Subterranean adventures often include one ongoing theme — madness.
Whether it’s creatures from the world below, the ambient radiation affecting teleportation or any storyline provided by the creators of this great game, underground became an icon for crazy settings, insane visuals, wild creatures and erratic behavior.
I’ve noticed a lack of what should be an obvious species in such an environment — insectoid humanoids. These are famously surface desert dwellers, and all other such creatures are either solitary aberrations or nowhere near humanoid.
This is a gap not only crying to be filled, but should be with a colonized hive-like society. The only problem with this is an organized species adapted for this life would quickly take over.
Therefore, a built-in flaw must exist to balance it with the rest of the subterranean cultures and also put it in line with the rest of the humanoid species dwelling in the neverending night of the world below.
Therefore, I introduce the coh-leop (a play on the Latin for the family of beetles), or beetlefolk if you like.
They are suitably adapted and odd in this setting, and filled with their own foibles and functions making them just as fun as any other underground species — except with their own inverted twist.
To introduce this species, I am proposing an odd encounter with a envoy-by-misadventure, who might then be the player characters’ first insight into this new and strange race from the Beneath or life underground.
As regards the rest of this encounter and how it should scale, we’ll do something a little different.
Instead of measuring the difficulty by the level of the group, we’ll do it based on the number of characters in the group.
This sort of encounter works well at lower levels, so we’ll factor this into the encounter.
Most characters can individually crank out a certain amount of damage, and given this encounter can repeat in a certain way, making it deadly would defeat it’s entertainment value.
Encounter Type: Combat and social
Map: Underground caverns
Lighting: Dynamic lighting
System: 5E
Length: One shot
Installation Type: Addon
License: Roll20 End User License Agreement
(Personal Use Only, Do Not Distribute)