The Vulcanverse series consists of five open-world gamebooks designed for solo roleplaying, but they provide such a sweeping story arc that they'd make a good basis for an epic multiplayer campaign too. Converting them all to a series of RPG modules would be a true labour of Herakles -- if Herakles had been a gaming geek -- and would take years. But I couldn't resist taking just one subquest, when the hero has to sneak into the city of living skeletons, and seeing how that looks as a multiplayer scenario.
"The City of Bones" (a scenario set in the Vulcanverse)
The Spartoi (singular: Spore) are the ‘sown men’, a race of living skeletons that arise when a dragon’s tooth is planted in the earth. They inhabit Ostopolis, a city in the desert, and send out patrols to scour the dunes for dragon skeletons.
‘In the early days they were forever laying into each other, seeing as how they hate everything that walks or crawls. But over the years they formed themselves into regiments, appointing their own commanders from those that won a game of knucklebones. They took over the forts that the Myrmidons built to control these lands back in the day. Now the Spartoi range up and down the desert in search of living foes to kill and skin or else enslave.’
Each Spore belongs to a phyle (plural: phylai) depending on whether it was created from an incisor, molar, canine, etc. There are ten phylai:
- Calcaneus
- Capitate
- Hallux
- Hamate
- Lunate
- Navicular
- Pisiform
- Scaphoid
- Talus
- Triquetrum
When the Spartoi catch a living person they skin them and stitch their preserved flesh into a garment that the Spore puts on like a suit of clothes. Wearing a stolen skin earns the Spore status so that it is accorded great honour by other Spartoi – until the skin rots and falls off. The Spartoi wearing the freshest skins are the chieftains of the phylai.
The lost standard
‘The city of the Myrmidons fell to invaders and a small band retreated into the desert with their sacred battle standard. Bad luck for them that they strayed into the patch of desert where the Spartoi live. Myrmidons were the hardest bastards you could hope to face – as you’d expect of Achilles’s own companions – but the Spartoi outnumbered them ten to one. They skinned them and so in a way they carried the standard to triumph in the Spartoi homeland. At least, their pelts did.’
The player-characters’ mission is to retrieve the ancient battle standard of the Myrmidons, which was taken centuries ago by the Spartoi. To do so the characters must cross the desert, avoiding or defeating any Spartoi patrols they encounter, and find a way to enter the city of Ostopolis.
The characters’ motivation could be gold or they could be helping to restore the Myrmidons’ own city of Iskandria to its past glory. Inevitably the adventure will share some of the characteristics of a heist, so some may be tempted to use Blades in the Dark or a variant thereof. But I maintain that genre is the bane of good fiction and good roleplaying alike – it’s like bran for storytelling, it exists only to make it easy for writers or GMs to slide one out – and so I counsel instead using any system that does not lean into the obvious tropes. This being the 40th anniversary of Dragon Warriors, I’m going to be unashamedly partial and use that, but even D&D would do the job fine so you’ll find 5e stat blocks at the end too.
The adventure suits a party of half a dozen characters with average rank about 5th, bearing in mind that it will be difficult for them to be conspicuously well-armed or -armoured in Ostopolis. (If using 5e rules then characters should be of around 10th or 11th level.)
Ostopolis
Ostopolis is a half-ruined city of louring black basalt that stands in the heart of a vast stony landscape carpeted with shifting banks of wind-blown sand. Sentries patrol the walls, staring out with hate and envy across the desolate wastes towards the lands of men.
Did living beings once walk those cracked streets, barter in the now dust-choked marketplace, and cheer their sportsmen in the arena that looms like a giant broken pot against the sky? Now it swarms with the fleshless grinning hordes of the Spartoi, enacting a macabre mockery of daily urban existence. By day it is oppressively hot, the air shimmering as it rises off the cyclopean blocks of black masonry. By night the desert wind brings a chilling cold.
The streets of Ostopolis are wide avenues of cracked paving where sand sifts in endlessly shifting threads and lies banked in the gaping doorways. No living city is ever so uncannily quiet. Apart from the occasional croaking cries of glee or hate, and the clattering of bones echoing down the streets like hollow sticks, much of the time the only sound is the whispering of the wind through the ruins. The battle standard of the Myrmidons is usually kept in the Palace, and is taken with other trophies of war to be displayed at the Arena when the King goes to watch the games. Characters would have no obvious way of knowing that and will have to observe or (very carefully) tease out the information in conversation with Spartoi.
