Hey there my name is AJ Pickett, I make videos about role-playing game lore, particularly
in-depth monster ecologies, I also have live streams.
You can find me on Subscribestar, Patreon and Discord, Facebook and Twitter, also, there
is an option to join the channel as a member and I welcome any questions you have, or requests
for video topics in the comments section down below, if you enjoy the video hit that subscribe
button, I'd really appreciate it.
Have I covered any of the creatures from Kobold Press's latest monster book, the Tome of Beasts
volume two?
Well now is a good time to start I suppose.
As this is a brand new creature, the lore for it is kind of a blank canvas for us to
fill in ourselves, also, to make this fun, I had one subscriber pick a random page number
in the book, which landed us on a bizarre and horrific monster called the Mad Piper.
The description of the beast reads, and I quote..
"A grey mound of flesh scuttles forward on mismatched limbs, its five heads trilling
along on bone flutes.
All the while, a harrowing tune plays from the column of pipes rising from its core.
" This thing is technically a living construct,
a result of foul, ancient and eldritch ritual magic that warps flesh according to the will
of alien powers from the most dreadful reaches of the multiverse.
Only when a cult is getting close to unlocking the secrets of how to usher in an age of calamity
by summoning an Old one are they rewarded with the knowledge of how to create a mad
piper.
First, they have to locate an ogre, murder it, then harvest its bones and organs to produce
a revolting set of bagpipes constructed from its hollowed-out bones and its large, tough
stomach.
Then, five of the cultists must willingly offer themselves up to become the blessed
servants of their soon to arrive master, and at least one of these cultists must be a musician
of some kind.
When the ritual begins, they stand with their backs to the grisly bagpipes, over a strange
and disturbing pattern etched into the floor below them with the musician playing a song
on a bone flute that seems to crawl into the ears and scratch at the corners of the mind.
As the music plays, the four other humanoids will be drawn towards the music and slowly,
horribly, their bodies press into each other more and more, until bones begin to snap and
the flesh starts to seemingly melt and merge together.
All the limbs and heads sink into this throbbing and twitching mass which becomes grey and
congeals around the large set of ogre bone pipes protruding out of the top, the strange
music continues to play, but now it is the large pipes from which the sound comes, as
the mass heaves in odd places from the five sets of lungs, or whatever they have now become,
pumping air in and out of them still.
After a while, the five heads re-emerge, along with randomly assigned limbs, and each of
the heads pulls a bone flute from the mass, raises it to a blank and twisted face and
begins to play along to the sound of the large pipes, connected to all of their lungs, and
perhaps to something else far, far more terrible, to play a haunting tune.
The heads are no longer individuals, they share one mind and one body, completely dedicated
to their coming master and fondly cared for by their ecstatic fellow cultists, now wildly
celebrating the impending doom of their world.
The tome tells us that "Mad pipers aren’t naturally evil.
Most are made from commoners, resulting in relatively docile and loyal creatures that
imprint quickly onto cult members, who in turn often come to treat these abominations
as pets.
More violent and powerful mad pipers can be made from powerful, evil humanoids, though
they are harder to control and often hostile to their creators."
It is thought that this ritual is a lesser version of one that creates the heralds of
an old one called the Crawling Chaos, I profess I don't know much about that dark power, I
don't want to know and perhaps neither should you, but there are countless elder gods and
foul powers older than reckoning that these cults are always trying to dredge out of whatever
nightmare prison or lost void in the beyond they have been dwelling in for eons.
My theory as to why these cults are so common or I should say, why ordinary people seem
to keep falling into this sort of doom, is that on worlds where magic and divine power
are so clearly real, but there are only a few who have the ability to access it or master
it, those who do not have that dedication, talent or calling to access the power will
not just give up trying to get into an arcane academy or joining a clerical order or whatever,
they look elsewhere for that power, and there is a lurking and lost abundance of horrid
and evil entities who are only too willing to offer them that sort of power but with
the highest and most terrible price.
Cultists of such old ones as the Crawling Chaos may be blessed with additional limbs,
strange sensory organs, psychic powers, the dark gifts of the warlock or may have offspring
infused with sorcery, but also twisted bodies and minds.
Once they taste some power and true dark gifts, there is usually little anyone can do to stop
them from their path to ruin, and inevitably, they do things like perform the ritual of
the herald, creating the mad pipers.
As a form of living construct, so mutated and alien from what they once were, mad pipers
are now immune to being charmed, exhausted, frightened, poisoned, knocked prone or paralyzed.
Their many eyes have the ability to see in the dark out to 60 feet and while their ability
to speak has been lost, they retain the ability to understand common and the whisperings of
the dark old ones.
Thanks to their supernatural music, they have the ability to play a tune that inspires loyal
cultists and their allies.
As a bonus action, the mad piper can play a tune that inspires a friendly creature it
can see within 30 feet of it.
If the target can hear the mad piper, it has advantage on its next ability check, attack
roll, or saving throw.
They can also have the opposite effect, playing a terrible dirge that affects any creature
of the mad piper's choice within 30 feet of itself.
Each selected creature that is within 30ft and can hear will have to make a DC13 Wisdom
saving throw or become frightened for one minute.
Frightened characters have disadvantage on all ability checks and attacks while the mad
piper is within sight and hearing of them and they can't willingly bring themselves
to move any closer to the mad piper unless they manage to beat that saving throw, at
which point they are then immune to the creatures song for the next 24 hours.
The characters can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the
effect on itself on a success.
While the mad pipers are large, they are feeble really, they have an armor class of 12 and
from 9 to 30 hit points with an average of only 19, so these are what you would call
one-hit wonders and you will want to keep them safely distant from harm while they play
their eldritch tunes.
They will almost never be encountered alone and outside of the lair of some sort of cult.
They will scuttle around with their many feet, huffing, tooting and playing that unnerving
music while they seek to influence from cover.
If they are engaged in melee combat, the mad pipers are poor fighters, very slow to adapt
to new tactics or coordinate their own effects with their allies.
When within melee range they will lash out with their many limbs all at once while bellowing
from the large bone pipes coming out of the body mass.
This attack is +5 to hit one target in an adjacent position, doing 2d6+3 bludgeoning
damage and an additional 1d4 thunder damage.
this also serves as a very loud alarm signal to any cultists of mutant flesh constructs
nearby.
The mad piper is a challenge rating 2 monster, best used as something that is more hinted
at than fully revealed.
Keep your players making those wild guesses as to what it really is and how best to handle
it.
Keep the players distracted with other threats and monsters which the mad piper can boost
with its song as it conceals itself behind them and certainly do your very best to keep
the mad piper out of a clear line of attack from a ranged spell or missile weapon.
If you like this sort of quick look into new monsters from third-party publishers like
Kobold press, hit that like button and let me know which I could cover next in the comments
down below, also, have you used cultists, their hidden lairs and the strange creatures
associated with them in your campaigns recently?
let me hear about how it worked or didn't work in the comments.
Let's come together as a little community to help each other out with fiendish ideas
and clever tips and tricks.
As always, thanks for listening and I will be back with more for you, very soon.