Dungeons & Dragons 2024 (D&D) Monster/NPC: Maligno

If a depraved and misanthropic humanoid who has done countless atrocities against its own kind dies in an accursed forest, a deity like Auril, Malar, or the Queen of Air and Darkness may reincarnate it as a maligno, an insidious and malevolent engkanto. The maligno appears as a shadowy humanoid figure with bestial eyes that glow red in the dark. It wears the bark of a gnarly and twisted dead tree like a skin, and its limbs end in long, razor-sharp claws. Sometimes it will don the bones and skulls of its victims like dreadful head and shoulder ornaments.

Wicked, Twisted, and Cruel. The maligno seethes in the darkness, waiting to unleash its wrath on any mortal that might intrude on its realm and waylay anyone else that might stray too close to its territory. To protect its realm, the maligno corrupts those around its grove, transforming all flora and fauna living within it into dreadful, twisted, and evil reflections of themselves. If a humanoid settlement is established near its lands, the maligno will send its minions to destroy it. Some folk who rely on the bounties of the forest try to appease the maligno by sending its young to it to be sacrificed.

Creature of Nightmare. In combat, the maligno is a terrifying and deadly opponent. Its mere supernatural presence can paralyze creatures with fear, while its dreadful claws can wither its victims to death. If faced with multiple foes, the maligno has an array of powerful spells it can use to confuse, dominate, maim, and snuff the life of its targets.

A Maligno's Lair

The lair of a maligno is a dreadful grove of dismal, misshapen trees with branches that look more like claws. The maligno attracts the company of blackroot treants, bugbears, dark duwendes, death's head trees, evil darklings, goblins, hags, harpies, meazels, quicklings, redcaps, tikbalangs, and will-o'-wisps. These creatures revere and are subservient to the maligno.

Lair Actions

On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the maligno takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects; the maligno can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:

• The maligno casts bestow curse (no components required) and doesn't need to maintain concentration of the spell. The effect ends after 1 minute, or if the anito uses this lair action again.
• The maligno casts entangle (no components required) and doesn't need to maintain concentration of the spell. A creature that starts its turn restrained takes 5 ( 2d4 ) piercing damage from thorns. The effect ends after 1 minute, or if the maligno uses this lair action again.
• The maligno unleashes a wave of madness. Each creature with- in 60 feet of it must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or must use its reaction to move up to half its speed toward a creature of the maligno's choice that it can see and make one weapon attack against it.

Regional Effects

The region containing a maligno’s lair is warped by the maligno’s magic, which creates one or more of the following effects:

• Once per day, the maligno can alter the weather in a 6-mile radius centered on its lair. The maligno doesn’t need to be outdoors; otherwise the effect is identical to the control weather spell.
• Beasts and plant creatures within 1 mile of the lair become evil and violent — even creatures that are normally docile.
• Thickets form labyrinthine passages within 1 mile of the maligno’s lair. The thickets act as 10-foot-high, 10-foot-thick walls that block line of sight. Creatures can move through the thickets, with every 1 foot a creature moves costing it 4 feet of movement. A creature in the thickets must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw once each round it’s in contact with the thickets or take 3 ( 1d6 ) piercing damage from thorns. Each 10-foot-cube of thickets has AC 5, 30 hit points, resistance to bludgeoning and piercing damage, vulnerability to fire damage, and immunity to psychic and thunder damage.

If the maligno dies, the effects fade over the course of 1d10 days.