I’ve been doing some housekeeping on the site, recategorising posts and updating images and broken links. I came across this one sitting in drafts and I’m genuinely not sure why I never published it, so here it is – 6 years after I originally wrote it.

On Saturday I appeared on The RPG Lab’s Twitch channel with a handful of really talented creators, where we were discussing D&D monsters and attempting to combine some already-existing creatures into something new and interesting.

For my mashup I chose to combine two of my favourite monsters – the Purple Worm and the Gelatinous Cube – creating a rolling ooze worm that I dubbed the Gummy Worm.

If you head over to The RPG Lab you’ll be able to find the VOD of the stream, where I talk about some of the design decisions that went into creating this thing. I’m not sure how long that will remain available, so in a future post I’ll write at more length about combining existing monsters into new creations, and we’ll work on creating some more mashups.

For now you can download the Gummy Worm, and use the adventure hooks here to introduce it into your games. Enjoy!

[Click to download PDF for free]

Gummy Worm Adventure Hooks

These hooks are designed to be used while your party are underground, be it in tunnels and cave system or the Underdark itself.

1. Surprise! The party are resting up in a stronghold or settlement somewhere in the Underdark. As they chat, drink, or engage in whatever they’re currently doing, there is a chance (DC 14 Wisdom (Perception)) that somebody notices the sound of shifting earth from somewhere beyond the nearest wall. A few moments later the masonry crumbles and falls apart, revealing a deep tunnel around 10’ wide that vanishes into the earth. Something oozes out of the opening, a mass of slithering slime that begins to spew acid and suck people into its gelatinous form.
2. The Missing Party. A group of adventurers – or miners, travelers, whatever suits your game – ventured out of the city a little over a week ago. They were heading for a nearby settlement, a journey that should have taken a day or two, and were expected to send word via a sending spell or some other means that they had arrived safely, but no word has come. A newcomer to town mentions that she saw a group that matches their description on her journey, but that they appeared to be rotting zombies that were somehow drifting along the tunnels, and she gave them a wide berth.
3. The Slime Caves. The slime caves are well known, and often avoided by travelers. They are a labyrinthine series of tunnels, chimneys, and caverns, that are home to numerous oozes and slimes. Most travelers who venture in there never return. Occasionally adventurers head into the caves, but there is little to be had in the way of treasure in there and most people simply ignore them. Still, they have been well mapped, and local magic users often recruit people to go and recover strong acids and samples of the oozes for their research. Now, though, the tunnels have begun to change – old passages are caving in, new paths are being dug into the earth, and many of the slimes that dwell in the caves have begun to venture out, seeming to be retreating in some way (though nobody has ever known mindless oozes to show fear before). Something new has moved in, and it seems only a matter of time before the ooze spreads to encompass the nearby area.

On Monday Matt Sanders and I made his Shadepoint adventure, Whispering Darkness, Pay What You Want on DriveThruRPG.

After that post went live I had a little trip down memory lane on Twitter, talking about the plans we had for the Shadepoint Cycle. That got me thinking about my adventure Terror At Tightwillow Pond, which I haven’t thought about in a while.

I’m still really proud of that adventure, and particularly of the monster I created for it, so I decided the time is nigh for the Mandragorgon to reappear on this site. Take the monster, throw it into your games, and let me know what you think!

A mandragorgon is an evil, ambulatory plant creature. It looks like a humanoid creature that stands some 10 feet tall, with a thick central trunk and branch-like limbs. The lower half is a dense, tangled root system that extends beneath the earth. Its ‘face’ is a flat oval of bark; some have eye-like markings, though many are featureless.

The Blights of Spring. A mandragorgon’s head is crowned with a large frond of leaves that unfurl to reveal several large flowers. Each of these is capable of releasing a thick cloud of pollen that engulfs nearby creatures. The pollen of each individual flower has a unique – though equally horrible – effect. These flowers can be severed and rendered useless, but doing so is rarely easy.

Aberrant Flora. Little is known about the origins of the mandragorgons, but it is believed that they are the result of strange, twisted magics from the twisted places far beyond the Material Plane that have mingled with the essence of the fae realms. They are rarely encountered on the Material Plane, though they have been known to appear there.

Download Terror At Tightwillow Pond here.

Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Matt Sanders who runs The Sealed Library. Have You Heard About The Beast? is out now and well worth your attention.

Undead creatures in RPGs are typically sword-and-spell fodder, and only a few types of undead get developed into having any kind of personality. That’s usually liches and vampires as significant villains or antagonists.

Today’s post is about adding some of that undead flavour to NPCs that your party will be able to have some proper social interaction with. All of these should fit into most settings without major tweaking. Simply roll a D10 or choose one that suits.

1. This forked tree holds an ancient skull that was jammed into the fork many years ago. It’s the skull of Toldren Cumberle. His moss-covered skeleton lies slumped a few feet below the head, tantalisingly close to being reunited. His favourite pastime is to wait until someone passes and hurl expletives and curses at them.
2. This shuffling zombie has been dead so long, and reattached so many parts of his body himself, that he’s become quite the expert surgeon. He can clean and stitch up wounds well beyond the skill of most. He answers to Anton.
3. This ordinary-looking coffin is mainly notable for the muffled voice coming from within. Inside is the fresh corpse of Morgan Druffield, who was until recently the village’s oldest man. He mostly just wants to talk about the old days to whoever will listen.
4. This group of stray dogs was poisoned, but they failed to move on to other planes. A crust of green foam still hangs around their mouths. One of them carries a bone which you are fairly sure is from his own leg, given how he hops along. They’re glad to see anyone who will pay attention to them, and can perform quite a lot of tricks.
5. This veiled seamstress works all through the night, sewing the clothes of all who bring things to her in need of repair. She seeks to atone for perceived wrongs she did when living. During daylight, she sits and waits.
6. This forlorn-looking wight shuffles around the docks, staring out to sea, his cutlass hanging limply at his side. A trail of ethereal grog bottles lies where he has been, and his speech is slurred and repetitive. “They only went and bloody left me,” he mumbles under his breath every few seconds.
7. This spectre of a young woman is stuck in a loop, walking the same path again and again, disappearing at its end, and reappearing back at its beginning, only 30 feet away. As she walks, she pauses and looks at those who pass, lacking the confidence to speak up. Each time she reaches the end, she drops her hood and you can momentarily see her eyes are gone and her cheeks have been cut open, the flesh flapping around in grisly flaps.
8. This cheeky spirit likes to flit around bodies of water, looming up at the faces of those who pause and glance down into the water, distorting it’s translucent face into disturbing grimaces and then breaking into giggles when the onlookers recoil in horror. The spirit is playful and always up for suggestions of what it sees as practical jokes.
9. This headless skeleton rifles through garbage piles wherever it can find them. This often takes some time, as it has to stumble around, feeling its way around. Bizarrely, it does seem able to hear, and responds to people speaking to it well enough. Presumably, it’s looking for its head.
10. This fearsome, matronly-looking woman bellows at the top of her lungs, calling the names of her three children in turn. “DERRRRREEEEKKK! LLLOOOORRRNNNAAAA! KAAAAAYYLLLEEEEBBB!”. When they don’t appear, she moans to whoever will listen about how they’re always pinching things and causing trouble and that she’d pay someone to bring them back.

You can find Matt on Twitter as @iammattsanders. His latest game – a collaborative game about building tavern rumours called Have You Heard About The Beast? – is out now and is really, really fantastic.

Matt also produced a really excellent bard college to go with Loot The Room’s Shadepoint supplement. The College of Cadence for 5e is still available from DriveThruRPG.

The Wandmaker’s Cabin – New Monster

Whatever the reason the adventurer’s have travelled to Celli’s cabin, they may well find that when they arrive there the gnome is no longer alive. This month’s new monster is the Stranglebloom, a plant that germinates inside a living host before erupting from the mouth and throat of the now-dead body and setting out to plant more seeds in more new hosts.

Celli ventured out into her forest a few months ago to harvest new materials for her work, and was unfortunate enough to disturb a stranglebloom that had taken root among the trees. She believed she had escaped it safely, unaware that its seed was slowly growing in her body. A few short days ago, while organising things in her cellar, the seed finally germinated and the plant emerged from her carcas. It has been lying in wait there ever since, too unintelligent to understand the purpose of the flight of stairs in the center of the room. Luckily for it, a band of inquisitive adventurers are about to wander into its new lair.