Ways into the city
To avoid immediate execution, a living person must either pass themselves off as a Spore or else appear to be a captive enslaved by Spartoi. A magical illusion to make the intruder seem to be skeletal would work, but has the problem that such spells are usually of limited duration. Another option available to Assassins, who understand the skilful application of cosmetics, is to disguise oneself as a Spartoi noble clad in cured human skin. (The Assassin could also apply the disguise to companions, but part of effectively carrying off a disguise involves bravado and acting ability, so the disguised character uses their own STEALTH to avoid detection, not that of the one who made them up.)
As the Spartoi take human slaves, it is not necessary for all members of a party to impersonate Spartoi. Some could pretend to be living captives, though doing so means they can’t have any weapons or armour. To have the captives outnumber the captors would be highly suspicious, however, so there is no getting around some of the characters using an illusion or disguise – or else to take along a number of skeletons raised by Animate Bones spells, but it is hard to make those pass as Spartoi because of their inability to communicate and their mindless obedience. There is thus no way to avoid at least one member of the party attempting to impersonate a Spore.
In The Hammer of the Sun (Vulcanverse book 2 -- and did I mention there are spoilers ahead?) you earn the gratitude of a crippled Spore by sparing its life, and in return it escorts you into the city. Alternatively you might be resurrected after being skinned, which gives you the opportunity to enter Ostopolis purporting to be the Spore who took your face, though you have to be careful to avoid running into your ‘alter ego’. Another option sees you turned into a living skeleton – hopefully a temporary condition. Player-characters may be able to come up with other ploys.
Patrols of Spartoi encountered in the desert consist of 8-12 fighters of whom a quarter will be veterans and the rest footsoldiers. Their main purpose is to prevent looting of dragon skeletons buried in the dunes; the Spartoi treasure such skeletons for their teeth, the only source of new Spartoi. They are extremely concerned about dragon eggs, which are very rare and which they will fight to the death to protect. A single character could stalemate an entire Spartoi patrol by threatening to damage an egg.
The Crania
The Crania are the secret police of the city. They are tall and heavy-set and wear black tunics, disdaining the use of cured human skins for Crania members have no need of individual status. They have the authority to accost and search anyone other than a noble (that is, a Spore wearing human skin) or royalty.
Each time characters move to a new location in the city they have a chance (say 1 in 6) of running into a Crania patrol. Those wearing cured human skins are given more respect, and their belongings not summarily searched, but the Crania will carefully scrutinize them just the same. Ordinary Spartoi (or those who seem to be ordinary Spartoi) may be questioned, and if their replies are unsatisfactory the Crania may decide to search them, confiscating items that take their fancy. Slaves had better speak only when spoken to, as the Crania have the power to take them for immediate execution or deliver them to the arena to fight in gladiatorial contests.
Crania patrols typically number half a dozen, each of them a fair match for a player-character. In the city they can quickly summon backup, so it is highly inadvisable to pick a fight with them.
The Sewers
The sewers of Ostopolis cannot have been built for the Spartoi, who have no need of them. As it’s unlikely they would build such an extensive and capacious network of underground tunnels for the benefit of living slaves, this is a strong argument for the theory that the city was originally inhabited by the living and conquered by the Spartoi in ancient times. One theory is that the city's original founders used the Spartoi as soldiers, but that when one Spartoi discovered the secret of their creation it became possible to dispense with their former masters.
Gates into the sewers are locked, but if characters can gain access then it can be a useful way of navigating the city without detection. The problem is then one of navigation. In the absence of a guide or magical direction-finding, characters will need to roll Intelligence or less on d20 at each junction to take the correct route. (Roll individually in secret and inform each player of what they think.)
There is no access to the sewers from the Palace.
The Arena
The arena looms like a giant broken pot against the sky. The fifty-metre outer walls of the arena are tiled with travertine that sparkles palely in the noon sun – a dazzling contrast to the sombre black stone of the rest of the city.
