alone with me? In my own quarters?” Absalom unleashed several more violent shudders. “You know it asked me why we would want to help other sentients? Why? It genuinely seemed to struggle with understanding why one intelligent species would help another instead of harming them. Their minds are so alien to our own.”

“There is much we can teach them.”

Absalom looked grave. “Yes, there is much we can do to help them, but for the first time in my life I truly wonder if we are doing the right thing. We can prepare the humans to meet the wider universe, but can anyone prepare the wider universe to meet them?”

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Sean: I almost consider this one part of a series with a couple of my other stories, Eyes of the Beholder and Faust Date. They’re not really a series at all but they’ve got a common theme of almost mundane, one-on-one conversations between humans and significantly more alien beings, which I find fun.

As such, this story is meant to be in good humour so I wouldn’t take my indictment of the human condition too seriously. Kind of like my story inspired by the Nalfeshnee, this one really was inspired by the way the image of the Bone Devil in the Monster Manual absolutely leapt off the page. There’s definitely some Xenomorph inspiration there. It got me thinking how quick we are to judge, monsters look scary so therefore they are scary. Okay, there’s plenty of subversions out there already, but how many stories are there where the aliens show up showing good intentions and actually keep their word? How many times, if you watch as much science fiction as me, have you heard aliens showing up being compared to colonisers meeting natives?

Keep your eyes on the website, another story coming in a couple weeks! I’ve got a few I should probably get through!