Celli’s body makes for a grim sight. The gnome is suspended from a tangle of brambles, and flowers, her feet dangling limply above the dirt floor of the cellar, vines pouring out of her mouth and wrapping up around her head. While the party does battle with the stranglebloom they will also have to deal with staring into her dull, lifeless eyes, knowing that they arrived too late to save her.

Stranglebloom

At first glance a stranglebloom appears to be a humanoid who has got herself caught in a mass of vines and thorns. On closer inspection, though, it soon becomes apparent that the thick tendrils that hold the body in place are sprouting from the corpse’s mouth and throat, rising up to form a vivid corona of flowers behind the poor victim’s head.

Reap What You Sow. A stranglebloom has only one goal – to plant more seeds in a living host, which will go on to become another stranglebloom. They do not hunt for prey – they are not intelligent or fast enough for that – but instead simply lie in wait, feeding on the nutrients of their host body and whatever soil they have access to, content to bide their time until new hosts stumble into their vicinity.

Stranglebloom

Large plant, unaligned

Armor Class 16 (natural armor)

Hit Points 190 (20d10 + 80)

Speed 20 ft.

---

STR	|	DEX	|	CON	|	INT	|	WIS	|	CHA
16 (+3)	|	6 (-2)	|	18 (+4)	|	3 (-4)	|	13 (+1)	|	3 (-4)

---

Condition Immunities blinded, deafened

Senses blindsight 120 ft. (blind beyond this radius), passive Perception 14

Languages —

Challenge 7 (2,900 XP)

---

Stench of Rot. Any creature other than a stranglebloom that starts its turn within 10 feet of the stranglebloom must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned until the start of the creature’s next turn. On a successful saving throw, the creature is immune to the stench of all strangleblooms for 1 hour.

Grappler. The creature has advantage on attack rolls against any creature grappled by it.

---

Actions

Multiattack. The stranglebloom makes two bramble vine attacks and one sap spit attack.

Bramble Vine. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d10 + 3) bludgeoning damage. If the target is Medium or smaller, it is grappled (escape DC 14) and restrained until the grapple ends. The stranglebloom has two vines, each of which can grapple one target.

If the target is a humanoid, it must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or be infected with a disease – a miniscule stranglebloom seed.

A humanoid host can carry only one stranglebloom seed at a time. Over two months, the seed moves to the chest cavity and takes root. In the week preceding the seed’s germination, the host starts to feel unwell, its speed is halved, and it has disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. Once it sprouts, vines and flowers burst from the host’s mouth and throat in 1 round, killing the host in the process and producing a new stranglebloom in its space.

If the disease is cured before the seed’s emergence, the ungerminated seed is disintegrated.

Sap Spit. Ranged Weapon Attack: +1 to hit, range 20/80 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (2d6 – 2) acid damage.

Vine Slam. The stranglebloom slams creatures grappled by it into each other or a solid surface. Each creature must succeed on a DC 14 Strength saving throw or take 22 (3d12 + 3) bludgeoning damage and be stunned until the end of the stranglebloom next turn. On a successful save, the target takes half the bludgeoning damage and isn’t stunned.

Pollen Cloud (3/Day): A 20-foot radius of pollen extends from the stranglebloom. The polled spreads to fill the space, ignoring cover and going around corners. Any creature in the affected space when the cloud appears, or that starts its turn in the cloud, must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or be stunned for 1 minute. An affected creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. 

A moderate wind (at least 10 miles per hour) disperses the cloud after 4 rounds. A strong wind (at least 2 miles per hour) disperses it after 1 round.

Stranglebloom art by Zack Keedy.

If you’d prefer a PDF of this monster you can grab it here.

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Matt Sanders kindly stepped in to write a guest post this week, as I’m deep into finishing off the next release in the Shadepoint cycle. With no further ado, I’ll hand you over to him!

The Talking Undead

10 Undead NPCs to Meet, Not Fight

Undead creatures in RPGs are typically sword-and-spell fodder, and only a few types of undead get developed into having any kind of personality. That’s usually liches and vampires as significant villains or antagonists.

