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Characters
Devourers
Boða
Challenge Rating: 24
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- The Chessmaster: At any time, Boða has dozens of schemes actively in place, with her witches acting as agents of chaos and disruption across the world. She keeps the clans fighting one another and provokes war with the Baendur whenever she needs a suitable distraction.
- The Dragon: Boða has lived for centuries, perhaps longer, serving an indescribable being known simply as Muspell. It is her duty to weaken worlds so that they become vulnerable to its predation. Afterwards, Muspell enters those lands and devours them.
- Offing the Offspring: It sends Boða into a murderous rage when those that she has created are not entirely dedicated to her, like her daughter Hel, whom she murdered after Hel abandoned Boða early in Grimnir's history.
- We Have Reserves: Boða is completely willing to sacrifice the lives of her Ironwood Witch minions, as required. They mean nothing to her.
- Wicked Cultured: The life Boða lived in the Lost Lands made her fond of certain types of finery, like clothing and jewellery, and she is just as interested in staring at a piece of art as she is destroying it.
Fenrir
Challenge Rating: 23
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Canis Major: Fenrir is a massive wolf-like Yoten, standing over 100 feet tall at his shoulder.
- Making a Splash: Fenrir can cause a burst of water to shoot from his body.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Fenrir is a tormented beast trapped within the mountain range known as Turnfjall. The reason this range continues to grow year after year is because this wolf is growing within it.
Hel
Challenge Rating: 23
Alignment: True Neutral
- All-Loving Hero: Hel judges no one and her love and compassion can extend to even the direst of subjects. She feels all should have the opportunity to live their lives in the way they want. The Underworld is a haven from the real world.
- The Mourning After: It is said by those who claim to have found the Underworld (and returned to Grimnir to tell the tale) that Hel is consumed by grief, forever mourning her lost love, Thonir.
- Two-Faced: The left side of Hel's face is scarred and emaciated. Her left hand is skeletal as well, her right covered in flesh.
Ormur
Challenge Rating: 25
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Big Eater: Ormur is always hungry, and her hunger is expanding as she herself grows ever larger.
- Extreme Omnivore: Ormur believes it is her right—and the right of her children—to feed on all things that enter the sea.
- Monster Progenitor: Ormur releases her children into the waters of her home every generation, adding to the dangers of the Serpent Sea.
- Weather Manipulation: Ormur can command the very sky, causing it to pour down an acid rain.
Witchking
Challenge Rating: 11
Alignment: Lawful Evil
- Animated Armor: Crafted long ago by the Matron from the wood and leaves of the eldest ironheart tree, the Witchking's armour Bloodbane (and the shield grafted onto the right gauntlet) is a hungering beast.
- Auto-Revive: When reduced to zero hit points, the Witchking becomes covered in thick roots erupting from Bloodbane, which grant him immunity to all damage types and heal him by 100 hit points per turn. This ability can only be used once per day. If the Witchking is reduced to 0 hit points again, before this ability is refreshed, they die.
- The Dreaded: Mere mention of the Witchking can make a hardy raider hesitate. An immortal warrior known to shrug off the deadliest of attacks, the Witchking is believed unstoppable.
- Legacy Character: It has not been the same person holding the title of Witchking all this time—they are replaced by Boða as necessary.
- Was Once a Man: After donning Bloodbane, the Witchking becomes more or less a vessel undertaking Boða's wishes.
Creatures
Playable Races
Beastborn
- Beast Man: A beastborn strongly resembles the creature it once was, though no matter its original size, it has grown or shrunk to roughly human height, like an animal that has simply decided to walk upright.
- Child of Two Worlds: Though curious about the raiders they admire, beastborn are also deeply attached to their own kind, and the struggle to belong to both groups can be hard.
- Uplifted Animal: Once an ordinary animal living a content life in the forests, seas, or skies of Grimnir, the beastborn became enamored with raiders, their villages, their ships, and gradually, day after day, they started to act like them, become them.
Grim
- Discard and Draw: After each long rest, a grim decides whether you are driven by cruelty or hope. Each drive provides different benefits, and you lose the benefits of the previous drive when you change drives.
Tallfolk
- Gentle Giant: The tallfolk's gentleness belies their great size, but those that anger them always reap consequences.
- Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: When an Ironwood witch in giant form consorts with an actual giant, there is a chance the offspring are tallfolk or grimtrolls instead of normal giants.
Tuss
- Mutants: Tuss, who have the blood of the Yoten flowing through them, are always born to human mothers and indistinguishable from other newborn babies. The only difference that becomes apparent as they age is that they are generally stronger, healthier and more successful than their cohorts.
Wicker
- Easily Detachable Robot Parts: During a long rest, a builder wicker can add and remove limbs: two additional legs, a tool arm, a shield arm or a spiked arm.