Spectators enter through one of several great arches, each four times the height of a man and decorated with faded and peeling stucco reliefs. A short flight of steps opens onto a balcony that leads to the spectator area. Within, banks of seats climb in row after row around the sweeping sides of the amphitheatre. In the middle is a circular arena at least a hundred paces across. There are tunnels at the sides, sealed with massive bronze gates, where the gladiators and animals enter.
The royal throne is on a wide platform set close to the arena’s edge, just a few metres above the floor of packed sand where combats are fought to the death. The seating gets less impressive the further it is from the ringside. Right at the top, the highest tier of seats is shaded from the sun by an awning of stitched hides – recognizably human from the flaccid eyeless faces, dangling empty fingers, and clumps of dead dry hair.
Drums are pounded to signify the beginning of a bout. Living captives are driven out into the arena, usually already wounded, some of them with bandaged stumps where a limb has been hacked off. Intact skins are far too valuable to waste in the arena. These poor wretches stand blinking and confused until skeletal lions are released. The crowd hector the victims with shouts, promising them freedom and riches if they survive, but the spark of hope has already left them. They are quickly torn apart by the lions. Soon the sand is soaked in blood and living slaves – all of them old or crippled – scurry out to sweep it clean.
Occasional contests between Spartoi gladiators of rival phylai, seeking to avenge a slight or settle a matter of ancient honour, provide some excitement amid the tedious inevitability of slaughter. But such bouts are few and far between.
Player-characters will not find the audience at the arena a useful source of information. Spectators come to watch the fights, not chat about the city layout or where captured battle standards are kept. If the King attends the games (1 chance in 3 each day) then the battle standards are brought and installed along the back of the royal dais. In principle characters could stage a fight to get close to the standards, leap up and seize one, and then try to escape via the tunnels off the arena and thence to the sewers. It should all go fine as long as they don’t run into the Ossuary.
The Ossuary
The Ossuary is a skeletal gladiator more than three metres tall assembled from the bones of men, giants, and monsters. Its face comprises the pelvic girdle of a human or giant ape, the gaping foramina being the eye sockets and the rest of the pelvis a huge blunt crest. The mouth was taken from the skull of a reptile. The limbs are thick and hard, built using the bones of elephants, and it has a third arm consisting of a whole string of forelimbs that curls up from its spine like a scorpion’s tail. In each hand it wields an axe.
The Ossuary has its lair in the tunnels below the arena and is brought forth to fight the most powerful gladiators.
The Hippodrome
In its heyday the hippodrome must have presented a magnificent sight. Three tiers of stone benches rise to a height of over twenty metres around a central oval race-track six hundred metres long. There is room for over a hundred thousand spectators, though the Spartoi are not nearly so numerous as that. The sparse groups of onlookers, little huddles of bone dwarfed by the grandeur of their surroundings, only serve to accentuate the vast emptiness of the now-ruinous structure.
Chariot races are held here throughout the afternoon. The chariots themselves are battered bronze tubs spotted with green patches of corrosion and the horses, like the drivers, are animated skeletons.
The champions of past races are a fearsome sight with missing bones and shattered skulls. You see one hulking brute with ebony prosthetics replacing half the bones in his body. Another has lost the whole top of his skull from the bridge of the nose up, though the lack of a cranium doesn’t seem to affect his control of the chariot.
Charioteers compete two at a time, one on the inner track and one on the outer. There are endless debates as to which track gives the advantage; the inner is shorter but demands greater control in the turns. If characters wish to make a bet, the GM secretly rolls 9d10 for one charioteer’s chance of victory, and the other’s is 100 minus that.
If a character placing a bet has any experience with chariot racing, the GM secretly rolls d20 against the character’s Intelligence and if that roll is successful the GM tells them which racer is the favourite and whether the chances are within 10% of each other. Characters could also be influenced by the prevailing bets, of course.
There is a fee of 5 obols for watching the races which is charged when a spectator leaves the hippodrome. Failure to pay guarantees that the Crania will be summoned.
Taverns
The tavern presents a macabre scene like something out of a satirical play. Skeletons lounge at the tables outside drinking cups of gold dust, which trickles out of their ribs and is cast away on the wind.
