The ABC's of DND: C is for...

Today we are taking a deep dive. At first I thought it would be cool to do a Couatl, bit after deciding that a Couatl was too much like a dragon to count (what with this whole series being about taking the dragons out of D&D), I decided to delve into the D&D vault.

For this we are visiting 3rd edition (well 3.5), so of course the challenge rating of 11 means fuck all, and the lore is frankly ropey at best. But sometimes as a DM you just wanna pick something purely for the cool factor. It’s like those moments when someone in the party, chaos gremlins I am looking at you, asks if they can lick the blood soaked cursed object. You as the DM have to decide how mechanically this is going to work, because frankly, it’s too much fun to say no. (The answer is of course a constitution check followed by a wisdom saving throw, fail one and you just take a little damage, fail both and you are now cursed to only taste blood at every meal, and maybe the object speaks to you in the voice of an ex you least want to bump into on a bad day). Besides, while I know it’s not a hugely popular opinion, I like 3.5. There I said it, come for me tabletop nerds, I am ready. But this is the system I cut my tabletop teeth on, sitting in my best friend's kitchen with a bag of microwave popcorn and a carefully crafted (wince) half-elf rogue. Would I go back to playing it? Probably not, but 3.5 stumbled so that other TTRPG’s could soar over dwarven mountain homes. So for that, I doff my hat this week and I give you… Heat. Heavy, ever present heat, that dries the mouth until the skin on your lips are chapped and sharp. Nothing soft can survive out here. Not for long. The sun beats overhead, so hot it seems to ring in your ears. You have been walking this barren landscape for days, and if it were not for the druid in your party able to cast Create or Destroy Water, you would have had to turn back long ago. A small flock of vultures circles overhead. They have been following you for two days now. They seem to know something you don’t. Here in the heart of the vast expanse of Anauroch, every step comes with a price. The weight of the packs on your back is grueling. Every meal that you hunt is hard won, and never enough. You cannot remember the last time you didn’t feel sand in every inconvenient crevice. At night, temperatures plummet, and you have to huddle around a campfire to keep the cold and predators at bay. There has been scant rest, and you have considered turning back more than once. On the fifth day the endless dunes of the horizon are at last broken. At first you think perhaps the vision ahead of you is a mirage. The heat of the air curling to form a break in the landscape. However as you struggle on you soon realise those cliffs are real, those ruins material. And for the first time in days you feel relief. Relief that you will soon be able to plunder dark catacombs of the ancient city of Oreme. It is a place of legend, lost to the sands, and thought to be nothing more than the ravings of those who lost their minds to the relentless heat. However you cries of celebration come too soon. As soon you realise the sand is moving in front of you, around you. Great worm-like tendrils slithering to trap you, to draw you towards a sight that is so unnatural and grotesque that for a moment you find yourself paralyzed by fear. You have heard of mummies before, of creatures raised from the dead, but this… this is the end of the world made manifest. This is a Crawling Apocolypse. Making its first appearance alongside the Untheric Pantheon in the 3.5e module Sandstorm, the crawling apocalypse is going to take a little reworking to fit into your 5e games. However I would argue that while we all might agree the clunky mechanics of 3.5 are better left to the past, some things are still worth carrying forward, or rather dragging across the barren sands. With dried heads resembling leathery mollusks and barbs on their tentacles, they are a rare but memorable encounter. The Crawling Apocalypse is the mummified remains of a giant cephalopod (that’s a giant squid or octopus if you are like me and have to look that sort of stuff up on wikipedia). Given form through necromantic magic long lost to the ages, the sight of a Crawling Apocalypse was said to be so terrible as to cause temporary paralysis. It also has the ability to inflict mummy rot through its touch. With that in mind, the Crawling Apocalypse can be the perfect ambush predator for your game. Mummy rot is a minor form of the Flesh Rot curse/disease. Mummy rot can be of variable strength, ranging from something that prevents those infected from healing, to more extreme cases suffocating from sand in the lungs and your body turning to dust. Even minor cases are fatal unless cured. Cures vary depending on the type of mummy rot, so with someone in your party getting infected, it is a time for the clerics to really shine with those medicine checks. Depending on whether you class it as a disease or a curse, cures can vary, but from the moment a player has been infected a countdown should be implemented. This can be a great way to really galvanise a party who struggle with making spontaneous decisions. You may even want to consider extending the initiative past the point of combat. Outside of the harrowing effect their appearance and touch have on wayward desert wanderers, not an awful lot is known about these behemoths of the sand. We know they were created in ancient times by necromancers, who wanted a not-so living weapon to do their dark bidding. Whether that was guarding ancient tombs or carrying out some long lasting revenge is unclear. Once formed however, it seems that the magic which has created them continued to persist, giving them a form of life long after their masters, and even the civilisations they once served, had fallen. One thing we do know is that they do carry forward some of the memories through the millenia. Unlike the Aboleth these are limited to the Crawling Apocalypse’s own experiences, and perhaps owing to their undead status, can be hazy and somewhat unreliable. And like a great many magical creations, formed to serve a purpose, these creatures are always lawfully evil. While not mindless, they will continue to carry out their purpose until they have been finally turned to dust.