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Monster Trove: Things Others Swore They Saw

Valravn

Medium

About

It was a knight once, before the curse put it in a raven's body, and it has spent a long time since then looking for the way out. It is the size of a man, glossy black, and it speaks well. What it offers is real - it will carry you over the water, or out of the country, or off a field you have no other way off - and it will do precisely what it said it would do. The price is your firstborn son. It wants the child's heart-blood, because that is the thing that lifts the curse, and it will not take anything else instead. It tells you all of this before you agree to anything.

Stats

HP 88
AC 15
DR 1
Attacks 2
Attack: 2d6+3, 2d8+3

Save Rolls

Quick 2
Tough 2
Mind 2
Default Save TN (based on HP): 12

Traits

Alignment: Orderly Vile (Tyrant)
Intelligence: High (13-14)
Magic Resistance: It cannot be compelled to break terms, nor tricked into believing terms have been met. Divination asked whether it is telling the truth answers yes, every time, correctly, which has ruined several people who took that as reassurance.
Valravn - Image Coming Soon

Special Attack

The Offer: no attack roll and no save. It names something the party genuinely needs and cannot otherwise get, and it names its price, and the price is always a firstborn son. It will not attack any creature while an offer of its own stands unanswered, and it will wait a long time. Beak and Talon: piercing, melee 10 ft, +4 to hit, 2d6+3, used only after an offer has been refused outright. Wing Buffet: bludgeoning, melee 10 ft, +4 to hit, 2d8+3, its second attack each round.

Special Defense

Keeps Terms Exactly: whatever it promises it delivers, in full, without trickery, loophole or delay - and it collects in full by the same standard, and it always knows where the child is. Cursed Shape: no spell, blessing, kindness or act of will lifts the raven form. Only the heart-blood of a child breaks it, which is the whole horror of the thing, and the DN should not permit a clean solution. Scattered: reduced to 0 HP it comes apart into a great many ordinary ravens and is gone. Any bargain already struck still stands and will still be collected, and it will be making the same offer to somebody else before the season turns.

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