Today’s post is about adding some of that undead flavour to NPCs that your party will be able to have some proper social interaction with. All of these should fit into most settings without major tweaking. Simply roll a D10 or choose one that suits.

1. This forked tree holds an ancient skull that was jammed into the fork many years ago. It’s the skull of Toldren Cumberle. His moss-covered skeleton lies slumped a few feet below the head, tantalisingly close to being reunited. His favourite pastime is to wait until someone passes and hurl expletives and curses at them.
2. This shuffling zombie has been dead so long, and reattached so many parts of his body himself, that he’s become quite the expert surgeon. He can clean and stitch up wounds well beyond the skill of most. He answers to Anton.
3. This ordinary-looking coffin is mainly notable for the muffled voice coming from within. Inside is the fresh corpse of Morgan Druffield, who was until recently the village’s oldest man. He mostly just wants to talk about the old days to whoever will listen.
4. This group of stray dogs was poisoned, but they failed to move on to other planes. A crust of green foam still hangs around their mouths. One of them carries a bone which you are fairly sure is from his own leg, given how he hops along. They’re glad to see anyone who will pay attention to them, and can perform quite a lot of tricks.
5. This veiled seamstress works all through the night, sewing the clothes of all who bring things to her in need of repair. She seeks to atone for perceived wrongs she did when living. During daylight, she sits and waits.
6. This forlorn-looking wight shuffles around the docks, staring out to sea, his cutlass hanging limply at his side. A trail of ethereal grog bottles lies where he has been, and his speech is slurred and repetitive. “They only went and bloody left me,” he mumbles under his breath every few seconds.
7. This spectre of a young woman is stuck in a loop, walking the same path again and again, disappearing at its end, and reappearing back at its beginning, only 30 feet away. As she walks, she pauses and looks at those who pass, lacking the confidence to speak up. Each time she reaches the end, she drops her hood and you can momentarily see her eyes are gone and her cheeks have been cut open, the flesh flapping around in grisly flaps.
8. This cheeky spirit likes to flit around bodies of water, looming up at the faces of those who pause and glance down into the water, distorting it’s translucent face into disturbing grimaces and then breaking into giggles when the onlookers recoil in horror. The spirit is playful and always up for suggestions of what it sees as practical jokes.
9. This headless skeleton rifles through garbage piles wherever it can find them. This often takes some time, as it has to stumble around, feeling its way around. Bizarrely, it does seem able to hear, and responds to people speaking to it well enough. Presumably, it’s looking for its head.
10. This fearsome, matronly-looking woman bellows at the top of her lungs, calling the names of her three children in turn. “DERRRRREEEEKKK! LLLOOOORRRNNNAAAA! KAAAAAYYLLLEEEEBBB!”. When they don’t appear, she moans to whoever will listen about how they’re always pinching things and causing trouble and that she’d pay someone to bring them back.

You can find Matt on Twitter as @iammattsanders, and you can find his work on DriveThruRPG here.

If you would rather have this table as a printable PDF you can use at the table, grab it here:

And one final thing – last month’s PDF of Monster Hunters is now available for free from DriveThruRPG! Get it here.

Today I’ve got a table of 12 NPC monster hunters you can drop into your games. Most are designed for wilderness games set in and around jungles or vast woodlands, but there are a few for other locales thrown in there. And they should all be non-specific enough to use anywhere with a little tweaking. You can either roll 1d12 to pick a random hunter, or else choose the one that fits your needs the best.

Want this post as a PDF? Click here or on the cover below to download it:

Enjoy!

1d12 Monster Hunters

1. This pair of gnomes wear a strange assembly of furs, leaves, and broken twigs and branches. Their faces (and all of their exposed skin, in fact) are daubed with a thick green paint that they make from leaves and wild grasses. They both carry large polearms that end in hinged hooks and claws that they operate with a series of buttons and triggers embedded in the handle. They say very little.

2. This large tortle pulls a cart packed with baskets and cages of different sizes, along with a large collection of spiked poles, large nails, chains, and nets. She has embedded wicked spikes into the back of her shell. One of her eyes is permanently sealed shut; she claims it was plucked out by a young roc who attacked her as she was laying traps around the edge of the nest.

