WHEN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD GOES BAD, IT GOES VERY BAD

Adventurers expect danger in dungeons.

They expect it in forgotten tombs, haunted forests and ominous castles situated upon cliffs during thunderstorms.

They are generally less prepared for the street itself to rise up and try to kill them.

Fistful of Foes #1 launches the Schlocktoberfest series with five quick-and-dirty monsters for fifth-edition-compatible fantasy games: three forms of Urban Blight, a swarm of animated objects and a creature born from hatred of the gods.

No enormous bestiary.

No lengthy discourse upon the migratory habits of hostile masonry.

Just five novel monsters from a twisted imagination, ready to drop into your game whenever the players have become too comfortable with the furniture, the local architecture or the continued goodwill of the divine.

FIVE NOVEL MONSTERS

COBBLE BLIGHT

When the neighbourhood goes bad, the streets may become actively hostile.

The Cobble Blight turns the stones beneath the characters’ feet into something considerably more dangerous than an uneven paving hazard.

Use Cobble Blights in:

• Ancient streets

• Ruined cities

• Castle courtyards

• Abandoned plazas

• Subterranean settlements

• Roads built over cursed ground

• Districts infected by hostile magic

• Anywhere adventurers have assumed the floor is not part of the encounter

A Cobble Blight can transform an ordinary urban location into an ambush.

Perhaps the stones were awakened to defend the city.

Perhaps they have absorbed generations of violence, fear and spilled blood.

Perhaps some irresponsible magician animated them and neglected to include instructions explaining when they should stop.

Whatever the cause, the characters may discover that the safest route through town is no longer the road.

WATTLE BLIGHT

Wattle has served for centuries as a practical building material.

This is the first mistake.

The second is allowing it to become angry.

The Wattle Blight brings hostile life to woven walls, fences and rustic structures. It is ideal for villages, farmsteads, crude fortifications and neglected buildings where nobody expects the construction materials to possess opinions.

A Wattle Blight might be:

• A corrupted part of an inhabited building

• A guardian created by rural magic

• An infection spreading from house to house

• The remnant of some older structure

• A defensive enchantment that has ceased distinguishing friend from foe

• The first sign that an entire settlement is coming alive

Characters accustomed to checking doors for traps may be less prepared to interrogate the walls.

Their mistake will be educational.

STRAW BLIGHT

Straw is dry, plentiful and commonly shaped into things that look almost—but not quite—human.

Nothing about this arrangement should inspire confidence.

The Straw Blight provides another form of hostile vegetation for fields, barns, cottages and villages where the harvest has developed murderous ambitions.

Use it as:

• A rural guardian

• A creature born from a failed harvest ritual

• The servant of a witch or disgruntled agricultural deity

• A manifestation of famine or rural anger

• A threat concealed among ordinary bundles of straw

• The beginning of something spreading through the surrounding countryside

The Straw Blight can appear alone as an unexpected encounter or as part of a wider outbreak involving farms, settlements and the unfortunate people who believed bringing the harvest indoors would make it safe.

It is only straw.

Until it moves.

URBAN BLIGHTS

The Cobble, Wattle and Straw Blights form a family of creatures built around familiar materials becoming animate, corrupted and hostile.

Together, they allow Games Masters to turn ordinary environments into sources of danger.

The monsters are not merely standing inside the location.

They are part of it.

A ruined district may contain all three varieties. Cobble Blights infest the streets, Wattle Blights lurk in the surviving buildings and Straw Blights wait in abandoned storehouses or overgrown fields.

Their presence might suggest:

• A curse affecting an entire settlement

• Magical pollution spreading through local materials

• A druidic attack upon urban civilisation

• A protective enchantment gone wrong

• A dead sorcerer’s defences continuing without direction

• A town gradually becoming one enormous hostile organism

The characters may begin by fighting individual monsters before realising that the environment itself is changing around them.

Burning one building may destroy a Wattle Blight.

It may also create several entirely new problems.

CLOUD OF OBJECTS

Animated objects are a respected fantasy tradition.

A broom moves by itself.

A chair attacks somebody.

A suit of armour walks down a corridor.

The Cloud of Objects asks why these things should attack one at a time when they can achieve much better results through collective action.

