Flesh Suit. The Devourer can force its black blood into the body of a Medium humanoid that is unconscious, dying, or has died within the last minute. The body becomes a warped disguise that roughly resembles the creature in life.
While using a Flesh Suit, the Devourer appears to be the host creature, though subtle distortions remain—limbs slightly too long, eyes that blink out of sync, or a faint black seepage at the mouth or wounds. The Devourer gains access to the creature’s languages and fragmented surface memories, allowing it to mimic simple behavior or speech.
The Devourer can speak through the host’s vocal cords, though its voice is often strained, broken, or layered with faint whispers.
While inside a Flesh Suit, the Devourer’s size appears Medium. The disguise ends immediately if the Devourer attacks, if the host body takes 20 or more damage, or if the Devourer chooses to emerge. When the disguise ends, the body violently ruptures as the Devourer tears free.
A creature that carefully examines the Flesh Suit can make a +2 Wisdom (Perception) check against DC 14 to notice something is wrong with the body’s movements or appearance.
Whispering Faces. The Devourer’s body is riddled with partially absorbed victims whose faces and arms plead desperately for help. Any creature that starts its turn within 10 ft. of the Devourer must succeed on a +0 Wisdom saving throw (DC 14) or become Compelled until the start of its next turn.
While Compelled, the creature must use its movement to approach the Devourer and attempt to pull a pleading torso or face free from the mass. When it does so, the Devourer immediately grapples the creature (escape DC 16).
At the start of the Devourer’s turn, any creature grappled this way is dragged deeper into the mass and gains 1 level of exhaustion.
At the start of each of its turns while grappled in this way, the creature may attempt a +0 Strength saving throw (DC 16), freeing itself on a success.
An ally within 5 ft. of the grappled creature can use an action to help pull them free, granting advantage on the Strength saving throw.
A creature that succeeds on the initial save is immune to Whispering Faces for 24 hours. If a creature reaches 6 levels of exhaustion, it dies and is absorbed into the Devourer’s mass.
Grasping Hands. The Devourer’s body is covered in writhing arms and clutching hands from the corpses fused into its mass. When a creature within 5 ft. of the Devourer moves around it or within its reach, the grasping limbs claw and batter at the creature.
For every 5 feet the creature moves while within 5 ft. of the Devourer, it takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage from the striking limbs. This damage represents the unarmed blows of the grasping hands embedded in the creature’s body.
Hungering Maw. The Devourer’s flower-like head splits open into rows of inward-angled thorn teeth leading into a dark, pulsing throat. When the Devourer reduces a creature to 0 hit points, it can immediately attempt to consume the fallen body.
The creature is dragged into the Devourer’s maw and absorbed into its mass of flesh and black blood. The Devourer regains 2d10+5 hit points.
If the creature consumed was Medium or larger, the Devourer instead regains 3d10+5 hit points.
A creature slain in this way is absorbed into the Devourer’s body, its face and limbs occasionally visible among the writhing corpses that make up the monster’s form.
Multiattack
Multiattack. The Devourer makes two attacks. The first attack must be One-Handed Strike. The second attack can be One-Handed Strike, Two-Handed Slam, or Tail Whip.
One-Handed Strike
The Devourer lashes out with a single massive arm formed from fused corpses.
Melee Weapon Attack:
+9, reach 10 ft., one target.
Hit:
1d10+6 bludgeoning damage.
Two-Handed Slam
The Devourer raises both massive arms and smashes them down in a crushing double blow that sprays black blood and corpse matter across the ground.
Melee Weapon Attack:
+9, reach 10 ft., one target.
Hit:
2d8+6 bludgeoning damage.
The impact splatters viscera and black blood across the ground in a 15-ft radius centered on the target. The area becomes difficult terrain until the start of the Devourer’s next turn.
Tail Whip
The Devourer swings its long corpse-bound tail like a heavy club.
Melee Weapon Attack:
+9, reach 15 ft., one target.
Hit:
2d10+6 bludgeoning damage.
Devouring Bite
The Devourer’s flower-like head splits open, revealing rows of inward-angled thorn teeth that snap down on restrained prey.
Melee Weapon Attack:
+8, reach 5 ft., one creature grappled by the Devourer’s Barbed Tongue.
Hit:
2d8+4 piercing damage.
If this attack reduces the creature to 0 hit points, the Devourer can immediately use Hungering Maw.
Barbed Tongue. The Devourer lashes out with a hooked tendril tongue that coils around the target. Dozens of backward-facing barbs dig into the creature’s flesh like fish hooks, holding them fast as acidic saliva burns the wound.
Melee Weapon Attack:
+6, reach 20 ft., one target.
Hit: The target must succeed on a +0 Strength saving throw (DC 14) or become grappled (escape DC 14).
A creature grappled this way takes
1d4 acid damage at the start of each of its turns as corrosive saliva seeps into the hooked wounds.
The Devourer can grapple one creature per tongue, and the grapple ends if the creature escapes or the Devourer releases it.
Black Blood Splatter
The Devourer violently shakes its body, spraying thick strands of black blood and liquefied flesh in every direction.
Each creature within 15 ft. of the Devourer must make a +0 Dexterity saving throw (DC 14).
On a failed save, a creature takes
1d6 necrotic damage plus
1d4 acid damage.
On a successful save, the creature takes half damage.