Inside, a stygian gloom replaces the stark white sunshine. Here the drinkers are more subdued, hunched over their mugs in a brooding attitude that makes you wonder if they are aware of the horror of their existence, their travesty of real life.
Gossip in the taverns frequently comprises racing tips at the hippodrome or gladiatorial tips at the arena. Because status in Spartoi society is fluid, shifting according to slaves captured and skins taken, tavern talk also often centres around who is currently riding high and who is on the way down – ‘That pelt he’s wearing was taken from an Amazon warrior, sure, but that was two months ago and it’s getting a bit frayed. He’ll need a new kill soon if he wants to stay the big swinging scapula around here.’
It's not impossible that the characters would eventually hear mention of the battle standards by hanging around the taverns, but that could take a long time.
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The Marketplace
The market square is a wide plaza riven with fissures and tumbled black masonry. The awnings of ramshackle stalls hang listlessly in the sweltering heat. Most of the goods on sale are the spoils of plunder, bartered more as trophies than for any intrinsic value. You may see hats, gloves, children’s toys, skin creams, pots of kohl, knives and spoons, silk scarves and sacks of dried beans.
This is another place to listen out for rumours. As merchants are always willing to indulge a potential customer, there is a better chance of steering conversation around to the subject of battle standards, though the characters must be on their guard as the Crania keep a close watch on the marketplace.
The Royal Palace
During the day the palace is a hive of activity with skeletal guards patrolling briskly, courtiers coming and going in their stolen skins, and living slaves scurrying through the marble-paved corridors on various chores.
As night falls, the hubbub of activity subsides. Soft moonlight falls in shafts through the high windows. The slaves curl up in any corner they can find, the nobles go off to their banquets, and the soldiers of the night watch prowl in silence through the vasty halls.
The entrance courtyard is planted with dead trees. At all times there will be a few slaves going about their chores. These are captives whom the Spartoi have spared because they are too old or crippled to be worth skinning. Most likely these slaves wouldn’t alert their skeletal masters even if they saw an intruder, as they have learnt how callous and indiscriminate the Spartoi concept of justice is. But the player-characters may not want to rely on that, so even if entering the palace under cover of night it pays to use stealth.
Filigree panels of green jade filter the blistering sunlight and the icy moonlight alike, leaving the interior of the palace thickly clustered with shadow. Marble-floored passages, galleries and stairways form a maze in which every footfall echoes unnervingly. Fortunately there are heavy stone plinths, deep alcoves, and vast amphora filled with sprays of dried-out blooms – a multitude of places in which to hide from the occasional patrol of sentries.
The trick will be finding the throne room, given that the screened windows block clear view of the sky and it is easy to lose one’s bearings in moving from hall to hall. Roll Intelligence or less on d20 to match your current position against a mental image of the palace seen from outside.
The Spartoi do not have significantly better night vision than most living people, so the palace is lit even at night by dim lanterns hung in recesses high in the walls. Eventually the characters will make their way to a set of massive, silver-studded mahogany doors. With effort they ease these open. Beyond, lit by flaring torches, is King Incus’s throne room. There is 1 chance in 10 that the King will be encountered here at night – during the day he’s almost always here and surrounded by courtiers and soldiers, so the player-characters will hopefully have the sense not to try and swipe the standard then.
The walls of the throne room are decorated with trophies: faces peeled from foes whom the Spartoi considered especially worthy. They hang in eternal expressions of dismay or hate, gazing sightlessly on their conqueror.
The battle standards seized across centuries of warfare stand in a row behind the basalt throne. Each bears as its crest, fashioned of gold or copper, the head of an animal sacred to the nation who once carried it into battle. There are five, respectively with the head of an eagle, fish, dragon, ant, and the last bears a human skull.
Players will know that the standard with the emblem of an ant’s head is the one they want – but will the characters? If they have visited Iskandria then they’ll have seen it as a ubiquitous symbol throughout the city. Likewise, if hired to obtain the standard then their employer will certainly have made sure they know what they’re looking for. Those who have simply travelled here as opportunist thieves, having heard that the people of Iskandria will pay well to recover the standard, may not have taken the time to research it, in which case they must take their pick. Each standard has significance, which can be determined later in the campaign, but none has the value of the ant-headed one.
