Parts of a Species

A species includes the following parts

Creature Type. A character's species determines the character's creature type. Creature types don’t have rules themselves, but some rules in the game affect creatures of certain types in different ways. The animalfolk species in this chapter are Humanoid, despite being non-humanoid animals, for the purpose of mechanical game balance.

Size. Your character's species determines the character's size. Individuals within a species cover a wide range of heights, and some species include such diversity of size that you can choose whether your character is Small or Medium.

Speed. Your character's species determines the character's Speed.

Special Traits. Each species gives a character special traits—unique characteristics based on the species' physiology or magical nature.

Parts of a Background

A background includes the following parts.

Ability Scores. A background lists three ability scores. Increase one score by 2 and another score by 1, or increase all three by 1. None of these increases can increase a score above 20.

Feat. A background gives you an Origin feat. If a feat is unique to this book or has an updated version introduced in this book, the background will direct you to chapter 7. Otherwise, you may take the feat of that name as presented in your version of the Player's Handbook.

Skill Proficiencies. A background gives your character proficiency in two specified skills.

Tool Proficiency. Each background gives a character proficiency with one tool.

Equipment. Each background offers a choice between an equipment package and 50 GP.

Magic Item Descriptions

The magic items are listed in alphabetical order.

Chainsaw

Weapon (Maul), Uncommon

The chainsaw has 3 charges and regains 1d3 expended charges daily at dawn. While holding the chainsaw, you can take a Magic action to expend 1 charge and activate it for 10 minutes. When you take the attack action on your turn while the chainsaw is active, you can replace one of your attacks with a swipe of the chainsaw at one creature you can see within 5 feet of yourself. The target must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw (DC 8 plus your Strength modifier and Proficiency Bonus) or take 2d8 Slashing damage.

Anthropedes are enormous insects, similar in appearance to milipedes or centipedes. Their forelegs are not insectoid, instead being humanoid hands with sharp claws. Their heads appear to have skulls affixed to either side, giving the implication that these creatures were once fused to living humanoids.

Anthropedes often crawl along ceilings and extend downward to grab their prey. The touch of its many hands is almost gentle, at first. But then the grip tightens, and the mandibles dig in.

These enormous leeches are natural insects have adapted to feed on dead flesh, feasting on the cemeteries that have been absorbed into the House. But when no corpses are available, they are not averse to making their own from nearby survivors.

Originally the plane's household pets kept by humans, Beasties were transformed during Valgavoth's Ascension. They are small when young, and then they spin silk cocoons and emerge as large, shaggy, furred adults. They generally have more than four limbs, claws, horns, and fangs, and wear masks. Beasties don't speak Humanoid language, but they're fully intelligent; they can understand what's said to them and communicate with each other. Though they are predators, they don't eat intelligent creatures. The beasties find their purpose in protecting the House's survivors, who they refer to as "keep-alives."

The face beneath a beastie's mask is their most guarded secret. Beasties live in constant fear of their human companions seeing their real faces, which are visages of dried flesh tethered to exposed skulls. Beasties know these faces are terrifying, hideous mockeries of living flesh. If a human does ever catch a glimpse of a beastie's real face, the beastie will abandon them or even grow enraged and attack.

Though they were once a part of one large pack, Beasties are separated into multiple factions. The Mural in the Attic, which depicts the plane before the Ascension, is a neutral ground for the Beastie packs.

Above all, beasties want to be loved and appreciated. Beasties are fiercely loyal to their companions, and won't hesitate to attack anyone who threatens their new friend.

Cellarspawn are manifestations of Valgavoth's daydreams. Made of the materials of the House itself, warped, asymmetrical shapes that distort the world around them. When a cellarspawn catches a survivor, it overwhelms the person with pure terror until their mind collapses or their heart bursts. The resulting harvest is a dense, delicious morsel of terror that's considered a delicacy by cellarspawn. People harvested this way are reduced to floating spinal columns called Spindrells.

It's almost impossible to defeat a cellarspawn in open combat. Seemingly killed cellarspawn can reattach limbs, restore their blood, and seal their wounds. The only way to escape is to evade it long enough that it loses interest in you. Cellarspawn have practically no sense of perseverance or memory, so if a survivor can avoid drawing its attention for long enough, eventually it will drift away on its own.

Duskmourn's crawling claws aren't daydreams or nightmares like other manifestation, but instead a mutation of living tissue spawned from somewhere deep in the boilerbilges. They have a particular craving for the flesh of survivors and will hunt them. These hunting claws aren't often found in packs, instead preying on stragglers from survivor groups.

The Cult of Valgavoth is a cabal of worshippers dedicated to promoting the glory of Valgavoth. Cultists wear long robes shaped like moth's wings. According to the cult, Valgavoth's fear-eating is a blessing: by devouring your fear, he can cleanse you of that fear and grant you protection from it. True paradise will only exist when Valgavoth has devoured all fear in existence, creating a world where all are safe. They call this the Gift of the Threshold. Believing themselves to be descendants of Valgavoth's original summoner, the cult views itself as the steward of the House, responsible for maintaining it and ensuring its smooth running.

