The Nature GM

What Lurks Unseen

Picture a black, malevolent spirit with flowing tendrils and stretched-out limbs like a starfish the size of a monkey. Picture it latched on to someone’s back, slowly draining their life force away, feeding the energy to the mother creature to breed more of such spirits. And picture them invisible.

Conceptually they are similar to the egg eaters from Moribito Guardian of the Spirit, but smaller. And these are connected to a queen, whom they feed with the energy they drain.

These are the soul eaters.

It is more accurate to call them ethereal than invisible. They have a visible and tangible form, but they exist one step removed from the material plane, and the unaided eye cannot perceive them. All ordinary people see are afflicted people slowly losing their color. All they feel is that their limbs are heavy, and they are just so tired. During the night their life simply slips away.

No one knows why this change is occurring. They say the Grey Sickness has taken hold in a place, and the only way to escape it is to flee as far and fast as you can. There seems to be no way to combat the illness: no cures or cleansings are effective.

Some believe the answer lies deep in the jungle, where nobody goes. There lives a trickster spirit named Geedis, and he holds much knowledge if you can persuade him to share. He will require that you prove your worth by passing a test to outwit him.

If you bargain with Geedis, he will reveal that eating the flowers of the poisonous kanawao shrub induce a trance state that allows to see what is unseen. In this state an aura radiates from all living beings, creating a disorienting prismatic array of colors and imposing a penalty on one’s intuition and reason.

But when under the trance of the kanawao flowers, one can see the soul eaters. And one can fight them. And one can win.

Alas, even as one soul eater is killed, another rises to fill its place. They are entering this plane from a source, but where?

It must be someplace secret. Someplace safe. Someplace no one ever goes… Someplace like the ancient shrine beneath the sacred tree which grows over the Heart of the Jungle.

The Heart of the Jungle is a massive chunk of peridotite that was formed when the tropical island cooled from its magma origins. They say the jungle goddess radiated her power from this very stone when she created all manner of plants and beasts on the islands, and it underpins the magical energy that binds all living things together.

How unfortunate, then, that the queen soul eater, the Mother of Death, has made her nest around the Heart of the Jungle. Someone terribly brave will have to venture down to save it. Someone terribly foolish.

It sounds like a job for a hero.

How to Use the Soul Eaters

My table just completed an arc with soul eaters. They were a party of three characters at level 6, and they just barely survived the endgame. It was a great deal of fun.

The soul eaters were very effective, very creepy monsters. This was in part because the player characters knew something malignant was among them, but they could not see or fight it. Here is how it worked for us.

Aura of Mystery

I introduced the Grey Sickness as a mysterious plague restricted to a particular realm. While journeying to that realm, the characters met some people who had been afflicted with the Grey Sickness. They learned that it was not contagious, and the symptoms had not worsened since leaving.

When the characters entered the plague-ridden realm, I had something they could not see brush against them. They all rolled Perception checks, and despite some very high rolls, they could see nothing. Panicked, they fled. This was my first hint that the Grey Sickness had a more tangible element than a pathogen or curse.

Raise the Stakes

The player characters were fairly invested in the mystery, but I wanted to raise the stakes. During their investigations, I would periodically ask a player to make a Constitution saving throw. Eventually one of them failed. They felt weak, drained of life, and their Strength score decreased by 1 point each dawn. They had caught the Grey Sickness, to which there was no cure.

This dramatically ratcheted up the tension. Suddenly, it was personal.

Reveal the Monster

I did not want the answer to seeing the soul eaters to be readily available, otherwise someone in the realm would have found it already. I required the player characters to embark on a small quest to find a demigod who would help them.

He told them eating flowers of the poisonous kanawao plant would allow them to see into the ethereal plane, and this would reveal the cause of the Gray Sickness. Conveniently, there were plenty of kanawao plants nearby.

It was a very cool moment when the player characters all took a kanawao flower, ate it, and turned to their afflicted friend to see a long-limbed black creature wrapped around their back.

Now, at last, they could see it. And they could fight.

Bring Them to the Queen

A single soul eater is a reasonably tough monster, and the characters realized they could not easily destroy them all. They had to stop the soul eaters at the source.

I had tried to hint through a dream that the soul eaters had a queen, but I do not think the hint was understood. Fortunately, the characters had other in-game reasons to recognize the dungeon in which the queen laired.

They ventured down expecting a big fight, and they were not disappointed. It was close—the queen very nearly destroyed them before she was slain. The danger made the encounter exciting and fun for all of us. There was an NPC with them who cast a healing spell or two, and without her I think we might have had a total party kill.

As I said, it was good fun.

Sout Eater Stat Blocks

Here are the stat blocks for the three types of soul eaters used in this campaign arc. Several of the features are lifted directly from the MCDM Flee Mortals! book, including Corrupt Healing, Concealing Strike, Mind Scream, and Share Agony.

These are deadly monsters. Try them out, and let me know how it goes!

Soul Eater

Soul Scavenger

Soul Eater Queen

Before this encounter, I had told myself that I would not use Share Agony when the spell slinger cast Fireball. I would not. It was too powerful, and the character would be destroyed.

But then the spell slinger just handed me the opportunity. How could I resist?