Athach

Three-armed celtic giant that wakes the earth. A huge humanoid.

Imagine a huge, hulking humanoid with tusks, pink skin, red hair, and, unsettlingly, a third arm sprouting out of its belly. It can feel where leylines are.

Brutish philosopher, easily bought, god-fearing.


 
HD: 6 +6HP Armor: as leather
Hit it: easy Dodge it: normal
Move: normal  

The athach is gigantasophobic and must make a save when seeing a creature bigger than it, or be frightened.

Attacks (3/round)

Punch. The athach makes one melee attack (1D8).

Cold Iron Apple Flail. The athach makes one melee attack (1D8). On a failed save, the target is pushed back and knocked prone.

Grapple. The athach makes one grapple attempt.

Stinky Bite. The athach bites (1D8) one grappled target, which must make a save vs poison or be dazed until the athach’s next turn.

Leyline Awakening. The athach chooses a natural features. All creatures and objects standing near it take magical damage (1D8), or half if they dodge it. All further uses of the ability during this battle affect the original natural feature.



Random Encounter
  1. Monster: 1 athach.
  2. Lair: A mossy den carved out of a single humongous boulder.
      OR
    Omen: Heavy footsteps are coming, magic users can feel the ground awaken.
  3. Spoor: Big rock is blocking a path. The loot from the ambushes is badly hidden nearby, smashed flat, except for the food and gems which have been taken away.
  4. Tracks: The arcane vibration of a Leyline.
  5. Trace: All objects in the area have been roughly moved along a single line.
  6. Trace: A tagged sign saying to keep a gem to pay the toll.
Salvaging the body

You find the monster’s weapons and … (Roll as many times as the HD of the monster)

  1. Rotten food scraps between the teeth.
  2. A human skull.
  3. A full ration stuck under a foot.
  4. A few gems in a folded pelt. (Valuable)
  5. A few medicinal herbs. Will rot tomorrow.
  6. An Iron Apple seed.

Iron Seed. If planted in hard rock along a leyline and watered, it will grow overnight into a tree producing 1D8 cold iron apples per year.

2D6 Athach Cultures

Combine the result of both tables to get the broad lines of this humanoid culture in this part of the world.

Cultures

  1. The ones that follow Leylines hoping to find the birthplace of the world.
  2. The ones that raise herds of tiny beasts.
  3. The ones that weave metal into trees to grow iron fruits.
  4. The ones that do massive moon rituals hoping to awaken the land and start a new geological era.
  5. The ones that violently protect the secrecy of the druids.
  6. The ones that are brigands, asking for gems for a right of passage.

Features

  1. Nocturnal, they look to the stars for guidance.
  2. They must feed gems to an earth elemental.
  3. They never get out of the mist.
  4. They have fairy sycophants, but are actually manipulated by them.
  5. Their architecture / clothes are made of moss.
  6. They love human flesh.
Player Class

Play as a (baby) athach!


DM Notes

In gaelic folklore, the athach was thuggish giant with one leg and three arms waving flails made of apple. Its strange appearance was linked to the fear of druid curses. In DnD, it was boringly adapted as a three-armed hill giant. Since I want my monster adaptations to be retrocompatible with old modules, I decided to go for a middle ground between generic and weird by pushing the druidic aspect. Finally, since I don’t want my players to play huge monsters, I flavored this class as a human adult-sized baby giant. — SaltyGoo

Written on November 14, 2020