Demons once existed in the Demon Realm, one of three distinct realms in the plane of Duskmourn. From there, they communed with humans in the Mortal Realm and made deals with them; in exchange, the human would not pass into the Spirit Realm after death, but instead serve as fuel for the demon's power and influence.

Valgavoth, a particularly powerful demon, was once imprisoned in a mortal house. Empowered by sacrifices, he was able to hunt mortals in the house until he could expand the house's borders in a ritual known as the Ascension; the House is now the entirety of the plane.

During the Ascension, the Mortal and Demon Realms became one. One of Valgavoth's first acts after the Ascension was killing most of the plane's other demons and breaking the rest, ensuring none could challenge his rule.

Those demons who have survived take vengeance on the House and continue to make pacts with survivors in hopes of one day deposing Valgavoth.

Drowners are aquatic monsters with a roughly humanoid appearance from the waist up, and a fish tail from the waist down. They are in fact Duskmourn's mermaids, though whether they existed on the plane before the Ascension or were brought by one of the House's doors remains unknown. In either case, they have been corrupted by Valgavoth's influence. They have no eyes, razor=sharp teeth and claws, and disply a single-minded desire to drown and devour survivors that venture into the Floodpits.

Flesh burrowers are tiny insects that live in the Hauntwoods and, as their name implies, burrow into the flesh of their victims. Symptoms of a burrower bite include fevers, chills, gangrene, subcutaneous writhing, and a growing urge to eat the flesh of the living.

Glimmars are manifestations of the hopes and persistence of Duskmourn's survivors. The physical manifestation of psychic phenomena, they take the form of treasured childhood objects, fondly remembered pets, friends, or other comforts that a survivor holds to prevent giving up. Glimmers offer magical protection against Valgavoth's insidious malice and help keep survivors from succumbing to the House's influence, even after the two are separated.

They can be extinguished when their companion loses hope or dies, and most long-term survivors of the house no longer have their glimmers.

Originally, Duskmourn was separated into three distinct realms: the Mortal Realm, the Realm of Demons, and the Realm of Spirits. Mortals who died in the Mortal Realm passed on to the Realm of Spirits as ghosts. After Valgavoth's Ascension and the transformation of the House, the Spirit Realm was pushed to the edges of the plane. The ghosts of those who died outside the House before Valgavoth's Ascension can only enter by squeezing through weak spots, entering through reflections or cracks in the walls. The effort of doing this corrupts the ghosts, producing a warped appearance that has earned them the name "glitch ghosts."

Glitch ghosts are trapped in the moment of emotion they experienced when they died. Sometimes a ghost will haunt a particular person or location they have an affinity for.

Duskmourn's gremlins are chaotic beings who delight in mischief and pranks. They indiscriminately antagonize both survivors and other denizens of the House but can be partially tamed if treated with kindness.

Malevolent chandeliers have been animated by Valgavoth's influence and given an inherent malevolence toward survivors. The bulbs that once provided light now burn with wicked flames, and the chandeliers uses them to hurl fire at any and all living creatures in its vicinity.

Nightmare fears are manifested embodiments of individual terrors and fears, spawned from survivors by the House because of Valgavoth's influence. All nightmares are individual and specific to the fear they symbolize; if multiple people have the same nightmare, the nightmare in question will increase proportionally in size and power. A person can be responsible for contributing to multiple separate nightmares.

Most nightmares are manifested subconsciously, but sometimes a cultist of Valgavoth will deliberately feed their fears to the House to birth a new nightmare. These nightmares are some of the most terrifying and warped, as the cultists have willingly opened up their repressed subconscious minds for the House to scour.

Nightmares are single-minded entities that only target those who created them. They don't aim to kill their victims, instead preferring to cause the person to relive the fear they embody. A person defeated by a nightmare is pulled into the nightmare's body, where they're forced to live through their fear endlessly. Each nightmare has a weakness specific to its core concept, and thus a different method of overcoming it.

Valgavoth, the demon lord of the House, has eyes everywhere. Most often these eyes manifest as moths, but deep in the Floodpits are terrible, living eyes called Oculi (singular oculus). They are Valgavoth's spies, scouring the pits for survivors. When they find one, they will silently follow, hoping to find a survivor encampment. Once they are satisfied, they will attack relentlessly. Merely being spotted by an oculus will alert the rest of the House to the survivor's presence.

In their larval stage, oculi possess a bark-like husk that takes the shape of a spider, allowing them to crawl around. As they age, they grow in size; eventually, the oculus will burst from its husk with the innate ability of flight and hover around the Floodpits looking for victims.

In the Hauntwoods is the Greenhosue, a room beside a rickety gazebo that houses all manner of planters and potted plants, an amalgamation of every greenhouse found in human cities before the Ascension. Hiding among the plants here are flytraps that have been warped by the House to grow to enormous size and consume living flesh, especially that of hapless survivors. They have insatiable appetites, always hungering for more.

Quickened toys are previously inanimate objects that have gained sentience and an appetite for death thanks to Valgavoth's warping influence.

