Candela Obscura will feature a terrifying new monster meant to represent a fear of an emerging technology within the Fairelands. Later this month, Critical Role’s Darrington Press will release the Core Rulebook for Candela Obscura, a new horror RPG that mixes occult and cosmic horror. Today, ComicBook.com has the opportunity to showcase one of the fearsome monsters in the Core Rulebook that appears as an adventure hook for Game Masters – the Light Eater of Bridleborne. “It comes out of, literally, the thing that they were all fearing at that time, which is the advent of electricity,” explained Candela Obscura lead designer Spenser Starke during an interview about Candela Obscura with ComicBook.com.
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While electricity is common in the city of Newfaire within the world of Candela Obscura, it’s still being established in the mountainous rural areas, such as the Bridleborne Mountains. Designer Rowan Hall noted that she took inspirations from Appalachia when designing this particular monster. “Spenser said, ‘Give me some monsters,’ and I am from Pennsylvania. And so I said, ‘I want an Appalachian story,’” Hall said. “The Light Eater is the embodiment of that terrifying total darkness that people feel afraid of in their most primal brain. You feel that this is going to consume you, and the Light Eater is a beast come from the forest that is hungry for this electric light.”
Another wrinkle to the Light Eater is that it doesn’t work alone – it has creatures it works with to help draw out the electricity that it craves. “One of my favorite parts about the Light Eater is it has these sort of minions called the Night Terrors, and their whole job is to scare people so that they turn on the lights,” Hall said. “‘I want you to be afraid of the dark so that I can have the thing that you think keeps you safe,’ and that just makes my skin crawl. It’s so good.”
When discussing how to incorporate the Light Eater into a Candela Obscura campaign, both Starke and Hall suggested different approaches to the game. Starke suggested using the Light Eater as a sudden threat for players to face while out in the Brindleborne Mountains, while Hall suggested using the Light Eater as a more existential threat. “My favorite part about the Light Eater, and we try to do a lot in different ways with the monsters and the adversaries in the book, is that when you look at the Light Eater as it’s written currently in Bridleborne Mountains, what if the people are the problem?” Hall said. “What if we shouldn’t be clear cutting our way out into the woods and running power lines, and what if the Light Eater is just fine being out there, and we should go? That is the existential kind of problem that, to me, feels Eldritch. Is there a right answer? Probably not, and there are a lot of mysteries and hooks in the book that should feel that way.”
You can check out the full preview for Candela Obscura below. The Candela Obscura Core Rulebook comes out on November 14th.
