Bedeviled Tatters

Bedeviled Tatters

12 HP, 8 STR, 16 DEX, 8 WIL, smother, swirl

  • Swirling clouds of blackened rags, paper, or bandages; an angry red light pulses at its center.
  • Unaffected by mundane un-bladed weapons, which are impaired.
  • Smother: tatters wrap around a single target; the target saves STR each turn or is controlled by the tatters.
  • Swirl: tatters swirl like a raging storm for d4 blast damage. On every 4, an open flame is snuffed out.

Sometimes, when a soul dies in great anger, that anger lingers. And especially when that anger finds no body of flesh remaining, it may attach itself to something near to the body's final resting place--bandages, books, seals, shrouds--and so on. This is the beginning of a Bedeviled Tatters.

Though it is raw anger that animates these lingering vestiges, they may yet lie dormant for a time, either totally still or drifting in dispersed, lazy patterns. When the tatters are roused--whether by great commotion or direct disturbance of something that the originator's soul held important--they will swirl together with enraged speed and ferocity until they become a deadly maelstrom. Once started, the storm cannot be quelled until the irritant is neutralized or banished from the vicinity, and even then the tatters sleep only fitfully for some time after.

Commentary

Mechanically speaking, this stat block was just inspired by the desire for a "boss monster" in the final room of a crypt. Aesthetically, I was reminded of this scene in Spirited Away: 


And these paper tag things that show up in Naruto all the time:


(In a couple particular instances they even fly up and attach to people as well, of course.)

And also this pretty cool image from that otherwise lackluster Fantastic Beasts move:


Anyways, combining these ideas I thought about what could animate these papers/bandages, and the sort of simple, interesting challenge they could pose in a dungeon crawling context. The rest is history.

Back to My Cairn Bestiary

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dungeon Room Index: Sewers and Water Rooms

Image
Sewers! And other watery places. At the very beginning of this series I specifically called out water and how I think it can elevate a dungeon. Today, I hope to vindicate that idea. Here are the rooms: ...and this sneaky devil that I missed on my first pass transcribing my rough notes Sewers as a category I  love  sewer dungeons.  I think there are a few broad archetypes for dungeons out there: "cave" , "prison" , "tomb" --many of the room types I've covered so far can readily be expanded into a whole dungeon concept. (Some more readily than others--I'll be impressed if you can make "kitchens" into an entire megadungeon.) For many of those, I think when you pick the broad archetype you can readily come up with actual rooms  to stitch together (even if there are just a lot of rooms with more coffins in them).  I think sewers, on the other hand, are kind of the opposite: I don't really think of a "room" when I think of sewer...
Read more

Dungeon Room Index: Tombs

Image
Last time I did Shrines. Today I'm doing tombs. Graves, crypts, mausoleums, so on. Places where dead things are laid to rest. (Or in games like this, to guard their earthly spoils from would be grave robbers. It doesn't sound that restful to me...) This is a classic staple, I think. Here are the rooms:
Read more

Dungeon Room Index: Great Halls

Image
(Last time we did Libraries) I really like a big room, don't I? There are the reasons I already gave, but maybe it's that I find bigger rooms easier to diversify as well; I guess we'll find out what happens when I seriously attempt something smaller. Anyways, here are the rooms, with notes to follow: Halls, that are Great When I say "Great Hall", I'm using this as somewhat of a blanket term for a variety of large, open spaces: ballrooms, banquet halls, hallways (that are really big and grand; it's in the name!). Basically any space that is best served by a large, open area, especially one with high, vaulted ceilings. (And remember, if the ceilings aren't vaulted, they are quite liable to collapse! Better get some pillars in there...) With a room like this, I find myself a little at a loss at first to come up with new aesthetic flourishes; mostly it's all about the layout. However, there are a few things I find fit well in rooms like this: Fireplace...
Read more