Last week we joked that the DDC got mugged by the Easter Bunny as they took a shortcut through the Feywild. Their attackers weren’t hardened assassins, and driving them off was reasonably easy – but not without Caeluma being relieved of a pair of magical daggers while knocked unconscious by a well-aimed rock.
Rather than being a homogenous mass of what most would see as traditional pixie-style fairies, these opportunistic bandits were drawn from a variety of sources and while individually relatively weak in comparison to the group they still caused problems.
The bulk of their force was comprised of darklings – small in stature and rumoured to be a people cursed by a powerful spirit in retaliation for unnamed crimes.
Dark in appearance and nature, they shun the light, but given that they explode in a blinding flash when slain I think there’s a story to be told of light suppressed and swathed as part of the curse – that these are a dark shell for a brighter spirit. These creatures attacked en masse from behind the group but were intimidated into running away without much trouble.
Their armed assault was backed up by a much more troublesome and murderous creature in the form of a redcap. With its trademark hood/cap dipped in fresh blood and heavy iron boots strapped to its feet, the redcap carried a sickle almost as big as it was.
In conversation later, we likened the appearance of this fey creature to that of a soccer hooligan and at least for a brief period it held its own in a fight with Thorin before he finished it off. When slain it melted away in to a spread of red mushrooms.
Magical support came from a hobgoblin devastator – a martially trained magician. In 5th edition D&D creatures like goblins and hobgoblins have been reclassified as fey creatures so it was a good excuse to bring some firepower to the table to level the playing field.
A fireball erupting in the middle of the group was the first warning the DDC got that they weren’t just facing a physical assault. Unfortunately for this particular hobgoblin that meant he then got targeted by the ranger and quickly taken down despite an attempt to run away deeper into the woods.
Further ranged support came from a diminuative fey called a Korred – closely aligned with the earth and stone as an elemental creature, the korred drew strength from being on the ground and used that to empower a series of rocks thrown with distressing accuracy.
Korreds are normally shy and retiring sorts, so this one – known as Konred – is a bit of an outlier as a bandit. His ability to smell out metals and gemstones as well as identify hidden cavities in the earth made him a valued member of the bandit group. He escaped with a cry of having a boulder and 15 pebbles to support by diving into and melding with the ground and refusing to come back out.
Their leader, a harengon rogue, was modelled on stats for an antagonist from a published adventure and had a hit and run set of tactics. He also had very sticky fingers and was able to steal from Caeluma during the fight. He too escaped the fight, and was last seen diving through the portal back to the Amberhammer Lands, so will no doubt be encountered again in the future.
I’ve published the various Heroforge-generated tokens here, feel free to use for your own tables if you want – and if you have any fun encounters you use them in, I’d like to hear how that worked out for all concerned.
Thinking of things like this, I’ve been assuming that people have access to their own resources or to tools like dndbeyond and so can use those to pull together statblocks – but if people would like some simple statblocks for groups and encounters, let me know and I’ll think about how to format them.
TimMaidment.Com 