Gaunt

A starved, impossibly tall thing. Every rib shows above a waist starved down to nothing, and a ridge of spikes runs down its back. It stands on stilt legs, and its arms bend in one place too many, dragging long clawed fingers that twitch on their own. Its face is a stained, cracked skull with lopsided hollow sockets and black streaks running down from them. A pinprick of eyeshine deep in each socket follows you. Thin strands of hair hang from its head, and its jaw unhinges over rows of needle teeth. It picks one player and follows them through the facility.

How it behaves

• Comes out late, some days. Each day there's a 33% chance a Gaunt comes. On those days it crawls out of a vent when the clock hits 7 PM, never earlier. There's at most one per day, and the game's normal monster spawning never picks it.
• Stalks. It picks a target (it prefers whoever is furthest from the crew) and moves between hiding spots near them. It stays out of their sight.
• Watches from around corners. It stops behind a doorway or corner and waits until you look away. Then it leans out sideways in stop-motion jerks and curls its long fingers round the edge of the wall. The longer it watches, the further its head rolls, until it's nearly upside down. After a while it slips off to watch from somewhere else.
• Spotted while alone: it attacks. If you look straight at it for a moment and no other living player is within 15m of you, it screams and charges. Once it reaches you, it rears back and rakes its claws down for 25 damage, then keeps striking about every two seconds while it can reach you. Four hits kill, since players have 100 health. Backing off before the claws land dodges a strike.
• It sees you alone: it attacks. You don't have to look at it. If it keeps you in sight for 1.5 seconds while no one else is within 15m of you, it screams and comes for you. Seeing a group does nothing. It keeps stalking and waits for one of you to wander off.
• It always takes the fastest route. Once it's hunting, it works out the quickest walkable path to you several times a second and aims slightly ahead of where you're running. It cuts corners, doesn't slow at turns, and opens doors twice as fast. If you climb somewhere it can't walk to, it waits as close as it can get.
• Spotted by a group: it flees. If someone is with you, it runs off and keeps its distance for a while before it starts stalking again.
• A shovel hit or a stun grenade also breaks it off. It can't be killed.
• Footsteps. You hear it before you see it. Its strides are long and uneven, with a soft heavy pad, a knock of bone, then claws ticking on concrete. Sometimes the claws drag. When it stops to watch you, the footsteps stop too. Leaning out makes its neck crack.

Every sound is synthesized at startup, and the creature is built from procedural meshes and textures. There's no asset bundle.

Config

BepInEx/config/axelc.gaunt.cfg:

Every player needs the mod. The host's game makes the decisions.