- Plant Person: The wicker are unusual constructs made from wood, though they are clearly separate and apart from the natural world.
- Weak to Fire: Being made from wood, wicker are vulnerable to fire.
Creatures of Grimnir
Everlasting Beast
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Resurrective Immortality: When an Everlasting beast is killed, its body slowly regenerates, and it resurrects itself within 24 hours of its death.In the early years there were many of them, wandering out of the forests and offering themselves to us. Hungry as we were, we slaughtered them. And yet, each morning they arose anew! It was a miracle.
Huldra
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Lawful Evil
- Green Thumb: A huldra can conjure ironwood roots from the earth to restrain foes.
- Little Bit Beastly: Huldra are almost supernaturally attractive humanoids with beast-like features, such as long tails and cat-like ears.
- To Serve Man: Huldra never hesitate to ambush weaker foes, have a fondness for flesh of any kind and take most any opportunity to consume other creatures.
Ice Ripper
Challenge Rating: 10
Alignment: Unaligned
- Barrier Warrior: When caught, an ice ripper can create a wall of ice in front of it, separating it from the attacker.
- Stealthy Colossus: Despite their size, these massive monstrosities are ambush predators, striking from below and dragging their foe beneath the ice to be eaten.
Lindwyrm
Challenge Rating: 10
Alignment: True Neutral
- Our Dragons Are Different: In the absence of true dragons (the only official Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition dragon that occasionally appears is the white dragon), lindwyrms are the dominant species of dragon in Grimnir. Unlike many other dragons, lindwyrms do not tend to have lairs or acquire treasure. Instead, they live for the hunt and move often.
Mountain Bear
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Unaligned
- Bears Are Bad News: A mountain bear stands almost 20 feet tall and is often mistaken for a giant. These bears fear very little, and few raiders have survived encounters with them.
Shaggy Aurochs
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Unaligned
- Brutish Bulls: Wise raiders know to steer clear of these mercurial beasts, for they are easily triggered to stampede. When this happens, shaggy aurochsen become as chaotic and unstoppable as a landslide.
Sleipnir
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Neutral Good
- Only the Chosen May Ride: Sleipnir are near impossible to tame and do not understand why other horses accept domestication. They alone decide whether they will carry others, and even if they accept a rider, the sleipnir are unlike any other riding horse. They will refuse to be mistreated and are likely to leave if this happens.
- Vertebrate with Extra Limbs: Unlike standard horses, sleipnir have eight legs.
Tomte
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Any
- House Fey: The tomte are small fey that live hidden among mortals. In the evening, they wake and tend to the chores their mortal companions have not completed. They are generally kind, if treated well—homesteaders know to leave out thimbles of mead or baked goods for them. If mistreated or abused, they will pack up, knock over a few chairs, and depart for a more appreciative family.
Valkry
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
- No Body Left Behind: When a valkry dies of old age, they simply vanish.
- Shield Bash: A valkry shieldmaiden can throw her shield as a ranged attack. At the end of her turn, the shield teleports back into the shieldmaiden's hand.
- Valkyries: Thonir's valkry watch for conflict across Grimnir. Those among the dead that are most skilled are taken from the battlefield to Valholl so they might feast at the Halls of the Slain.
Woolly Rhinoceros
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: Unaligned
- Rhino Rampage: Woolly rhinos are aggressive herbivores that are seldom hunted by raiders since the effort and risk is seldom worth the result.
Denizens of the Underworld
- Dark Is Not Evil: Many of the undead of Grimnir serve a somewhat different role than they do in other worlds. While on the surface skeletons and zombies exist as dangers to the living, their existence is more nuanced. Many of the dead are agents of Hel and scour the surface world at her bidding. They gather information, they help her collect the unfortunate and forgotten, and they defend her interests—and those of Grimnir. Yet, despite this semblance of civility, the undead are still frightening and the raiders avoid them.
Cursed Knight
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Any
- I Reject Your Reality: Cursed knights are intelligent but can frame their reality in a way that aligns with their beliefs. While they can set traps and outwit opponents, they ultimately exceed best at deceiving themselves.
- The Unfettered: Eventually an idea–or compulsion–forms in cursed knights, a twisted version of the duty they held in such high esteem during their lives. They take their ideals to the extreme and become a force of unbending destruction as they seek to make good on their twisted and distorted beliefs.
- Warrior Undead: These undead knights tend to return to the world of the living after a great and tragic conflict. They tend to adhere to the ideals they honoured in life, but the ideals become exaggerated and eventually twisted.
Draugr
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- The Oath-Breaker: Most commonly, a draugr is created when a raider makes an oath that they later break. The breaking of the oath causes torment in the draugr, so much so that often they attempt to finish in death what they failed to in life. At other times they seek revenge against those that originally solicited the oath from them.