3. This oddly tall dwarf wields a large maul. A chunk of his wild beard appears to have been torn out and has never regrown; the skin of his bare cheek beneath it is heavily scarred. The rest of his beard is woven around sharp barbed wire. What little flesh is on display is heavily tattooed with what appears to be an intricate maul of the wilds in this area.

4. This slender elf woman wears a cloak made from the skin of a naga. She doesn’t appear armed, but the smell of sulphur lingers near her and the locals give her a wide berth when she walks through town. Rumours say that she can talk to snakes, and that when she ventures out on the hunt the trees themselves shake in fear.

5. This wingless kenku carries a spear, a net, and little else. Her beak has been sharpened to a wicked edge, and she has embedded large curved blades into the back of her shoulder in place of wings. Though she has no language of her own she uses her race’s mimicry to lethal effect, luring her prey with the sounds of smaller creatures and scaring off anything that my hunt her in return with the roars and screeches of enormous, terrifying monsters. Rumour has is that she can perfectly mimic the sounds of the tarrasque.

6. This unassuming human appears distinctly average in every way, so much so that most people forget that he is present within a few minutes of meeting him. He dresses in plain, uniformly grey clothing and rubs ash into his light hair to darken it. His only weapon appears to be a narrow short sword made from an odd, matte-grey material.

7. This rotund gnome carries a large messenger-style bag that is almost as big as she is, made from the skin and gaping maw of a purple worm. Inside it she keeps a collection of powders and potions, along with a large stock of fragile glass baubles that she fills with her odd concoctions and throws at her prey. She is ebullient and friendly, but also fairly skittish and constantly on edge. She struggles to maintain eye contact when talking to people, as she is always looking out for threats. When indoors – something she generally avoids – she always knows where the exit is, and never sits with her back to doors or windows.

8. This stocky human woman carries an oversized sword that seems like it should be impossible for her to wield. Her armour is a mismatched conglomeration of hides and bones of various creatures, and her cheeks have been scarred with thin, straight lines in a seemingly ritualistic manner. A calico cat accompanies her everywhere, to which she has strapped a small backpack made of large waxed leaves.

9. This lanky elf has dark skin mottled with bark that seems to grow out of and meld with his flesh, and his long hair is interwoven with vines and leaves that are growing from his scalp. Tales say that he wasn’t always this way, but that an accident of some kind deep in the jungles changed him forever.

10. This old gnome sailor lost both her legs from above the knee to a sea monster of some kind. Undeterred, she crafted a pair of prosthetics loaded with springs and hinges that allow her to stand taller than most humans and move faster than should be possible. She sails alone, on a small catamaran of her own construction, and always returns to shore with tales of weird creatures and strange ruins deep beneath the waves.

11. This tall, imposing woman wears a full suit of battered, blood-stained plate that – despite its seemingly poor condition – is still as strong as the day it was made. She hunts not natural beats, but the evil creations sealed inside the forgotten dungeons and tombs of the land. She claims not to care for wealth, power, or glory; rather, she is on a personal quest to rid the world of everything she deems unnatural.

12. This red-furred tabaxi is a trophy hunter, seeking out the largest, most beautiful, and most unusual creatures so that he may taxidermy them and either sell them or add them to his large personal collection. He prefers to bring down his prey through poisons and magics that leave no physical mark, in order to leave the most perfect specimen possible for preservation.

This past week was a bit of a write-off for me in terms of creating anything. There should have been a Campaign Setting post on Monday, and the DMs Guild roundup should have been out on Wednesday. I also still need to finish off this month’s long form review.

Luckily it’s now a 4 day weekend here, so I’ve got plenty of time to catch up and start to get ahead of the schedule again. And, even more luckily, Matt Sanders kindly offered this post to help fill the content void that’s started to develop here.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Matt and I recently re-released his fantastic trinkets supplement Trinkets: Books as a Pay What You Want title. Today’s post is an extra table of bookish NPCs to accompany the table inside that product.

Enjoy!

Bookish NPCs

If you enjoyed this, don’t forget to pick up a copy of Trinkets: Books and the newly released Trinkets: Bottles. Both are available as Pay What You Want titles on DriveThruRPG right now!

Find Matt on Twitter: @iammattsanders

Last time I said that this post would arrive on Thursday, but as with most projects I take on it ended up taking a little longer to complete than I had expected. Still, we’re here now and that’s all that matters!