Taking all five standards is going to rule out a stealthy retreat. These things are two metres long, cumbersome, and awkwardly balanced. Moreover, the skull-headed standard shouts out an alarm if anyone touches it, summoning the King and 6-36 of his praetorian guards within ten rounds. Even if the skull standard is left untouched, the King has a 5% chance of wandering in (unaccompanied) for each minute the characters linger in the throne room.
Unlike his coterie of nobles, who are all clad in stolen human skins, King Incus disdains to emulate the living. He wears a crown and cloak but otherwise his bones are bare, polished to a gleaming sheen of whiteness. And one other thing marks him out from all other Spartoi. Inside his ribcage is a red, beating heart.
Leaving the city
You look back at the walls of Ostopolis by moonlight. It is intensely eerie, like a place found in a dream that leaves you on waking with indistinct feelings of unease.
Once they have the standard, the characters won’t want to hang around – unless one or more of the party has been arrested by the Crania, in which case they may feel the need to mount a rescue attempt.
For a quick wind-up (with possible complications) if the characters were engaged by a patron he or she has provided them with an Astral Gate scroll for instant getaway. The snag is that the portal has a chance of closing after each character goes through (see Dragon Warriors rules) so they have to decide who uses it first.
Otherwise they’ll have to flee across the desert. The Spartoi will send out patrols in pursuit, and they are accomplished trackers, so the final sequence then becomes a fighting retreat over the dunes. Any time a Spartoi patrol catches up with the characters they’ll need to make sure that no Spore gets away, otherwise it will bring ever more patrols down on them as the search area narrows.
If they get to safety (the Spartoi will not follow them out of the desert) and if they have the right standard the characters can claim their reward. In Iskandria that means honour and the freedom of the city. A more mercenary payoff sets the monetary value of the standard at around 50,000 gold pieces, or perhaps the equivalent in services and accoutrements that their patron may provide if he or she is feeling generous.
Dragon Warriors stats
These stats are based on a party of 5-7 characters of around 5th rank.
Spartoi veteran
Attack 16 damage
depends on weapon (sword, spear, javelin)
Defence 10 AF 3
(but 4 vs stabbing weapons)
Magical Defence 7 Movement 10m (20m)
Evasion 5
Stealth 14 Perception
8
HP 1d6+9 Rank-equivalent: 5th
Spartoi footsoldier
Attack 13 damage
depends on weapon (sword, spear, javelin)
Defence 7 AF 2
(but 3 vs stabbing weapons)
Magical Defence 3 Movement 10m (20m)
Evasion 4
Stealth 13 Perception
6
HP 1d6+6 Rank-equivalent: 1st
The Ossuary
Attack 28 Axe
(d8+2, 8) three times per round
Defence 20 AF 4
(but 5 vs stabbing weapons)
Magical Defence 16 Movement
12m (20m)
Evasion 4
Stealth 3 Perception
13
HP 36 Rank-equivalent: 14th
King Incus
Attack 27 sword
(d8+1, 5)
Defence 21 AF 0
(but 2 vs stabbing weapons) and will grab a shield
Magical Defence 16 Movement
10m (20m)
Evasion 7
Stealth 14 Perception
13
HP 25 Rank-equivalent: 15th
Special abilities: Expert Parry, Swordmaster, Weapon skill (sword), Force
Field (Mystic ability, one use per day)
Locating this in Legend
Andrea Odoni, a wealthy collector of objets d’art in Charoa, believes that the standard of the Royal Squadron remains in the possession of a Badawin sheik at a fabled oasis city in the heart of the desert. ‘The city is called Eazmium,’ Andrea states confidently. ‘It lies in the zhim al-khalili, “the Empty Quarter”, and is ruled by Sheik Sandan, whose name means “the Anvil of God”. He jealously guards the standard of the Eurytionid kings, for he believes it gives him authority over all other tribes. His are a warlike people, the Zareat, and they will not part with the standard voluntarily. Go there, obtain the royal standard by whatever means you deem appropriate, and deliver it to me, and I will fill these six caskets for you with gold, and with silver these other six.’
