Phantasmagoria Wagon

Large construct, neutral evil

Armor Class 20 (natural armor)
Hit Points 210 (20d10 + 100)
Speed 40 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
22 (+6) 9 (-1) 20 (+5) 15 (+2) 12 (+1) 23 (+6)

Skills Deception +11, Persuasion +11
Damage Immunities fire, poison, psychic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks that aren’t adamantine
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 11
Languages All
Challenge 14 (11,500 XP)

SPECIAL TRAITS

  • Feed on Fear. Anytime a phantasmagoria wagon is within 15 feet of a dying creature or creature subject to a fear effect, it repairs 5 hit points of damage. This includes creatures trapped within the wagon’s phantom zone.
  • Grim Coachman. To help interact with mortals, a phantasmagoria wagon can create a grim coachman (or “groach”). This figure can have any humanoid appearance or clothing but is usually masked or hooded and is generally believed to be the true fey menace and the wagon simply a magical conveyance. The groach is an illusion. The wagon’s spells can originate from the wagon itself or the groach’s location. The groach cannot be damaged, and if dispelled the wagon can create a new groach on the drover’s board as an action.
  • Hardened. The phantasmagoria wagon is an object as much as a construct and has a damage threshold of 5.
  • Immutable Form. The phantasmagoria wagon is immune to any spell or effect that would alter its form.
  • Magic Resistance. The phantasmagoria wagon has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
  • Magic Weapons. The phantasmagoria wagon’s weapon attacks are magical.
  • Phantom Zone. A phantasmagoria wagon contains a bizarre pocket dimension of shifting landscapes and phantasmal beings of frightful aspect. This dimension can be accessed through any of the wagon’s many doors, appearing as a vortex of light that seeps out like a vaporous ladder, beckoning passersby. The wagon uses its mysterious music ability to lure creatures inside, trapping them. Trapped creatures can escape as an action if they make a DC 20 Intelligence check to find the exit. Each time they fail the saving throw they become frightened and confused (as the confusion spell) for 1d4 rounds. On subsequent failures, the trapped creature loses 1 point of Wisdom. Multiple creatures may be trapped within the phantom zone simultaneously, though they cannot perceive or interact with other trapped creatures. A phantasmagoria wagon may suppress the psychedelia within the phantom zone to fortify its exits, imposing disadvantage on Intelligence checks to escape. Creatures reduced to 0 Wisdom scores become comatose and are usually ejected by the wagon wherever it happens to be (but never in a civilized area).
  • World Wheeler. A phantasmagoria wagon roams through lands of every kind and even between worlds and picks up bits of lore wherever it roams, learning the social customs and best ways to interact with people of every kind. It has advantage on any ability or skill checks related to the planes, geography, or culture. It has a particular impressive knowledge of gates and other fey connections to Faerie.

ACTIONS

  • Trampling Charge. The phantasmagoria wagon runs over any creature it passes over as part of its move action. Each creature in that area must make a DC 19 Dexterity saving throw, taking 45 (10d8) bludgeoning damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
  • Bedraggled Bondage. A phantasmagoria wagon can attempt to entice a creature to pull it. This functions as dominate spell (either monster, beast or person as appropriate) with DC 19 Wisdom saving throw to resist the effect. A creature already under the effect of mysterious music has disadvantage on the saving throw. If the save succeeds, it is immune to this ability for 24 hours. If the save is failed, the creature willingly takes up the wagon’s traces and pulls it along wherever the wagon (through its grim coachman) commands gaining the grappled condition (Escape DC 18). Once harnessed to the wagon, the creature gains great strength and speed, gaining +10 to its Strength and Constitution saving throw and +10 feet of movement. The bound creature is overcome by a deep sadness gaining disadvantage on all ability checks and saving, though it does not question the need to continue pulling the wagon. Attackers may choose to strike the bound creature instead of the wagon. The wagon may also disguise the trapped creature via illusion magic to make the enslaved creature appear as anything it likes.
  • Mysterious Music. A phantasmagoria wagon emanates haunting music luring victims in to its phantom zone. The wagon targets all humanoids that can hear the wagon within 60 feet of it. If the target can hear the wagon, it must succeed on a DC 19 Wisdom saving throw or be magically charmed. The charmed creature regards the wagon as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn’t under the wagon’s control, it takes the wagon’s requests or actions in the most favorable way it can. Each time the wagon or its allies do anything harmful to the target, it can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on itself on a success. Otherwise, the effect lasts indefinitely or until the wagon is destroyed, is on a different plane of existence from the target, or ends the effect as a bonus action. If a target’s saving throw is successful, the target is immune to the mysterious music for the next 24 hours.