Today I want to return to Shadepoint with a short encounter set in Ravenwall Village. This encounter is provided here for free thanks to the generosity of my supporters on Patreon.

If you would prefer to have this encounter as a PDF – or if you want the map without any text or logos on it – you can grab it from itch.io for $1.

Terror At Tightwillow Pond

A Shadepoint encounter for 6th level heroes

[click to embiggen]

“Tightwillow’s always been dodgy. The spicers and tar-eaters moved in there years ago, camped up on the island burning tar and doing gods know what. Nobody with half a brain goes there any more.

“It’s changing, though. Every day it gets worse, and even the spicers are avoiding it. They say there’s something evil on the shores of the pond, something twisted and vindictive that hunts in that little scrap of wasteland. Sounds like the ravings of people too stoned to know what day it is to me, but I still say you’d do well to stay away from that shithole.”

Using This Encounter

Terror At TIghtwillow Pond is not a complete adventure, and is not intended to provide you with a full session of play. Instead it serves as a single encounter that you can drop into your games. A number of hooks are provided for getting the players to Tightwillow, and some of the items found in the area may guide the party towards future adventures.

Tightwillow is designed primarily for use with the free supplement Cities: Shadepoint, and is located in the area of that city known as Ravenwall Village. If you aren’t using Shadepoint, you can place the pond in a public park or green space in whichever setting you prefer to use.

Background

Tightwillow Pond is all that remains of a public works project that aimed to build public parks within the city. The project was short-lived, shut down when the Treasurer at the time objected to spending money in the most deprived areas of the city rather than areas that he deemed to be more worthy of attention. Tightwillow is filled with brackish water, and this small green space is surrounded by collapsed buildings and grimy streets.

Tightwillow has long been a congregating point for the growing homeless population in the city. The large central island on the pond used to house a sizeable tent village, and was plagued by violence and drug abuse. Recently, though, more dead bodies have begun appearing on the shores of the pond, and many of the people who used to live on the island have sought out new pastures within the city. Those who have fled tell of a curse that has settled on Tightwillow, turning the trees themselves against any who dare to set foot near the pond.

In reality there is no curse. A mandragorgon has chosen the pond as its new hunting ground, and is making short work of the prey it finds there. Soon that prey will dry up, and the mandragorgon will seek fresh meat in the city itself.

Adventure Hooks

• The PCs camp up beside the pond for the night, unable to find accommodations elsewhere in the city. Sensing new prey, the mandragorgon puts in an appearance.
• The deaths of drug addicts and homeless people have gone unnoticed for weeks, but the recent discovery of the body of a local business owner on the shores of Tightwillow has kicked the city guard into action. The guard aren’t generally welcome in Ravenwall Village, so the party are hired to investigate and bring the killer to justice.
• The waters of Tightwillow Pond are rancid, but a small shrine on the northern side of the pond holds a fountain containing waters with potent healing properties. The party are recruited by the mother of a terminally ill young girl, who offers them a family heirloom (an amulent of second chances) in exchange for them braving the dangers of Tightwillow to bring her a vial of the fountain’s water.

Tightwillow Pond

The ambient noise of the city fades away as you step beneath the trees surrounding Tightwillow Pond. The air is uncomfortably warm and still, disturbed only by the buzz of mosquitos and the occasional distant hoot of an unseen owl. You can already smell the stagnant water, sour and salty and not at all pleasant. Now that you are here it is easy to see why people might claim the place is cursed.

1 – The Shrine

Two broken statues of white onyx are nestled beneath the trees in this small clearing. One appears the be the head of a raven, while the other has been so badly damaged that it is impossible to tell what it might once have been. A wide, shallow onyx bowl about two feet in diameter is embedded in a low plinth between the statues, though any liquid it may have once held has long since dried up.

The bowl in the ground is what locals refer to as “the fountain”, though it contains no water. A successful DC 16 Intelligence (Investigation) check reveals that the bowl is coated with a fine crystalline powder that can be collected into a vial or pouch of some kind, providing enough dust of restoration for one use.

