The Marrowmaw
Aberration
Description
An example monster to show what dndplaybook can do — remix it, rewrite it, or delete it and build your own. The stat block below was placed with the /Stat Block command in the editor.
The Marrowmaw is a burrowing horror the size of a barn: pallid, segmented hide over a body that is mostly appetite, and a head that is nothing but mouth — a blossom of bone plates that peels open around a gullet lined with grinding teeth. It hunts by sound through the earth itself. The only warning it gives is the silence of everything else fleeing first.
The Marrowmaw
Large Aberration, unaligned
AC 15 (natural armor)
Initiative +0 (10)
HP 95 (10d10+40)
Speed 30 ft., Burrow 20 ft.
Skills Perception +7
Resistances Bludgeoning
Immunities Blinded, Prone
Senses Blindsight 30 ft., Tremorsense 60 ft.; Passive Perception 17
Languages —
CR 5 (XP 1,800; PB +3)
Traits
Earth Glide. The Marrowmaw can burrow through nonmagical, unworked earth and stone without disturbing the material it moves through.
Sound Sense. The Marrowmaw automatically detects the location of any creature in contact with the ground within 60 feet of it.
Actions
Multiattack. The Marrowmaw makes one Bite attack and one Tail Sweep attack.
Bite. Melee Attack Roll: +7, reach 10 ft. Hit: 22 (4d8+4) piercing damage, and the target is Grappled (escape DC 15) if it is a Large or smaller creature.
Tail Sweep. Melee Attack Roll: +7, reach 15 ft. Hit: 13 (2d8+4) bludgeoning damage, and the target has the Prone condition.
Swallow. Strength Saving Throw: DC 15, one Medium or smaller creature Grappled by the Marrowmaw. Failure: the target is swallowed, and takes 10 (3d6) acid damage at the start of each of the Marrowmaw's turns.
Bonus Actions
Undermine. The Marrowmaw collapses the ground in a 10-foot square within 10 feet of it. That area becomes Difficult Terrain, and each creature standing in it must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or have the Prone condition.
Lore
Feed the Swallowed Doors, and the doors stay shut.
— carved in Old Thornish above a sinkhole shrine
The deep folk of the Thornwood left offerings at its sinkholes for generations and never wrote down why. Scholars now believe the creature slumbered beneath the heartwood for centuries until something — a tremor, a tunnel, a spade — cracked its long dream. @Kaelen Thornwood has tracked its spoor for two seasons and believes it is not wandering. It is circling back toward whatever woke it.
In the timber camps that ring the burned forest, everyone has a theory. Roll a d6, or pick whichever lie your table will enjoy chasing most:
d6 | Heard in the timber camps |
|---|---|
1 | It's a dragon with no wings. The Duke's men shot it, and now it's angry. |
2 | The deep folk fed it for a thousand years. We stopped. It remembers. |
3 | It only takes those who carry iron. Leave your tools and walk out whole. |
4 | Old Marta heard it under the floor of the cook-shed. She says it was singing. |
5 | There's a magistrate in the city who pays double for anyone who saw the fire start. |
6 | It isn't hunting. It's looking for something it lost. |
Tactics
The Marrowmaw fights the way it hunts: from below, without warning, and never fairly.
Open from beneath. It collapses the ground under the heaviest target with Undermine, then surfaces to bite whatever fell.
Take one, go deep. It grapples a single creature and burrows, forcing the party to chase it into tunnels it collapses behind itself.
Swallow and vanish. Reduced below a third of its hit points, it swallows whatever it holds and flees. It has learned that patience tastes better than victory.
On open rock it loses its tremorsense targets, Undermine, and its escape routes — which is why it is never found on open rock.