Hold Breath. The Anatrichla can hold its breath for 1 hour.
Multiple Heads. The Anatrichla has five heads. While it has more than one head, the Anatrichla has advantage on saving throws against being blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, stunned, and knocked unconscious.
Whenever the Anatrichla takes 25 or more damage in a single turn, one of its heads dies. If all its heads die, the hydra dies.
At the end of its turn, it grows two heads for each of its heads that died since its last turn, unless it has taken Thunder damage since its last turn. The Anatrichla regains 10 hit points for each head regrown in this way.
Legendary Resistance: (3/Day). When the Anatrichla fails a Saving Throw, it can choose to succeed instead.
Reactive Heads. For each head the Anatrichla has beyond one, it gets an extra reaction that can be used only for opportunity attacks.
Chameleon. Due to the Anatricha's relation to chameleons, it's heritage grants it the ability to change color and texture at will - allowing it to blend in with surroundings. While disguised in such a way, it has advantage on stealth checks.
Wakeful. While the Anatrichla sleeps, at least one of its heads is awake.
Multiattack. The Anatrichla makes as many attacks as it has heads.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (1d10 + 5) piercing damage.
If the target is hit by 2 separate bite attacks, it is then Grappled between the teeth of the Anatrichla. While grappled in this way, the creature is Restrained.
While a creature is grappled in this way, the Anatrichla may still make attacks with it's head, dealing bludgeoning damage, opposed to piercing.
Electrifying Spit. Ranged Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, range 60 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d8 + 3) Lightning damage.
Crush. The Anatrichla crushes all creatures it has Grappled between it's teeth, dealing 5 (1d10) piercing damage and 12 (3d8) lightning damage.
Aware. Independent of the "Reactive Heads" ability, the Anatrichla is able to make 2 reactions on it's turn, as opposed to just 1.
Born of Lightning. Upon taking damage from a melee weapon attack, lightning arcs off of the Anatrichla and connects with the attacker, forcing them to make a DC 17 Constitution Saving Throw, on a fail, they are stunned until the beginning of their next turn.
Poison Sling. Upon witnessing a creature start to move away from the Anatrichla, it slings an aimed glob of poison at it. the ground where the creature was standing becomes difficult terrain, and the creature must make a DC 14 Dexterity Saving Throw. On a fail, the target's movement becomes 0, and they take 10 (3d6 + 1) Poison Damage.
Electrified Bite. The Anatrichla makes a bite attack, half of the damage is converted to lightning damage
Wing Attack. The Anatrichla beats it's wings. Each creature within 15 feet of the Anatrichla must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity Saving Throw or take 9 (2d6 + 5) bludgeoning damage and be knocked Prone. The Anatrichla can then either move half it's flying or burrow speed.
Accidentally Arcane. The Anatrichla casts one of the following: Hallucinatory Terrain, Programmed Illusion, Mirror Image, Silence
Description
The Anatrichla is a reptilian horror not unrelated to the likes of the Hydra. A scaled horror with a largely crocodilian body, accentuated by multiple serpentine necks that boast heads similar to those of pit-vipers. It's long body is accentuated with numerous armored plates, stopping at the large chest plate, which protects their brain.
Each head has a large mouth that extends past the eye-line, and each maw can unhinge to fit even the largest of it's chosen food source, humanoids, between it's tangled teeth. Under certain circumstances, when overtly excited (while eating, for example), examples of it's affinity for lightning can be shown, either in small arcs across the scales, or causing to hair stand on end.
Smarter than their Hydra cousins, the Anatrichla is not nearly as simple and bestial. Thought to be a land-adapted variant of the Hydra, the Anatrichla utilizes their smarts in coercing their prey forwards, having developed a taste for humanoid flesh - they have had to become far more clever than in the past. Usually finding themselves closer to civilizations, in reaches where they might pick off the individual hunter or fisherman as they travel through the undocumented wood, coercing them to stray further off the path, having the capability to create an illusory pathway or thicket where the exit might have been.
This intelligence, however, has not been without cost. In the time that the Anatrichla has been given time to grow and develop, it seems to have become cruel in it's methods, most times playing and taunting it's soon-to-be food before consumption.
Lair and Lair Actions
The lightning-consuming Anatrichla tend to find themselves in open locations, such as fields, open mountain and cliff faces, and barren lands with little to no curvature. A product of magical study between an elemental and a hydra, the land around the Anatrichla is sometimes hard to spot. Most times, a heavy fog sinks to the ground, obscuring vision outside of it's domain, leading to uncertainty in travelers and adventurers both, it carries minor hallucinogens that slowly dose the travelers as they continue forwards through the domain. The open fields and mountain ranges show signs of detritus from lightning strikes that have stripped trees or permanently ashed stone. If there are trees around, they tend to part, allowing for the sky to peak through onto the forest floor, causing pathways to wind and force themselves into strange, winding positions - which tend to benefit the Anatrichla. The light that reaches the ground in these areas seem more dim than it should, and every sound seems more muffled the closer to the domain the travelers get.
At the center of it's domain, be it a moorland, a forest, or a mountainside, the Anatrichla chooses an area that would allow it direct access to the sky. It could choose a meadow in a forest, behind a waterfall, in a sheer cliff or at hillside for it's lair, usually creating an exit for itself doubling as sky-access. The Anatrichla wants to be found by adventurers and travelers, and will utilize the limited magic that it holds in order to guide them there to do so.
Lair Actions
On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the Anatrichla takes a lair action to cause one of the following effects; the Anatrichla can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:
- Deathly silence falls upon the domain of the Anatrichla. a 40ft sphere of pure magical silence appears at a point of the Hydra-kin's choosing within it's lair.
- The Anatrichla primes 3 locations on the ground with an electric energy, after 1d4 rounds after which, lightning strikes, dealing 1d8 in a 10ft radius around the primed locations.
- Rain starts to fall throughout the lair, after 3 rounds, lightning begins to strike 1 time per round in areas around the Anatrichla dealing 3d8 lightning damage to any target hit.
Regional Effects
The region containing an Anatrichla's lair is warped by the Hydra's magic, which creates one or more of the following effects:
- Within 6 miles of the Anatrichla's lair, there are numerous burnt, blackened craters in the ground - trees stripped nearly entirely of their bark - and hair stands unnaturally on end. A thick magical fog hangs close to the ground, lightly obscuring the area
- Within 1 mile of it's lair, the Hydra has excited the air currents around it enough to effectively super-excite it. Lightning strikes are frequent in the area, and any metal - worn or otherwise carried threatens to be struck by lightning.
- Other monstrosities within 1 mile of the dragon’s lair serve as the Hydra's eyes and ears. Deer and other large game are strangely absent - save for the extremely grotesque corpses left behind, hinting at the presence of an unnaturally hungry predator that simply kills for fun.
If the Anatrichla dies, the monstrosities lose their supernatural link to it. The thickets remain, but within 1d10 days, they become mundane plants and normal difficult terrain, losing their thorns.
Comments