2 – The Island

If the area around the pond felt lifeless, this island feels drained of life. The ground here is broken and uneven, full of loose rocks and exposed roots. The foliage is limp and browning, and the leaves on the trees that loom over you are spotted with disease. All around you are signs of recent human habitation; tattered tents and blankets, cold campfires, broken glass, scraps of rotting food, and even excrement litter the area.

This island was, until recently, the site of the encampment that made Tightwillow Pond such an unsavoury area. This is where the mandragorgon has been doing the majority of its hunting, and is where the creature is most likely to be encountered by the party.

Two wooden bridges stretch from the north and south shores of the pond to the island. They have no handrails or ropes, and their boards are broken and rotting.

Tightwillow Island Finds & Trinkets

1. A small leather satchel containing a broken piece of mirror, a razorblade, and a small paper wrap with a pinch of coarse red powder inside.
2. A long-cold campfire with a rusted metal tin thrust into the ashes. The thick brown sludge in the bottom of the tin was food, once.
3. A ragged stuffed bear with one eye. A tear on its leg has stuffing spilling out of it, and investigating closer reveals a single electrum piece shoved into the lining.
4. The body of a halfling boy who appears to have died fairly recently. His upper body is coated with a thick yellow powder that is clogging his eyes and nose. The powder appears natural in origin, possibly coming from a plant of some kind.
5. A small bundle of twigs and reeds that has been formed into a roughly humanoid shape. A slip of parchment is pinned to the front of its head with large thorns. It has a smiling face drawn on it in charcoal.
6. A small wooden bucket filled to the brim with chestnuts. Those at the bottom are crushed and beginning to rot, but those nearer the top still seem fine.

3 – The Boathouse

This long shed is only walled on three sides. The fourth side is open to the pond, and two wooden jetties extend out onto the water. A small rowboat is moored inside the boathouse, though it is partially sunk and has a number of holes in the hull.

4 – The Gazebo

The gazebo that stands on this large flat rock has seen better days. The white paint has flaked away in large strips, revealing the dark swollen wood beneath. Two benches sit beneath the canopy. A man in a long, moth-eaten coat is be slumped over one of them, though he is not moving.

The man is very dead. His head has been torn from his body, and close inspection reveals that it appears to have been twisted off. His upper torso is covered in a fine purple powder. This powder came from the mandragorgon’s paralysis ability, though it has no effect on characters who simply touch it.

Characters who search the man’s body find a pouch containing 8 copper pieces, a small piece of soapstone shaped like a raven’s head, and a note written in common from a person named Efril asking someone to meet them at the gazebo at sunrise.

Any characters who touch the man’s body must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw against disease or become poisoned until the disease is cured. Every 24 hours that elapse, the creature must repeat the saving throw, reducing its hit point maximum by 5 (1d10) on a failure. The disease is cured on a success. The creature dies if the disease reduces its hit point maximum to 0. This reduction to the target’s hit point maximum lasts until the disease is cured.

New Magic Items

Amulet of Second Chances

Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)

While attuned to this item you may choose to reroll a saving throw, keeping the higher result. You may choose to use this ability after you roll, but before the result is known. Once used, this item cannot be used again until you complete a long rest.

Dust of Restoration

Wondrous item, rare

This fine powder shimmers like oil on water. You can use an action to sprinkle the dust on a creature. The affected creature then gains the effect of the greater restoration spell.

New Monster – Mandragorgon

A mandragorgon is an evil, ambulatory plant creature. It looks like a humanoid creature that stands some 10 feet tall, with a thick central trunk and branch-like limbs. The lower half is a dense, tangled root system that extends beneath the earth. Its ‘face’ is a flat oval of bark; some have eye-like markings, though many are featureless.

The Blights of Spring. A mandragorgon’s head is crowned with a large frond of leaves that unfurl to reveal several large flowers. Each of these is capable of releasing a thick cloud of pollen that engulfed nearby creatures. The pollen of each individual flower has a unique – though equally horrible – effect. These flowers can be severed and rendered useless, but doing so is rarely easy.

Aberrant Flora. Little is known about the origins of the mandragorgons, but it is believed that they are the result of strange, twisted magics from the twisted places far beyond the Material Plane that have mingled with the essence of the fae realms. They are rarely encountered on the Material Plane, though they have been known to appear there.

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