Stone Drakes Themselves Look Like Living Statues, Seeming Like Ornate Carved Stone. As Drakes They Lack

Stone drakes themselves look like living statues, seeming like ornate carved stone. As drakes they lack wings and move around on all fours. When they bite creatures, so long as the drake can see, its eyes force transmutation upon the victim, petrifying them. It uses these eyes to reanimate creatures to serve it, and its lairs are full of them. Adventurers must act quickly to save fallen allies, as after 24 hours the creature dies, and the servant is no different than a zombie. The stone drakes eyes are useful for a wide variety of transmutation effects, such as spell components, creating spell scrolls, or magical items.

Lair actions under the cut

Lair Actions

On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the drake takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects; the drake can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:

Up to 3 statues in the lair that the drake can see reanimate, make a single weapon attack, before repetrifying.

One statue in the lair that the drake can see reanimates, breaths or otherwise creates a 60 foot cone, any creatures must make a DC 14 Dexterity or Constitution (DM's choice) saving throw or take 21 (6d6) damage of the dms choice of type.

Adventure: The Clockmaker’s Daughter

Setup: a generation ago you couldn’t visit a battlefield or costume ball without seeing one of Markus Relvolo’s marvelous clockwork soldiers. Originally a humble craftsman commissioned to create a single artificial guardsman for a noble’s estate, master Relvolo’s creation was so impressive that soon everyone, including the crown, wanted their own unsleeping guardians.   The riches rolled in, Relvolo was given a workshop and a royal commission, and soon his soldiers became emblematic of the nation’s formidable strength and forward thinking industry. 

The problem with clockwork soldiers is that however complex the mechanisms that drive their actions, they lack the common sense the gods gave to even the most brickheaded guard, being incapable of making judgement calls outside of their strict programming.  It was this strictness that led one of Relvolo’s creations to publicly and grusomely execute a trespasser on its owner’s estate. Nevermind the fact that the trespasser was a child who’d wandered from the public gardens, or that the murder happened right in front of said child’s mother, or that the noble had apparently been so protective of their front lawn they’d turned property defense to “extreme prejudice” in the clockwork’s decision making protocols. 

The scandal spread over the kingdom overnight, and by the next morning, Markus Relvolo and his creations were kicked to the curb, retroactively made monsters for the crime of another and dying in penniless infamy. 

Adventure Hooks: 

Where once they guarded palaces and temples, today most of Relvolo’s machines are consigned to the scrapheap. a paltry few were de-armed and sold as cheap labor, though most often they do backroom work, or pull night soil carts as even the lowest of the low does not want to be seen employing child-murdering machine. Poorly maintained these constructs are likely to go haywire, fulfilling their seemingly banal tasks with disastrous compliance.  The party may encounter an axewielding clockwork that having finished making firewood out of its assigned log pile has moved on to the walls of the surrounding houses.  

Heedless of their infamy, Criminals have no qualms about using these lethal automata, as their unquestioning lethality makes them Ideal muscle for those gangs capable of retaining a skilled salvage mechanic. What’s more, their ubiquity in the urban scrapheap makes them ideal boobytraps, indistinguishable from any of the other dozen clockwork hulks an unwary intruder might have passed that day.

Inheriting her father’s masterful skill and withering social stigma, Viola Relvolo, has worked her way out of squalor and is  intent on redeeming her father’s legacy. Life on the streets has given Viola no qualms about working with outlaws, and already she’s begun to weave her underworld contacts into the tentative foundations of a criminal syndicate reliant on her brilliance.  Unsatisfied with simply resurrecting her father’s creations, she labors to increase their thinking ability and reasoning, all the while equipping her criminal patrons with upgraded clockworks. 

It is believed that only the most twisted fey become bogeyman, as well as the victims they abduct; so long as they are male, can become bogeymen. The bogeyman looks like what the stories say he looks like. If a mother warns her son of a long thin man with knifes for hands who punishes rotten children, then the monster that appears before the child will be thin and tall with claws or metal daggers in place of fingers.

A bogeyman has its own preference for whether it's weapons are part of their body or held and this stays true no matter what the story of it is. Either way if it is slain it and any of its equipment melt into shadow.

