Dryad Husk

Medium fey (husk), chaotic evil

Armor Class 11 (16 with barkskin)
Hit Points 32 (5d8 + 10)
Speed 40 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
14 (+2)	12 (+1)	15 (+2)	12 (+1)	14 (+2)	18 (+4)

Skills Intimidation +6, Nature +3, Perception +4, Stealth +3
Condition Immunities charmed, frightened
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
Languages Elvish, Sylvan
Challenge 2 (450 XP)
Proficiency Bonus +2

SPECIAL TRAITS

• Innate Spellcasting. The dryad husk’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 12). The dryad husk can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
  • At will: druidcraft
  • 3/day each: darkness, entangle, shatter
  • 1/day each: barkskin, fear
• Speak with Beasts and Plants. The dryad can communicate with beasts and plants as if they shared a language.

ACTIONS

• Multiattack. The dryad makes two blighted branch attacks.
• Blighted Branch. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) bludgeoning damage plus 4 (1d8) necrotic damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or its hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken. This reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest. The target dies if this effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0.
• Impart Anguish (Recharge 5-6). The dryad husk twists its face into a visage of utter agony, sharing its anguish with those who gaze upon it. Creatures within 15 feet of the dryad that can see it must make a DC 14 Wisdom saving throw, taking 13 (3d8) psychic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

ABOUT

Few can look upon the face of a dryad husk and resist the pure fear it instills, and even fewer live to tell of it. Under normal circumstances, dryads are beautiful fey guardians of the forest. They become bound to great trees and rarely venture more than a few hundred feet from their homes. While the loss of its home tree can be devastating, a dryad can, in time, bind itself to a different tree.

The trouble arises, however, when calamity strikes a dryad’s forest and yet fails to kill the dryad. Disease, fire, logging-these and other catastrophes can prevent an uprooted dryad from locating a suitable replacement for its lost home. Such dryads wander their destroyed homeland, wracked by pain for years. Over enough time, a treeless dryad can become a dryad husk-a shell of its former self, stuck in a state of perpetual agony, bent on inflicting the same pain on others that it feels every waking moment.

Dryad husks are driven by unbridled rage, particularly toward creatures they see as complicit in the destruction of forest land, which includes just about every kind of humanoid. In combat, they close with their enemies as soon as possible, forcing their foes to stare into their deformed faces in order to impart some of their anguish onto others. For a weapon, dryad husks often carry a corrupted or burned branch, the last remnant of the bound tree they lost.

From a distance, a dryad husk resembles its former self as a beautiful forest nymph. Up close, however, its horrifying visage becomes plain, as does its other monstrous features skin as dry and cracked as dead logs, tangled hair matted with mud and slime.

Dryads aren’t the only nymphs capable of transforming into a husk-like abomination.

Naiad husks appear to be made of fetid, murky water. Similarly, the husks of once- golden-hued hesperides resemble a twilight sky reflected through a shattered mirror.