‘How will we know the standard?’ the characters might reasonably ask.
‘It bears the effigy of a fox’s head cast in the white gold of the Katanosan hills.’
‘And how do you know these things?’ a character might venture to add.
Andrea smirks, gesturing towards his library. ‘I have bought all the knowledge of the world. The things that travellers have seen and heard, the stories told by the desert nomads, even the secrets that wizards’ familiars bring to them with a whiff of brimstone fumes. There is no question – the standard is there for the taking.’
In the Legend version of the scenario, nothing is changed except that the standard is, as Andrea thinks, crested by a gold fox-head. Everything else – the Spartoi, the half-ruined city, King Incus – are as detailed previously in the Vulcanverse version. The characters may get more accurate information from trade caravans en route, though the Badawin shun the heart of the Empty Quarter (‘al-rubʿ al-khali’, incidentally, not what Andrea said) because of the stories of fleshless ghouls that dwell there.
Dungeons & Dragons stats
As mentioned above, these stats assume a party of around half a dozen characters averaging 10th or 11th level. And be sure to give the stats a reality check before you use them, as I don't play 5e so I'm just going by examples I found online.
Spartoi veteran (5e)
Armor Class 15
Hit Points 50 (9d8 +9)
Speed 30 ft
|
STR |
DEX |
CON |
INT |
WIS |
CHA |
|
13 (+1) |
14 (+2) |
15 (+2) |
12 (0) |
12 (0) |
12 (0) |
Damage Vulnerabilities: Bludgeoning
Damage Immunities: Poison, Necrotic
Condition Immunities: Exhaustion, Poisoned; effects that specifically target
undead (eg Turn Undead) because Spartoi are born as living skeletons and so are
not strictly undead
Senses: Passive Perception 11
Languages: Common, Spartoi
Challenge 3
Proficiency Bonus +3
Tactical Advantage: The Spartoi veteran has advantage on attack rolls against a creature if at least one of the veteran's allies is within 5 feet of the creature and the ally isn't incapacitated.
Phalanx Formation: If at least two Spartoi footsoldiers and/or veterans are adjacent, their AC increases by +1, representing shield walls and tight formations.
Actions
• Sword. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8+ 3) piercing damage.
• Javelin. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit (+5 if thrown), reach 5 ft. or range 30/120 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) piercing damage.
• Parry. The Spartoi veteran adds 3 to its AC against one melee attack that would hit it. To do so, the veteran must see the attacker and be wielding a melee weapon.
Spartoi footsoldier (5e)
Armor Class 14
Hit Points 35 (6d8 + 8)
Speed 30 ft.
|
STR |
DEX |
CON |
INT |
WIS |
CHA |
|
10
(+0) |
14
(+2) |
15
(+2) |
11
(0) |
9
(−1) |
9
(−1) |
Damage Vulnerabilities:
Bludgeoning
Damage Immunities: Poison, Necrotic
Condition Immunities: Exhaustion, Poisoned; effects that specifically target
undead (eg Turn Undead)
Senses: Passive Perception 9
Languages: Common, Spartoi
Challenge 1
Proficiency Bonus +2
Phalanx Formation: If at least two Spartoi footsoldiers and/or veterans are adjacent, their AC increases by +1, representing shield walls and tight formations.
Actions
· Sword. Melee Weapon Attack: +4
to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) piercing damage.
· Javelin. Melee or Ranged Weapon
Attack: +4 to hit (+5 if thrown), reach 5 ft. or range 30/120 ft., one target.
Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) piercing damage.
The Ossuary (5e)
Armor Class 17
Hit Points 150 (18d12 + 33)
Speed 30 ft.
|
STR |
DEX |
CON |
INT |
WIS |
CHA |
|
20 (+5) |
12 (+2) |
20 (+5) |
9 (−1) |
8 (−1) |
10 (−1) |
Damage Vulnerabilities: none
Damage Immunities: Necrotic, Poison
Condition Immunities: Exhaustion, Frightened, Paralyzed, Poisoned; effects
that specifically target undead (eg Turn Undead)
Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 9
Languages: Common, Spartoi
Challenge 14
Proficiency Bonus +6
Actions
· Multiattack. The Ossuary makes three axe attacks each round.
