Adventures are usually about events taking the heroes away from home. But this series explores possibilities when taking a character back home. What troubles lurk in a PC’s hometown? What manner of curse, bogeyman, disease, or nuisance was part of their upbringing? How does it now become part of the party’s greater story?
Each post in Hometown Hazards addresses a different PC heritage from the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide, focusing on ready-to-go concepts for what “home sweet home” might have looked like (and what imperils it).
The Family that Slays Together
For many born-and-bred members of a slayer heritage, there is no going home again. These communities of hunters tend to be small, mobile, and usually collapse after a generation or two, moving on or settling down. The exceptions are rare enclaves of retired slayers, who continue through old age or injury, forging community on the outskirts of society, passing on their trade or contributing to the work.
A slayer’s homecoming may well be to one of these enclaves. It’s also just as likely to be tracking down a relative in the field or finding an unrelated slayer group to approach for help. Those of slayer heritage are driven less by community and kin to define a home and more by an understood devotion of purpose—to the destruction of monsters, for vengeance, glory, and gold—which forge its familiar bonds.
What dangers lurk among these grizzled souls, ready to ensnare the unwary?
FOEMIND
Curse
A creature of potent will and power can levy a death curse against its killer, particularly when it is slain out of hatred or fear of its kind. Considered to be a paranoia-inducing madness afflicting veteran monster hunters, foemind also, unsettlingly, runs in families.
Trigger: The uttered malediction of a powerful, dying creature curses the target, as well as its direct descendants. When the target kills a creature of the same type (including tags or subtags such as shapechanger or lycanthrope) as the curse’s origin creature, the target must succeed on a DC 16 WIS save or manifest the curse’s effects.
Effects: A strong paranoia manifests, a certainty that enemies are everywhere. Auditory and visual hallucinations support it, making old friends seem like enemies and conspiratorial whispers undergird pleasant greetings. Some visions may include the original creature who laid the curse, or enemies hiding in shadows or crowds. The affected creature has disadvantage on all WIS (Perception) checks and all CHA-based checks except Intimidation. This lasts for 1 day before receding, only to return the next time the curse is triggered. However, should a cursed creature kill a creature of its own type (such as Humanoid) while deluded by the curse, the effect is permanent.
Resolution: The hallucinatory and paranoid effects of the curse can be suppressed by remove curse or similar magic for 1 hour. Lifting the curse requires the cursed creature to put itself in peril to aid a creature of a similar type as the original creature that bestowed the curse. Unearthing this cure requires at least a successful DC 16 INT (Arcana) check, and likely a story about the cursed creature seeking out an understanding of its enemies. If successfully lifted, the curse is removed from the target and any other creature affected by the original curse.
Preywraith
The minotaur skull pulses with dark energy before thick, oozing tendrils of black blood sprout from beneath it. The tendrils shape into four spider-like legs, jerkily ambulating while the skull perches at their apex like a grotesque crown.
Animated by Hate. A preywraith, despite the name, is closer to an animated object than undead, but one arising spontaneously from dark emotions. When trophies are taken from creatures killed in hatred or revenge, a psychic stain lingers on those remains. If the hunter continues to indulge in wrath and hate, the stain grows until the trophy becomes an entity unto itself.
Bloody Tendrils. Formed around trophies taken from a creature’s body—skulls, hides, and the like—a preywraith retains its appearance as a grim trophy until it senses living prey nearby. It spews dark, viscous appendages, a manifestation of the hatred which created it, using them to move and attack with the aim of tethering itself in a host body.
Violent Puppet. A host harboring a preywraith manifests black veins and wears the preywraith’s trophy somewhere on its body—such as a skull helmet or a worgskin cloak. The preywraith can still lash out with its tendrils while riding its host. Reckless violence and terrible bloodlust follows in its wake as the host kills anything nearby, even close kin. It becomes a predator unhinged—killing not for survival, but out of hate, wrath, and pleasure.
PREYWRAITH CR 4
Small Construct
Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 63
Speed 15 ft.
Perception 9 Stealth 13
Vulnerable acid
Immune blinded, deafened | Construct Resilience
Senses keensense 60 ft. (can’t sense beyond this radius)
Languages —
| STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA |
| +1 | +3 | +0 | −5 | −1 | −5 |
Construct Nature. The preywraith doesn’t require air, food, drink, or sleep.
Construct Resilience. The preywraith is immune to poison and psychic damage, and it is immune to exhaustion and the charmed, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, and poisoned conditions.
Damage Transfer. While attached to a creature it has charmed, the preywraith takes only half the damage dealt to it (rounded down). The creature charmed by the preywraith takes the other half.
False Appearance. While remaining motionless, the preywraith is indistinguishable from a hunting trophy.
ACTIONS
Multiattack. The preywraith can make two Blood Tendril attacks. If both attacks hit a Medium or smaller target, the target is grappled (escape DC 15).
Blood Tendril. Melee Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) bludgeoning damage.
Infuse Bloodlust. The preywraith pours the dark emotions fueling its existence into a Humanoid charmed by it, turning it into a vessel of mindless violence. Using its reaction, the charmed creature takes an immediate Attack action with advantage on all attack rolls, dealing an additional die of damage with each attack.
BONUS ACTIONS
Attach. The preywraith attaches itself to a Humanoid it has grappled with its tendrils, requiring a successful DC 15 CHA save to resist. On a failure, the host is charmed and under the preywraith’s control, which overwhelms its host with violent rage. The target is unable to speak or cast spells, reduced to growls and roars. The target can repeat the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself and immediately detaching the preywraith on a success. If the target successfully saves against the effect, or if the preywraith detaches, the target is immune to this preywraith’s Attach for 24 hours.
The preywraith can only have one target charmed at a time. If it charms another with its Attach feature, the effect on the previous target ends. The preywraith automatically detaches if it or its host is incapacitated or killed.
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