Wishing Unwell
A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Dangerous Monsters for 5E over on Patreon. Dangerous Monsters 3 is on track for release by Easter. Here’s a preview. Here’s another preview.
Did you know that most of what I write for Spes Magna Games gets published on this site and then that’s it? In many cases, this is because I’m writing monsters or villains for game systems for which one cannot publish. For example, check these posts related to AD&D.
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And now for more fun with The Black Hack.
The hamlet of Blato has seen better times. Few residents remain. Most have abandoned their homes. With one exception, ruin has visited the surrounding farms, and the one remaining farm family fights a losing battle against the creeping blight that has devastated crops and livestock.
Blato’s end started when Eadgar Iarna, proprietor of the Brass Knave, decided to expand his basements. Workers broke through a layer of rock and plunged into flood caverns. The shift in pressure altered water levels, and ruined the hamlet’s well water. A few days later, the worms arrived, burrowing up through poorer residents’ hard-packed dirt floors in the dark of night. Nearly a dozen residents died screaming that night.
Between the contaminated well water, the deadly worms, and the altered water levels turning the streets and much of the immediate countryside into a sodden mess, the first typhus outbreak did not come as a surprise. Today, Blato is almost a ghost town. Eadgar remains, trying to eke out a living even as the Brass Knave slowly sinks into the muck. One farm family struggles to bring in a crop. A handful of others stubbornly refuse to leave. One of those who remains is a thief and possibly a murderer as well.
Giant Burrowing Worm
A thick as a man’s arm and twice as long, its smooth skin glistens with slime, its wedge-shaped head cracks open to reveal a jagged beak.
Hit Dice: 1
Damage: 1d4 (2)
Special: This horrid worm burrows through earth. It moves somewhere Close as part of an action at any stage of the move, or it can forgo its action and burrow somewhere Nearby. Its venomous bite forces a CON test to avoid paralysis. Make a new CON test at the end of each of your turns to recover.