They relish using their abilities to torment a creature, enjoying their growing realization that something is creeping nearby. They prefer lone targets as groups allow comfort to the victims, souring their taste. They only fight groups willingly if cornered or in their lair, where their victims and food sources are stored.

They usually haunt secluded locations but the most evil bogeymen are ones who become serial killers, tormenting entire towns and cities and feeding on the mass fear, in which case their powers grow but the likelihood that competent adventurers will find them rises as well.

Lair actions under the cut

Lair and Lair Actions

Bogeymen tend to haunt places where few people wander, like the abandoned shack just outside town, but arent shy of waiting under a bed or a closet. Once a bogeyman has thoroughly learned every inch of a building it can be treated as its lair, even while an unsuspecting family still lives in the house. Vermin, and spiders seem to show up out of nowhere, and the building becomes unsettling overnight.

Lair Actions

On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the bogeyman takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects; the bogeyman can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:

Any two creatures the bogeyman can see are assaulted by shadows from the corner of the room. provided the creatures are within 10 feet of each other and not in bright light they must make a DC 13 Strength saving throw or be pulled up to 15 feet towards the wall and be grappled until the end of their next turns.

A identical copy of the bogeyman forms in a point it can see within 60 feet of itself provided it and the point are not in bright light. This copy is physical but has 1 hit point, and can take no offensive actions but can pretend to. At the point of forming the bogeyman can choose to swap places instantaneously with its copy, forcing enemies to guess which one to attack. The double lasts until the bogeyman dismisses it as a bonus action, uses this lair action again, or dies, or the double takes any damage. In any case it shatters and disperses into its choice of vermin.

Shadows swirl in a 10 foot cube within 30 feet of the bogeyman, any creature in this area must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or lose all resistances until the next initiative count 20. Can be used on targets in any light level.

Regional Effects

The region containing a legendary bogeyman's lair is sullied by the bogeymans magic, which creates one or more of the following effects:

Creatures sleeping within or within 30 feet of the lair have difficulty sleeping, having a 50% chance to gain no benefit of resting in the area. Additionally these creatures lose their positive emotions over time.

Light sources dwindle twice as fast as normal, and if no creatures observe them for 20 minutes or longer they go out.

The air within the area blows with an unpleasant chill all hours of the day.

Creatures feel as if something is standing behind them breathing at all times.

If the bogeyman dies, these effects fade over the course of 1d4 days.

Dare: The Glittering Reef: 

“While the dragon may long be dead, there’s more than one predator in these waters. You best be quick if you wish to claim your prize.“

Setup: Generations ago the crystal clear waters of the Ildathan coast ran red with blood, as a terrible archdrake terrorized the trade routes and savaged any merchant ship it caught eyes on. Known to locals as Hullraker, this beast would use its powerful claws to crack open the body of ships to gorge itself on sailors and treasure alike. 

While its a myth that dragons eat gold, they do sometimes devour valuable objects to spit up into their hordes later. This habbit would eventually lead to the drake’s defeat, as a group of clever pirates tired of the drake’s meddling caste a series of golden cannonballs, then hollowed them out and filled them with black powder, and an alchemical compound that would ignite after being exposed to the drake’s insides for some length of time.  Loading up a dummy ship with their deadly decoys and piles of coin as bait, they watched in glee as the drake’s belly exploded mid air, showering the sea with golden shrapnel and sending Hullraker plunging into the reef below. 

The Challenge: Since the time of its death, treasure hunters have paddled out to the glimmering reef in the hopes of  reclaiming a portion of the dragons last, fatal meal. Having stripped most of the upper reef clear of coins. Now after years of plundering only the strongest of divers can make it down to the dark, shark infested shelf of the reef where the dragon’s bones and the bulk of its treasure remains. Tradition is that each diver only takes a single coin, and while one gold piece isn’t much to an adventure, a “drowned queen” (one of the particular printing of coins the pirates used for the bulk of their bait) is a mighty prize among sailors and other folk of the sea, said to confer the luck and cunning of the pirates that took Hullraker down. 

Stop by Geoff’s Artificery of Arcane Oddities and try out one of his new capsule machines! For the totally reasonable price of 10 gold or 1 platinum, you too can end up with a bizarre little item.

Something this anon has wanted to explore many a time- an adventure wherein traditionally 'evil' creatures go through a reverse dungeon crawl- escaping the fortress in order to desert the Dark Lord's armies!

