2. A Fiend Folio monster I use a lot.
(Warning - stats are AD&D, and I've made them different for GURPS.)
One thing I love about norkers is that they're great fodder. They're intrinsically armoured, so they don't need to provide $5K in loot each just to be able to absorb some hits. They are cheaply armed with axes, so killing a few of them doesn't provide a realistic amount of loot. They fulfill the value of monsters to a GM - they're a threat - without that implicit promise that games have made to PCs - fighting is good because fighting means loot.
The "Gith," aka the Masters, the six-fingered elven vampires, etc. - seem to have a number especially tough norkers. So the PCs are enaged in a brawl with them as I write this.
They also have some other guys - Thorkers.
Thorkers
The PCs aren't exactly sure what thorkers are, exactly. They're very quiet, eeriely silent. They don't readily bleed - or maybe don't bleed. They take enourmous punishment to put down, regardless of magical or non-magical weapons. Their best effect on them has been putting them to sleep with sleep elixirs - clearly they're not immune to that - and repeatedly bashing them in the head with a flail - which takes far too many hits of far too much damage to make anyone feel like it's a really vulnerable spot.
They attack with claws or a bite - generally claws, since GURPS (unlike AD&D) tends to make biting suck unless biting is your main or only thing. They don't use weapons, unlike "regular" norkers.
They're a new monster for Felltower, although with an old inspiration. And the PCs are the first to encounter them, so research isn't going to turn up much. Their best bet is to take a live or dead one home - in that order of utility. They've hit upon that plan.*
I may update this post - or just link back to it - when they find out more.
* And I expect either way, they'll try to explain why someone in town should pay them for the prisoner or the corpse, and then tell them everything they want to know on top of that. No, NPCs don't pay you to find out what you want to know from them. No one has that level of social skills in game to pull that off. And it's probably less fun as a game if they do and regularly do so.