Helhest
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Any
- Poisonous Person: A helhest can breathe out a cloud of poison.
- Raising the Steaks: In life, helhests were horses with missing legs. They still behave like horses, staying in herds and readily coming to the defense of one another.
Kattakyn
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Any
- Raising the Steaks: The kattakyn is an undead spirit that has manifested into a form that is vaguely cat-like.
Myling
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Ghostly Goals: Mylings only fight in self-defence, and if an aggressor ceases attacking, they will respond in kind—they simply want a proper burial. Once it guides its victim to a graveyard, a myling detaches itself and watches, waiting for its victim to grant its final request.
- Undead Child: Mylings are the phantasmal incarnations of the souls of children.
Pyrewight
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Ax-Crazy: Pyrewights are pure vessels of violence, no matter the nature of the person they were in life. Only by hurting others do they, in some measure, and so very temporarily, diminish their own pain.
- Self-Duplication: In battle, a pyrewight can conjure a fiery shadow-twin of itself called a flameshade, which can only act when given a command from the pyrewight that summoned it.
Sea Monsters
Bladed Fish
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Unaligned
- Absurdly Sharp Claws: These fish are covered with sharp, metal-like scales that inflict considerable damage to prey and anyone foolish enough to get too close to them.
Grimnir Crab
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Unaligned
- Giant Enemy Crab: Some varieties of crab can grow to extraordinary size, with fierce temperaments.
Hafgufa
Challenge Rating: 20
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Combat Tentacles: The hafgufa can use its tentacles and mouths to restrain and eat surface dwellers.
- Too Many Mouths: A hafgufa has many mouths running along the entire perimeter of its body.
- Turtle Island: The hafgufa, a sentient island, is an ambush predator, trying to trick terrestrial creatures into walking on its surface. Some even allow entire communities to inhabit them, selectively feeding only as needed.
- Vacuum Mouth: The hafgufa can violently suck air into its mouth in an attempt to pull creatures towards it.
Lyngbakr
Challenge Rating: 12
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Monster Whale: The lyngbakr is a voracious, evil carnivorous whale that consumes vast schools of fish and even the occasional riverwhale. If a lyngbakr is particularly hungry, it might charge a longship fleet, or even risk attacking a pod of riverwhales.
- Turtle Island: The surface of a lyngbakr resembles a mossy island covered in shrubs. If animals, including raiders, happen to explore its surface, it will dive, hoping to drown the interlopers and consume them at its leisure.
Riverwhale
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Unaligned
- Monster Whale: These sleek predatory whales hunt larger whales and other sea life, including raiders. Though they generally do not target longships, they have been known to bump into them, knocking some of the crew into the water so they might be snatched and dragged underwater.
Seerfish
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Unaligned
- Chariot Pulled by Cats: Several of the largest seerfish can be harnessed to tow the floating town of Drifthall. Through magical means the völv guide and direct these seerfish and steer Drifthall across the sea.
Serpent
Challenge Rating: 3 (spawn), 8 (young), 12 (adult), 13 (caravan)
Alignment: Any
- Acid Attack: Serpent spawn can attack by exhaling a line of acidic gas.
- Chariot Pulled by Cats: The merfolk, as worshipers of Ormur, occasionally are blessed with a serpent bonding with a community. These serpents allow themselves to be covered in vine-bound ropes, carrying small homes and goods through the Serpent Sea.
- Sea Serpents: Spawn of Ormur, young serpents are more than capable of destroying smaller vessels on their own and often hunt in small groups, making such encounters all the more fatal.
Witches of the Ironwood
Grimtroll
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Healing Factor: Grimtrolls they will regenerate all injuries not inflicted on them by psychic damage.
- Hybrid Monster: When an Ironwood witch in giant form consorts with an actual giant, there is a chance the offspring are tallfolk or grimtrolls instead of normal giants.
- Telephone Polearm: A grimtroll usually starts a fight by throwing a tree at the enemy, then tears out another tree and uses it to strike down the strongest looking opponent.
Ironheart Tree
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Life Drain: When an ironheart tree siphons blood from an enemy, it heals itself for half the damage dealt.
- When Trees Attack: Ironheart trees are intelligent and can fight back against lumberjacks. Stand still too long and it'll drag you right under with their roots or it will eat you.
Ironwood Witch
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Horse of a Different Color: Other witches may use wolventrolls as mounts when attacking a settlement.
- Human Disguise: Ironwood witches use their Witch Shape ability to adopt humanoid forms when necessary to infiltrate humanoid settlements—either to permanently take over and masquerade as important NPCs, or to trick victims into trusting them before transforming them into ironthralls.