Campaign Starter: From Under the Shadow

No where to go but up

Setup:  More than a mere underdark fortress, Ykandri’s Shackle is a marvel of engineering and hubris that only the Duergar could have managed. Filled with visions of industry and conquest, the architects tasked with building a simple lift through a miles long fissure through the world below let their ambitions sprawl, becoming a make-work project for their subterranean empire and a monument to the pride of their succession of dour and powermad rulers. 

Like any expansionist Military power, the Duergar of the “Great-Chain” conscript their defeated foes and societal rejects to do the worst of the labor, toiling away to expand the warrens supporting the Shackle or fending off the beasts of he dark vastness that infest the surrounding caverns. This is where we find our party, the lowest of the low, captives bound together by their mutual desire for escape. 

 Adventure Hooks: 

While freedom is their primary goal, the party must keep up appearances and thier first mission will be a crawl through an mine and adjoining excavation site that has recently become infested with underdark pests. This will give them a chance to show off their characters and you an opportunity to hammer home just how miserable life on the Shackle really is. What’s more, having them return victorious and then being forced to hand over their gear and trophies under threat of lashes will set up great minor taskmaster/guards villains that they can avenge themselves against on the way out. 

Have them plan their escape like a heist, rolling out a hastily drawn sketch of the Shackle standing between them and nearby underdark portals. Lay out what sidetasks they may need to perform or challenges they’ll need to overcome to get the resources they’ll need for their escape.  

While preparing for their great escape, the party hear whisperings of  some tumult among the upper ranks of the Clan’s hierarchy, something to do with a prisoner and the overreach of the notoriously wicked spymaster. Leadership may shuffle from time to time but the lot of those captive in the Shackle never does. “ Different Boot, Same Neck” goes the saying... at least it does until a blinding burst of divine light suffuses the fissure and a band of high-level heroes from the surface world come to rescue that prisoner and bring the Tyrants of the Great Chain down in the process. Pull this trigger before your party is fully ready to escape, or just as things go righteously wrong after they’ve decided to attempt a more risky escape.  It’ll be clear they need to get out while the getting’s good, now having to sprint through a warzone rather than sneak through a prison. 

Portals in the underdark are tricky things, leading an escaping party to all manner of potential locales ( that they may might not know ahead of time unless they stole the right information). Maybe they’ll end up in a disused mine on the outskirts of a city of new beginnings, a far cavern trading post with fortunes waiting to be made,    a friendly settlement of exiles and make their reputation while defending its swampy borders. Perhaps somewhere even more strange? 

Operation of the Shackle:   The Shackle was built to ferry supplies, thralls, and soldiers en-mass across the great altitudes of the fissure, a task that could otherwise take days of marching or carting and be equivalent to descending a tall mountain. Instead, cargo is loaded from one level into an adjoining  fortified platform attached to the great chain, which is raised as the other side decends, until it comes level with another  platform. Cargo from one is loaded into the other, and then the mechanism reverses, sending the first platform down while the second platform ascends the way it came. By this way are the Shackle’s contents moved where they need to go by way of an overly elaborate, two way bucket chain, a process important to know should the party seek to escape their current level, or later should they wish to return to the site of their imprisonment and raid its ruins. 

Future Adventures: 

During the hatching of their escape plan, the party are slipped a few vital supplies by a drider merchant who did a little black market business on the shackle and took a shine to them in the process. Delighted to find the party no worse for ware ( despite possibly hopping dimensions) and that they’re now in a position to afford his more exclusive stock, the drider will be happy to send them on missions to fill their pockets then sell them things to empty them again. 

The Party and their favorite spider boy aren't the only survivors of the Shackle, as one of the mercenary captains hired to keep order in the prison fortress has made it out with a newly formed legion of followers, and is interested in carving out a new territory for himself that just so happens to include the party’s new home.  

It’s inevitable that the party left unfinished business on the Shackle, and some time into their adventures they may feel the call to return to their one time prison/home. Thoroughly in shambles after the heroes hit it with everything they had, the seat of empire has now become a patchwork of warlords fighting over the remnants of power, with vast stretches inhabited by the beasts of underdark attracted by the slaughter. Bonus points if the party runs into the pests they first fended off in the mines, grown in size, threat and swarming number without their population being culled.