· Axe.
Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (3d6 + 5)
slashing damage.
· Bleeding Wound: When the Ossuary hits with its axe, the target
must succeed on a DC 16 Constitution saving throw or take 1d10 slashing damage
at the start of each turn. The target can make another saving throw at the end
of each turn to stop the bleeding.
· Haemorrhaging Strike: On a critical hit, the target takes an
additional 2d10 slashing damage at the start of their next turn unless they or
an ally use an action to stanch the wound (requiring a DC 15 Medicine check or
magical healing).
King Incus (5e)
Armor Class 16
Hit Points 187 (15d10 + 90)
Speed 30 ft.
|
STR |
DEX |
CON |
INT |
WIS |
CHA |
|
22 (+6) |
12 (+1) |
22 (+6) |
12 (+1) |
14 (+2) |
16 (+3) |
Saving Throws: Str +11, Con +11, Wis +7
Skills: Athletics +11, Intimidation +8, Perception +7
Damage Vulnerabilities: Bludgeoning; Beating Heart (Incus has a living heart within his ribcage. If the heart takes 30 damage, Incus is stunned until the end of his next turn. An opponent can target the heart with an attack if Incus is grappled, restrained, or incapacitated. The heart has AC 13 and the same immunities as Incus.)
Damage Immunities: Poison, Necrotic
Condition Immunities: Exhaustion, Paralyzed, Poisoned, Frightened, Charmed, all effects
that specifically target undead (eg Turn Undead)
Senses: Passive Perception 17
Languages: Common, Spartoi
Challenge 15 (13,000 XP)
Proficiency Bonus +5
Abilities
·
Indomitable Resilience. When King Incus is reduced to 0 hit points for
the first time in combat, he regains 40 hit points at the start of his next
turn unless he was reduced to 0 by radiant damage or a critical hit.
·
Bleeding Strikes. When King Incus hits with his greatsword, the
target must succeed on a DC 18 Constitution saving throw or suffer 5 (1d10)
slashing damage at the start of each of its turns for 1 minute. The creature
can make another save at the end of each of its turns to end the effect.
·
Master of Battle. King Incus makes opportunity attacks without
expending a reaction, but he can only use this against a single creature once
per turn.
· Legendary Resistance (once per day). If King Incus fails a saving throw, he can choose to succeed instead.
Actions
·
Multiattack. King Incus makes three attacks with his
Greatsword of the Tyrant.
·
Greatsword of the Tyrant. Melee Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, reach 5
ft., one target. Hit: 20 (4d6 + 6) slashing damage, plus 7 (2d6) necrotic
damage. On a critical hit, the target suffers an additional 10 (3d6) slashing
damage.
·
Hurl Javelin. Ranged Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, range 30/120
ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) piercing damage.
· Bone-Crushing Strike (Recharge 5–6). King Incus strikes with overwhelming force. The target must make a DC 18 Strength saving throw or take 20 (4d8 + 2) bludgeoning damage and be knocked prone and stunned until the end of their next turn. On a successful save, they take half damage and are not stunned.
Legendary
Actions (3/Turn)
·
Tyrant’s Glare. King Incus forces a creature he can see within
30 feet to make a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or be frightened for 1 minute. The
target can repeat the save at the end of its turns.
·
Command the Dead. A Spartoi within 60 feet of King Incus can use
its reaction to move up to its speed and make a weapon attack.
· Greatsword Strike (Costs 2 Actions). King Incus makes one extra attack with his Greatsword of the Tyrant.
Lair
Actions (if in his throne room)
On
initiative count 20 (losing ties), King Incus can use one of the following
effects:
· Call for reinforcements. 1d4+1 Spartoi warriors (75% footsoldiers, 25% veterans) are summoned to join the battle.
·
Shattered Ground. The floor cracks open. All creatures on the
ground within 20 feet must make a DC 18 Dexterity saving throw or fall prone.
· Dark Majesty. Until the next round, King Incus has resistance to all damage, and any enemy that starts its turn within 10 feet of him must make a DC 16 Charisma saving throw or have disadvantage on attacks against him until the start of their next turn.
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