Maniitok

Colossal ooze, neutral evil

Armor Class 17 (natural armor)
Hit Points 264 (23d12+115)
Speed 30 ft., burrow 30 ft., swim 30 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
30 (+10)	6 (-2)	21 (+5)	7 (-2)	12 (+1)	14 (+2)

Damage Resistances acid, electricity, fire; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from non-magical weapons
Damage Immunities cold, poison, psychic
Condition Immunities blinded, charmed, exhaustion, frightened, poisoned, paralyzed, petrified, prone, restrained
Skills Perception +13
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception
Languages Sylvan (can’t speak)
Challenge 17 (18,000 XP)

SPECIAL TRAITS

• Amorphous. The maniitok can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch wide without squeezing.
• Enveloping Chill. The maniitok inflicts 10 (3d6) cold damage to creatures it has grappled at the beginning of its turn.
• Innate Spellcasting. The maniitok’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 16). The maniitok can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
• At will: fog cloud, heat metal (deals cold damage instead of fire), pass without trace (self only), sleet storm
• 3/day each: commune with nature
• 1/day: animate objects, antipathy/sympathy (antipathy only), insect plague (as a 7th level spell)
• Immovable Mire. Maniitoks are perpetually surrounded with sodden muck of boggy peat and half-thawed permafrost. The area 10 ft. around a maniitok is treated as difficult terrain. A creature that moves adjacent to a maniitok must succeed at a DC 19 Strength saving throw or become restrained until its next turn or until the maniitok moves.
• Magic Resistance. The maniitok has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects. One With the Land. If a maniitok is killed while touching the ground (including a vertical surface), it triggers an earthquake centered on the maniitok’s location, as the spell. Regeneration. The maniitok regains 20 hit points at the start of its turn if it has at least 1 hit point and is in contact with the ground.
• Siege Monster. The maniitok deals double damage to objects and structures.

ACTIONS

• Multiattack. The maniitok makes two attacks with its pseudopod.
• Pseudopod. Melee Weapon Attack: +16 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 32 (4d10+10) bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled. If it scores a critical hit, it rolls damage three times instead of two times.
• Breath Weapon (Recharge 6). The maniitok expels a cone of mire and debris in a 60 ft. cone. Creatures in the area must succeed at a DC 19 Dexterity saving throw. On a failure, the creature takes 21 (6d6) bludgeoning damage and is restrained until the end of its next turn; on a success, the victim takes half damage and is not restrained. The breath weapon has additional effects depending on the ambient temperature.
• Frozen (below freezing): Victims also take 7 (2d6) points of cold damage. If the cold damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but suffers one level of exhaustion.
• Thawed (above freezing): Victims also take 7 (2d6) points of poison damage. If the poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but poisoned for 1 hour.

BONUS ACTIONS

• Tundral Swarm (Recharge 6). The maniitok surrounds itself with a cloud of mire and debris. A 10 ft. radius surrounding the maniitok is creates strong wind and is heavily obscured. At the end of the manitok’s turn, the swarm, disrupts concentration (DC 10 Constitution saving throw to maintain concentration), deals 10 (3d6) bludgeoning damage to creatures in the area, and has additional effects depending on the ambient temperature. In colder environments (below freezing), a maniitok’s tundral swarm is mostly shards of ice, hard-frozen ground, bits of bone and stone, and driving snow. Creatures within 10 feet of the maniitok also take 3 (1d6) points of cold damage. In warmer weather (above freezing), this tempest is largely comprised of mosquitoes, beetles, and centipedes, interspersed with rocks, uprooted plants, and chunks of permafrost. Creatures within 10 feet of the maniitok also take 3 (1d6) points of poison damage. This aura moves with the maniitok and lasts 1 minute.

ABOUT

This immense abomination looms like a frozen hillside come to life. Rivulets of slushy muck cascade across the frost-rimed boulders of its massive shape, infested with tiny parasites in every crevice. A face in the frost forms and deforms from nearly human to gaping, vacant pits and back again, shifting as it heaves its mountainous bulk across the tundra.

Maniitoks (man-EE-tock) are strange and solitary creatures of the northern wastes, known by many names wherever they exist. Some call them palartok-maguyuk, the “silent howlers,” while others name them nunataq, “the mountain rising from the snow,” but their common name simply means “the rugged and desolate ones.” Maniitoks are amorphous creatures, amalgamated from the land itself and imbued with a crude intellect and spirit that craves silent solitude. A maniitok may lie dormant for years, half-buried in a chilly bog or forgotten valley, dimly contemplating the proper balance of nature and brooding on their forgotten purpose until their reverie is interrupted. They use their magic to make their homes as inhospitable and unapproachable as possible. Maniitoks carry a deep loathing for the din and clamor of humanoid civilization, which grates unmercifully upon their hypersensitivity to sound and vibration in a way that the ambient noises of the empty tundra do not. Their empathic linkage to the land carries even far-distant echoes of every blow and cut of hammer, axe, and saw, piercing them with a needling pain, inflaming in them a destructive rage, and calling them to avenge this insult to the land itself. They destroy every physical trace of civilization they discover, demolishing buildings, tearing up roads, smashing bridges, and slaughtering any that get in their way. They can follow even subtle traces of patrols and explorers, trailing them back to their outposts and laying waste to all they find in the hope of driving them so far away they will never return. Even the sounds of combat can sometimes attract the wrath of a maniitok, awakening it from its torpor and bringing its wrath down upon combatants on both sides. They are generally tolerant of fey creatures, plants, animals, vermin, and other oozes, but other creatures venturing into a maniitok’s range may soon find themselves face to face with the creature.

The true origins of the maniitoks are a mystery even to them, some believing they well up naturally at places of great primal power in the North as either a manifestation of nature magic or perhaps an accretion of disruptive forces worms away at the natural world like a canker and the maniitok forms as an anodyne to heal it. They may also be the literal or figurative children of Tekkeitsertok, great god of the earth and the hunt, made to keep the wild places wild or formed from the divine residue created where his feet touched the ground. Others call them “tundra spirits,” believing them to be animated by the souls of ancient shamans seeking the quiet solitude of the endless arctic wastes, and that their rage is kindled by those who disrupt their silent meditations. Survivors of encounters with maniitoks often describe shifting faces in the frost that shrouds them, some seeing just yawning dark pits like eyes and a gaping maw, others reporting the chiseled features that look entirely human. In combat, maniitoks are usually surrounded by a whirling tempest of tundral debris, and when they cannot crush or engulf their foes or drown them in the muck that perpetually surrounds them, they may hurl torrents of this debris or even rocky chunks of their own body mass at them. If confronted with foes it cannot perceive or cannot reach, or if severely wounded, a maniitok burrows underground to heal, often covering its retreat with a blinding sleet storm.