Smirch
Abilities
- Blinding slap: melee attack +4 to hit, 1d6 + 2 bludgeoning damage, and the target makes a DC 11 Constitution save or has ink in its eyes and is blinded until the end of its next turn.
- Seep: slides under a vault door or along a crack no wider than a pen nib, taking a full turn to do it.
- Shelf-runner: moves along shelves, walls and vault ceilings as easily as floors.
- Stillness: while it keeps still against dark stone, it is indistinguishable from a spill.
- Feels the shelves: senses anything that moves a case or shelf within 30 feet, and nothing else.
Weaknesses
- Its skin is a film of old sealing wax: vulnerable to fire damage.
- A pure ringing note: a creature can use its action to strike a bell or tuning fork. Every smirch within 30 feet makes a DC 12 Wisdom save or recoils and cannot move closer to the sound until the end of its next turn, and any creature blinded by a smirch that hears the note can end that condition on itself.
Ink that has been used to write too many sealed promises remembers them, and sometimes it remembers them hard enough to get up. A smirch is a knee-high slick of black ink under a skin of old red sealing wax, and it moves the way a spill spreads, except uphill.
Habits
The Sealwrights call them the vaults’ own ink and list them on the Hall’s roll of servants, at no wage. Smirches stay in the lowest level of the Wax Vaults. They let anyone in a Sealwright’s grey gown pass, and they come for anyone else who moves a sealed case. They have no mouths and no eyes. They feel the shelves, slap ink across a thief’s face, and cling to them until someone with keys comes down.
At the table
Brief original stats for fifth-edition play: AC 11, HP 18, speed 20 feet and climb 20 feet, Strength 14, Dexterity 12, Constitution 12. Vulnerable to fire. Blindsight 10 feet (blind beyond), and it feels any case or shelf that moves within 30 feet; it cannot itself be blinded.
Keeper, not killer. A smirch that drops a creature to 0 hit points clings to it instead (the creature is Grappled, escape DC 12) and makes no further attacks against it. The vaults hold thieves for the Sealwrights; they do not bury them.
A greater smirch rises when an ink cistern overflows: Large, CR 2 (450 XP), AC 10, HP 58 (9d10 + 9), two blinding slaps a turn (+4 to hit, reach 10 feet, 9 (2d6 + 2) bludgeoning, DC 11 Constitution save or blinded), and it can snuff every ordinary, non-magical flame within 10 feet of it as a bonus action. It follows the same keeper rule. On day 3 the Wardens fought five smirches and one greater smirch in the lowest vault: 950 XP, a moderate fight for four level 3 characters, fought in the dark.