Swarm. The swarm can occupy another creature's space and vice versa, and the swarm can move to any open location large enough to support it by travelling trhough the Astral plane.
Hunger. On each of its turns, the swarm will attempt to consume any soft, organic matter within 5 ft of them. Any organism, dead or alive, not completely covered in non-organic protection (e.g., magic or metal) or hard organic (e.g., chitin or bone) must perform a Constitution check. On a failure, they take 2d6 damage. On a succeed, damage received is halved.
Grapple. One of the skeletons inside the swarm Grapples a target within 5 ft of the swarm in an attempt to escape. The target must make a Dexterity save.
On succeeding, the target frees themselves and pulls the skeleton out of the swarm, where it becomes inanimate. The swarm loses ammunition for the Fling attack.
On failing, the target remains Grappled and vulnerable to the swarm's Hunger trait.
Lash out. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., up to three targets. Hit: 18 (3d8 + 6) piercing damage to targets with exposed, soft, organic tissue.
Part of the swarm lashes out to nearby targets and nibble on them.
Fling. Ranged Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, range 15 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 5) bludgeoning or piercing damage.
The swarm uses any weapons, armour and shields from the adventurers trapped in their middle and flings it towards a target.
Description
The Astral Stirge is a sub-species of Stirge which evolved to use the Astral plane to hunt prey. Way tinier and with dark purple coloration, they formed swarms to increase the chance of a succesful hunt. The success of this is obvious as almost each swarm contains one to four animate skeletons.
Adventurers who fell victim to the swarm long ago, nothing more than bones and their equipment, kept alive by some influence from the Astral plane, desperate to escape.
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