This creature represents a swarm of animated objects moving together as a single threat.

Books, tools, crockery, cutlery, toys, debris or almost any collection of unattended possessions can suddenly become airborne and hostile.

Use a Cloud of Objects in:

• A wizard’s laboratory

• An abandoned mansion

• A haunted inn

• A magical academy

• A workshop filled with tools

• A library where the books have become critical of their readers

• A kitchen containing a worrying quantity of knives

• A treasure chamber whose contents defend themselves

The particular objects involved can change the appearance and tone of the encounter.

A swarm of children’s toys is eerie.

A swarm of surgical instruments is considerably less whimsical.

A swarm of coins may be dangerous, distracting and extremely difficult to persuade adventurers not to pursue.

The Cloud of Objects makes almost any furnished room potentially threatening.

This is excellent news for Games Masters and deeply inconvenient for everyone else.

THE GODLESS

There are many reasons to hate the gods.

They are distant, capricious and extraordinarily demanding for beings who rarely trouble themselves to explain what they are doing.

A sufficiently intense hatred, however, may attract something worse.

The Godless is formed when hatred of the divine becomes strong enough to draw the soul fragment of an ancient evil.

This is not merely disbelief.

It is rage given supernatural form.

The Godless can be used as:

• The result of a priest’s collapse of faith

• A creature born from a persecuted community

• The weapon of an anti-religious cult

• A manifestation haunting a desecrated temple

• An ancient evil exploiting legitimate anger

• The consequence of divine cruelty

• A threat attracted by blasphemy, despair or vengeance

Its existence raises questions beyond simple combat.

Who hated the gods strongly enough to attract it?

Was that hatred justified?

Is the creature serving those who summoned it, manipulating them or merely using their anger as a doorway?

What ancient evil does the soul fragment belong to?

Can the Godless be destroyed without addressing the suffering that called it into being?

The creature may be encountered in a ruined shrine, a city abandoned by its patron deity or among people who prayed for deliverance and received only silence.

The gods may demand that it be destroyed.

That does not necessarily make the gods innocent.

FIVE MONSTERS, DOZENS OF PROBLEMS

The creatures in Fistful of Foes #1 can be used separately as quick encounters or connected into a larger scenario.

Perhaps an entire district has become infected by an ancient evil.

Cobble Blights control the streets.

Wattle and Straw Blights emerge from the buildings.

Possessions rise into Clouds of Objects.

At the centre of the corruption waits the Godless, drawn into the world by generations of unanswered prayers and divine neglect.

The characters might be asked to:

• Clear a dangerous neighbourhood

• Rescue people trapped inside an animated building

• Investigate why ordinary materials are becoming hostile

• Recover an object from within a living district

• Discover who or what created the Blights

• Prevent the corruption from spreading

• Decide whether the local temple is victim, culprit or both

• Confront the Godless and the grievance that summoned it

Five monsters are sufficient for several encounters.

A small amount of connective spite can turn them into an entire adventure.

QUICK, DIRTY AND READY TO USE

Fistful of Foes #1 is intended for Games Masters who need fresh opposition without buying a vast monster manual or spending an evening constructing a stat block from scratch.

The creatures can be used as:

• Wandering monsters

• Urban encounters

• Haunted-house threats

• Guardians and magical defences

• Manifestations of curses

• The centrepiece of short adventures

• Additions to existing dungeons and settlements

• Surprises for players who have stopped treating scenery with appropriate suspicion

Use them exactly as presented.

Modify them to suit your setting.

Take the central concepts and build something larger, stranger and considerably more vindictive.

The statistics provide the immediate threat.

You provide the reason the street has decided it hates them.

DESIGNED FOR THE SCREEN

The supplement is presented in a screen-friendly size and format for convenient reference from a tablet or laptop during play.

Keep it beside your campaign notes and deploy something unpleasant whenever the players begin treating the surrounding environment as harmless decoration.

This is a PDF electronic download for use with fifth-edition-compatible fantasy role-playing games.

You can find the other Fistful of Foes and fifth-edition supplements here.

The road is moving.

The walls are watching.

The furniture has formed a swarm.

And something in the ruined temple hates the gods even more than you do.