Caterwauler

The Caterwauler is a horrific amalgamation of a massive, swollen caterpillar and a giant spider. Their faces look like human skulls with three eyes, their mouths filled with sharp teeth and their jaws opening both horizontally and vertically. They have skinny silver human arms at the front of their bodies, which end in spindly gold nailed fingers, and they have bands of silver going down their long golden legs. They come from the Primal Sea, but unlike most of the other Primals which formed within the Primal Realms, they traveled to the Twilight Realms in an early age, and have been a permanent presence there ever since. Unfortunately for the Twilight Realm's many inhabitants, Caterwaulers abhor all forms of life, including their own kind, making encounters with one extremely dangerous. Paradoxically, however, is the fact that Caterwaulers are in constant, desperate need for more knowledge, going so far as to invade the dreams of other creatures to satiate their need for discussion and discourse. They use these dreams to intrigue and lure the individuals to their lair, where they either take a greater interest in their intellectual exchange or grow bored of them, leaving them victim to the creatures repugnant whims and foul appetite. Caterwaulers reproduce asexually, creating one, large, goldsilver egg every millennia, which hatches after some time into a fully developed, fully aware Caterwauler. Naturally, the parent and child despise one another, and will either fight to the death over control of the lair, or reach some form of agreement, often with the newborn Caterwauler leaving to create its own lair in exchange for some crucial piece of knowledge the parent has. Referring to themselves as Fate-weavers, Caterwaulers get their more commonly used name from the abhorrent sounds they create when threatened or disturbed; a mixture between a human's screaming and a cat's yowling. Anyone hearing the horrid cries of a Caterwauler become deathly afraid of it, even the most stalwart heroes have turned tail and fled upon hearing its mournful cry. Their one weakness are those blades which have been forged to have the sharpest cutting edge possible, said to be capable of severing through even the strands of fate itself.

A Caterwauler’s Lair

In a long, sprawling cave, a tight, dense cluster of trees or some deep, dark crevasse, hidden away, the caterwauler creeps about, scheming and plotting its unknowable machinations, as it anxiously toils away acquiring more knowledge and information about the world and its inhabitants that surround it.

Everything about a caterwauler’s lair reflects its warped mind and alien cunning; the magical goldsilver webs, the strange mutant beasts and undead, and the many valuable trinkets that it has... collected, littered about. The paranoid monster oft decorates its profane home with the rewards of its slaughter, ever keen to find a new ornament to adorn its silken abode.

Lair Actions

On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the caterwauler can take a lair action to cause one of the following magical effects; the caterwauler can’t use the same effect two rounds in a row:

• The caterwauler rolls a d6 and regains a spell slot of that level or lower. If it has no spent spell slots of that level or lower, nothing happens.
• The caterwauler teleports itself up to 60 feet away to an unoccupied space it can see within its lair.
• The caterwauler calls out to one of the various eldritch monstrosities it reluctantly shares its lair with. The caterwauler rolls a d6 . On a 1 to 3, a giant spider appears in an unoccupied space within 30 feet of the caterwauler. On a 4 to 5, an ettercap appears in an unnoccupied space within 60 feet of the caterwauler. On a 6, a phase spider appears in an unoccupied space within 120 feet of the caterwauler.

Regional Effects

The region containing a caterwauler's lair is warped by the creature’s magic, which creates one or more of the following effects:

• Goldsilver webs and iridescent silks appear over many surfaces within 3 miles of the lair.
• Spiders, caterpillars, and other similar creatures begin growing to unnatural sizes and become unusually aggressive within 6 miles of the lair.
• A strange temporal malaise falls over the region where a caterwauler's lair is located. Every other creature within 9 miles of the lair makes any ability checks with disadvantage.