- Savage Wolves: The wolventroll is a form that Ironwood witches wear, resembling a large dire wolf and capable of much greater carnage. When they gather in a war party, entire communities have vanished in the night, torn apart by the fangs and deadly magic.
- Spike Shooter: In brittlebone form, wolventrolls can fling bony fragments that shred flesh.
- Take Over the World: Witches believe that they are working to wrestle control of Grimnir from all other factions. The world belongs to the witches, not the raiders or the Baendur.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: In addition to pretending to be other humanoids, witches are also capable of transforming into a variety of powerful forms, depending on the required tasks. Favourites include becoming ropers to ambush enemieis important, and hill giants or frost giants when raw power is most important. They also have a specialised form, the wolventroll.
- Was Once a Man: All ironwood witches were once human, elf, dwarf, or other.
- Wicked Witch: The magic available to the ironwood witches gradually makes their limbs lengthen and narrow, their skin pale, and their hair thin and gray.
Witchbeetle Swarm
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Unaligned
- Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Any witch may see and hear what a witchbeetle sees and hears, as long as they are on the same plane of existence.
Witchgate
Challenge Rating: 10
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Energy Absorption: Whenever the witchgate is subjected to psychic damage, it instead heals itself equal to the damage dealt.
- Portal Door: A witchgate connects to another witchgate on the same plane of existence, allowing instantaneous travel between two locations (while all six witches remain alive).
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: A witchgate is created from the sacrifice of six powerful ironwood witches and powered by their excess vitality. Nothing can be done to save the witches once they have been transformed in this way. They will persist as a vessel, to be used. Once their life force is extinguished, they die.
Yoten
- Hybrid Monster: The Yoten are capable of breeding with numerous other creatures, which makes it difficult—but not impossible—to ascertain which creatures are true Yoten.
- Stronger with Age: Yoten grow in power throughout their lifetime. Younger and weaker Yoten follow their more experienced brethren until ready to assert their own strength.
- Taken for Granite: Most Yoten turn to stone when they are slain. These cairns can be found throughout the Lost Lands and occasionally even in Grimnir.
Blood Shadow
Challenge Rating: 16
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Bloody Murder: The blood shadow's blood, spilled or spat at enemies, pulses with necrotic energy.
- Savage Wolves: Blood shadows are creatures of suffering, born from the torment inflicted upon captive wolves by their Yoten captors. No longer a wolf—or resembling any living creature—they maintain the pack-like instincts of their progenitors, except they identify the Yoten as their pack-mates.
- Undying Loyalty: Blood shadows do anything other Yoten command them to do, even sacrificing their own lives.
Corpse Swallower
Challenge Rating: 13
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Blow You Away: When corpse swallowers flap their wings, they create gale-force winds strong enough to shatter smaller ships or run larger ships aground.
- Death Flight: Corpse swallowers grasp an opponent and fly away with them, dropping them far from help. If the fall does not kill the victim, the corpse swallowers swarm their target, seeking to quickly finish them off.
- Feathered Fiend: These Yoten appear to be massive bird/bat hybrids and in many ways they emulate natural birds, tending to form flocks, and nesting upon sheer cliff faces rising far above oceans and seas. But unlike birds, they delight in attacking and consuming humanoids.
Feeder
Challenge Rating: 17
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: Payload: Inferno consists of special tubes and ignition modules, which allow a feeder to channel its acid into fiery attacks.
- Hungry Menace: Anything feeders consume directly or indirectly helps replenish Muspell, and they are voracious eaters, capable of consuming anything.
- Siege Engines: Feeders are effective at destroying enemy fortifications, and can be equipped with a powerful siege ballista.
Forest Strider
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Beast with a Human Face: The forest strider looks as if a madman grafted a human's face onto a giant centipede and then turned the pitiful creature inside out.
- Inescapable Net: The forest strider can vomit forth spider-like webbing and fling it at foes to capture them.
- Poisonous Person: Forest strider venom renders an otherwise healthy raider immobile in seconds.
Mus
Challenge Rating: 18
Alignment: Evil
- Extra Eyes: The mus have numerous eyes, which grant them many advantages.
- Eye Beams: When the mus focuses all its eyes on a single creature, the target is subject to a massive heatwave.
- Magma Man: Mus are born from the lava that spreads from wherever Muspell emerges when it arrives in a world. Lava itself flows through the veins of their massive bodies.
- Shock and Awe: As a reaction to being attacked, a mus can cause crackling energy to erupt from within it.
- Weather Manipulation: The mus can rapidly swing its swords in a circle above itself to create an atmospheric disturbance, grounding flying creatures and igniting flammable objects.
Yoten Devotee
Challenge Rating: 7 (standard), 14 (advanced)
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Dishing Out Dirt: A Yoten devotee can cause earth and stone to erupt around a point it can see.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Yoten devotees are fluid in form, often changing shape.
