Dangers In The Mist
This post introduces the Mist Poltergeist, a mischievous creature that loves to torment travellers in the Arborhazy Hills!
Hey folks, it's been a while, but I'm back with the first of (hopefully) three new blog posts for May! Today we venture alongside the party as they arrive in the kingdom of Juthilyl, the northernmost country in Eonalon, and begin their journey north to find the cure for a deadly poison that has been inflicted upon the King - assuming they can make it past the mischievous Mist Poltergeists! Then, in the next post, get an overview of the whole continent of Eonalon - complete with two versions of the full continent map! Then finally, as the party arrive at the shores of Lake Clarandwell, you can expect a bumper haul of no less than 4 Adversary stat blocks and an Environment!
Hopefully that's enough to make up for my absence of late! Let's dive in to see where the party are today!
(Also, just a reminder that part of the reason for my variation in posting schedule is I don't want to reveal any secrets until my group have discovered them themselves, so sometimes I have to delay things until they find them when plans go off on a different track, as they are wont to do - don't forget to subscribe so you can be notified when new content goes live to ensure you don't miss a thing!)
The party have disembarked from their long journey over the Cauldron Sea at the city of Dawndrift, the capital of Juthilyl, and are now journeying north to Lake Clarandwell. As they pass the Arborhazy Hills and the mists descend, they come across some priests of Atumryn fighting for their lives - seemingly against the contents of their own wagons...
Today's post introduces the Mist Poltergeists, a mischievous adversary that turns your surroundings against you!
Darcy circled through the thickening fog, staff held out in front of her as the menacing laughter echoed all around. Suddenly, she felt something behind her - spinning she brought her weapon down with a crack, but it was only an old crate that had fallen off the wagon. Darcy shook her head in embarrassment - she was jumping at shadows - and turned back to face into the fog, only to see darkness fall upon her. She looked back once more to see the old box rise up to block the lantern-light, looming over her with one more echoing cackle of laughter...
Mist Poltergeists in their base form appear as small humanoid spirits made of smoky mist-like fog. These spirits live around the stone circles and barrows of the Arborhazy Hills - a fog-drenched highland that was heavily soaked in magic as part of the Lustre War. They love nothing more than messing with passing strangers - and if their fun is interrupted, they can quickly turn nasty! The abilities of a Poltergeist depend on what form they have taken, and to defeat one for good it needs to be removed from its new guise as quickly as possible - otherwise it will keep coming back!
The stat block for the base Poltergeist is as follows (all stat block links on Heart Of Daggers can be found at the end of the article!):
The key ability here is Mist-body Possession, which allows the Poltergeist to take over nearby objects and change their abilities based on the item they inhabit! This can lead to a really chaotic and fun battle as the group try to keep the creatures away from objects they might use, in order to whittle down their actual HP!
The stat blocks for the possessed items are as follows:
Each of the possessed stat blocks are hopefully relatively simple, to avoid too much admin for the GM running this encounter! This encounter works best in a location with lots of items for the Poltergeists to inhabit - my group encountered them as they were attacking a convoy from the temple of Atumryn, so there was plenty of books, crates, wagons, rocks, and trees for them to mess with. It is also good to provide some distance between objects though, so the players have a chance of isolating the creatures and preventing the poltergeists from taking new forms.
One word of warning about this encounter - I would adjust down the Battle Points calculation notably when using these creatures. While they are technically Skulks in their base form, the fact that they can become different types can throw off the difficulty of the encounter a bit - personally I'd say one per player character is more than enough to give a good challenge, and perhaps even less than this could still give a fun mini-challenge or random encounter.
I hope you enjoy using these in your games! Keep an eye out soon for the overview to the continent of Eonalon, and for that 5-in-1 post later this month! Subscribe to get updates when articles are published so you don't miss anything!
Stat Block Links
Tim Roddick-Hull
Tim Roddick-Hull
Tim Roddick-HullTim Roddick-Hull