Quickened toys prefer to avoid confrontation directly. They most often come across their targets when they're picked up by someone who assumes they're harmless. They'll let themselves be carried around, waiting for the perfect moment when everyone in the group has dropped their guards before striking. Once that group is eliminated, they'll fall into a dormant state again to await the next unsuspecting survivor to pick them up.

The only way to defeat a quickened toy is to destroy it entirely. Because they lack any sort of physiological structure, normal methods of incapacitation aren't enough to stop one. If any parts are still intact, even just a single limb, those parts will continue to move and hunt.

Razorkin are former survivors who now hunt the remaining survivors for their amusement. They thrive on pain and suffering, deriving pleasure from subjecting their victims to elaborate, punishing maze traps or inventing new ways of keeping victims alive and in constant agony. When they can't find survivors to torture, they will turn on each other, or themselves, to satisfy their cravings. Though razorkin don't function as a cohesive group, most of them will listen to the directives of the Lord of Pain.

Reflections are mysterious shape-shifters that live in the Fractured Realm, a mirror world that exists inside the House's reflective surfaces like mirrors and water. It is most commonly accessed in the aptly named Mirror Room in the Floodpits.

In their true form, reflections have masks that imitate those of Beasties and wear cloaks that are decorated with dried moths, but it is unclear if these are merely reflections of things seen around the House. No one knows if the reflections are native inhabitants of the Fractured Realm, or merely another twisted manifestation of Valgavoth's demonic influence.

Reflections are nearly inscrutable; they appear to have no motives of their own. They only attack if attacked, and will mirror the movements and actions of those they stumble across.

The shrieker is a chimera of animals that were native to the now consumed Rotrue Wood. They have the features of leapords, gazelle, racoons, and even reptiles. They have been twisted by Valgavoth's influence, and now hunt survivors and other monsters in the Hauntwoods. They are so named because of the terrifying shriek they emit before they pounce on their prey.

Skullcrabs appear as giant crabs with humanoid skulls emblazoned on their face. They are clearly twisted creatures made by Valgavoth's influence on the House, most likely from the plane's original crabs. With no beaches or shores left on Duskmourn, the skullcrabs hunt in the Floodpits and Mistmoors, looking for hapless survivors to devour.

Devourers are living trees, but it is unknown if they were animated by Valgavoth's influence or were twisted from Treefolk once native to the plane. In either case, they are aggressive, terrifying monsters that hunt the living. They are so named for their ability to devour the dead with their roots, absorbing their essence and leaving a hollow face-shaped growth on the devourer's trunk for every corpse absorbed.

Cellarspawn harvest fear from survivors, often causing enough fear to make the heart burst. People harvested this way are reduced to floating spinal columns called spindrells, stripped-down psychic remnants of the victim that retain only a base level of consciousness, steeped permanently in terror. Destroying a spindrell causes the trapped spirit to be released; but this may in turn create a glitch ghost.

Suspicious bookcases were once inanimate shelves of books, now given nefarious intent by Valgavoth. They are mostly found in the Floodpits and Mistmoors among the remnants of libraries, remaining still and blending in until survivors wanted too close or attempt to take a book.

These bookcases are often pressed up against the House's walls, and this allows them to often act as entrways for glitch ghosts who enter the House from the Spirit Realm, which has been pushed to the edges of the plane. The bookcases don't command these ghosts, but like everything in Duskmourn, they exist only to cause fear and hunt the living.

The original bears of the plane have been twisted by Valgavoth's demonic influence into these terrible twin monstrosities, an amalgam of two bears eternally caught in a painful struggle for dominance. They will lash out aggressively at any survivor who gets too close.

Valgavoth harbors a special loathing for dogs, whose mere presence provides a powerful antidote to the fear he craves. Most of Duskmourn's pets were transformed into Beasties during the Ascension, but many breeds of dog remained to defend their human companions. These watchdogs guard survivor encampments, and some survivors even equip their dogs with armor to give them a better fighting chance against the House and its denizens.

Wickerfolk are living constructs of wood that used to be humans and other survivors. In the early days of Valgavoth's Ascension, as awareness of the House's expansion across the plane grew, many people sought out ways to ward themselves against fear. A group of warlocks discovered a ritual to transform them into a form that would render them immutable, untouchable, and safe from horror forever. Their bodies were transformed into living wood — but their minds were left unable to experience sensations, driving them mad.

Spindly and strange, they look like constructs of wicker and bundled sticks, some decorated with flowers, mimicking hair or other ornamentation. They move stiffly and lack vocal folds, making them unable to speak.

Wickerfolk spend most of their time standing still and are frequently mistaken for lifeless wickerwork figurines or even trees. Wickerfolk often wait for a straggler to get close to them before infesting the person by sending slivers of leaves and branches into the victim's body through any gap they can to transform the person from both the inside and the outside. Some wickerfolk produce infectious spores from their bodies. Inhaling enough of the spores causes a person's joints to ossify and skin to harden, effectively petrifying them without killing them.