The ground in the affected area becomes slick with black blood until the start of the Devourer’s next turn.
Ravenous Lunge (Recharge 5–6)
The Devourer rears back, its flower-like head peeling open as its limbs tense for a violent charge.
The Devourer begins charging a devastating lunge. Until the start of its next turn, its speed becomes 0 as it coils its body.
At the start of its next turn, the Devourer surges forward in a straight line up to 40 ft. Each creature in that line must succeed on a
+0 Dexterity saving throw (DC 15).
On a failed save, a creature takes
4d10+6 bludgeoning damage and is knocked prone.
On a successful save, the creature takes half damage and isn’t knocked prone.
The Devourer ends the movement in the final space of the line.
Carrion Skyfall (Recharge 6)
The Devourer’s malformed wings violently unfurl and stretch to twice their size as black blood spreads across them.
The Devourer launches 30 ft. straight upward without provoking opportunity attacks and hangs in the air, preparing to crash down.
At the start of its next turn, it slams down onto the space it left.
Creatures within 15 ft. of that space must make a
+0 Dexterity saving throw (DC 15).
On a failed save, a creature takes
5d8 bludgeoning damage plus
2d6 necrotic damage and is knocked prone.
On a successful save, the creature takes half damage and isn’t knocked prone.
The impact scatters corpses and black blood across the area, turning it into difficult terrain for 1 minute.
Forced Evolution
The Devourer’s black blood violently reshapes its body in response to injury.
Forced Evolution. When the Devourer takes damage from an attack, it can rapidly mutate to resist the harm. The Devourer gains resistance to that damage type until the end of its next turn.
The Devourer cannot gain resistance to Radiant damage in this way.
Once the Devourer uses this reaction, it cannot use Forced Evolution again until the start of its next turn.
Carrion Escape
This gives the monster a way to survive or reposition without feeling like a cheap revive.
Carrion Escape. When the Devourer is reduced to 0 hit points, it does not die. Instead, the mass of corpses violently tears itself apart as black blood surges through the creature.
The Devourer instead drops to 1 hit point, immediately disengages, and flies up to its flying speed ×2 without provoking opportunity attacks.
After using this reaction, the Devourer cannot use Carrion Escape again.
Devouring Screech
The Devourer releases a chorus of screaming voices from the bodies trapped within it.
Devouring Screech. When a creature within 30 ft. damages the Devourer, it can unleash a horrifying scream.
The creature must succeed on a
+0 Wisdom saving throw (DC 14) or become frightened until the end of its next turn.
Description
Black Blood Devourer
The Black Blood Devourer is a towering mass of corpses, torn limbs, and exposed viscera bound together by a thick, tar-like fluid known only as black blood. This unnatural substance moves like living tar through the creature’s body, stitching flesh together and animating the dead matter into a single grotesque organism.
Standing roughly ten feet tall in a hunched, gorilla-like posture, the Devourer moves with disturbing speed for something of its size. Its massive arms drag across the ground as it lumbers forward, while a long corpse-bound tail swings behind it like a heavy club. Small, malformed wings jut from its back, appearing far too small to support its weight—until they suddenly unfurl with horrifying force.
Atop the creature’s body sits its most disturbing feature: a flower-like head formed from thick fleshy petals. The outer surface of these petals is covered in dozens of unblinking eyes, each darting in different directions as if searching for prey. When the petals open, they reveal rows of inward-curving thorn-like teeth surrounding a dark, pulsing throat.
From within that maw lash two barbed tendril tongues, each covered in hooked spines that tear into flesh like fishhooks. Once they latch onto a victim, the tongues drag prey toward the Devourer’s waiting jaws.
Embedded throughout the creature’s body are the faces and torsos of its past victims, partially absorbed but not entirely destroyed. These remnants sometimes twitch or whisper, their mouths forming desperate pleas for help. Whether these voices are echoes of the dead or cruel mimicry by the creature itself is unknown.
The Devourer is not intelligent in the way most thinking creatures are, but it possesses a predatory cunning. It learns from pain, adapts to threats, and remembers those who have harmed it. The black blood within its body constantly reshapes the creature, allowing it to evolve in response to danger.
The Black Blood Devourer feeds on both flesh and memory. When it consumes a creature, fragments of the victim’s knowledge linger within it. Though it cannot fully understand these stolen thoughts, they influence its behavior—allowing it to recognize language, mimic voices, or even disguise itself within the body of the recently dead.
At first the creature makes a strange, rapid “gir… gir… gir…” sound, high-pitched and wet, like something trying to force air through a throat not meant to make noise. The sound stutters faster and faster as the mass of corpses shifts and tightens.
Then the flesh at the top of its body begins to tear apart.
The thick petals of its head split open with a series of wet cracks and stretching cartilage pops, peeling back one by one. As they open, the creature draws in an enormous breath, the sound of air rushing into its cavernous maw like wind being sucked into a collapsing tunnel.
For a brief moment the battlefield goes quiet.
Then it releases the air.
The roar that follows isn’t a normal scream—it’s a long, hollow blast, like a rusted war horn dragged out of a grave, layered with the dying echoes of dozens of voices trapped within its body. The sound wavers and bends, metallic and broken, carrying a tone of agony that rattles in the chest of anyone who hears it.
As the roar fades, the many eyes lining its petals roll wildly, and the hooked tongues slowly slide from its throat.
The creature has noticed you.