LEGENDARY ACTIONS

A wagon can take 2 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. A wagon regains spent legendary actions at the start of his turn.

  • Overrun. The wagon makes a trampling charge attack.
  • Haunting Melody. The wagon uses its mysterious music ability, creatures already immune to the effect instead take 45 (10d8) psychic damage on a failed DC 19 Intelligence check or half as much damage on a success.

REACTIONS

  • Overrun. When a phantasmagoria wagon is hit by a melee attack it may use trampling charge as a reaction.

REGIONAL EFFECTS

The region containing a phantasmagoria wagon is warped by the wagon’s magic, which creates one or more of the following effects:

  • All beasts that can see the phantasmagoria wagon become frightened.
  • A roiling mist precedes the approach of the phantasmagoria wagon. This low hanging mist affects a 1-mile radius around the wagon. The area becomes heavily obscured and nonmagical winds cannot disperse it.
  • Dark clouds roll in and lightning flashes at dramatic moments casting a sinister pall over a 10-mile area centered on the wagon. It may also become windy or rain as appropriate to the wagon’s sense of flair. These effects are centered on the phantasmagoria wagon and move with it. If the wagon is destroyed conditions in the area return to normal in 1d6 minutes.

ABOUT

Phantasmagoria wagons are usually sent by their fey masters to remind mortals that some nights are times to fear the wild things in the world beyond, while at the same time tempting the daring or curious to look where others dread and thus find those whose fortitude or foolishness might pique their interest for a visit in the flesh. Phantasmagoria wagons can be ambassadors between mortal and fey, practicing a discordian diplomacy that confounds mortal rationality but slakes the impulses of faerie passions.

Phantasmagoria wagons acting independently may act similarly, spiriting captives off to the Fey Realms out of sheer whimsy or to barter the lives and freedom with denizens of that plane. Some phantasmagoria wagons are entirely nomadic, while others maintain a regular schedule of travels, returning often enough that their advent fills the locals with dread as they barricade themselves inside, huddling in fear.

Some localities hold lotteries, chaining the unfortunate loser in the wagon’s path as an offering in the hope that the groach and his wagon will accept their sacrifice and depart, while a rare few volunteer as tribute to exempt their families from future lotteries. Whatever their motivation, few that go unto the wagon are ever seen again.

This ramshackle peddler’s wagon is covered with strangely carved doors and cupboards, with eerie light leaking through the cracks. A hooded figure drives a lonely, bedraggled steed before it, but a glowing mist seeps out of doors left ajar to form a spectral staircase leading up to an eldritch portal filled with kaleidoscopic lights and jangling, discordant music that is equal parts disturbing and enchanting. A phantasmagoria wagon is a sentient construct that contains a bizarre and even psychedelic pocket dimension within its doors and drawers.

Phantasmagoria wagons originated in the Fey Realms, and each carries within it a distillate of the pervasive strangeness of the Fey Realms, a physical and psychic residue that takes tangible form within the null-space inside the wagon in the form of inhuman phantoms and kaleidoscopic cascades of shifting reality. A phantasmagoria wagon is 10 feet long and 8 feet high and weighs 3000 pounds.

Eerie Environment. Phantasmagoria wagon is highly disturbing to the natural patterns of wind and weather, disrupting the natural activity cycles of diurnal and nocturnal animals and inspiring choruses of yowling, chattering, and fits of erratic behavior, overwhelmingly intense and always on the edge (if not over it) of going out of control. The phantasmagoria wagon may chase small or weak creatures not with any intention of killing them, but for the simple purpose of inspiring fear or drawing other creatures into the chase or into destructive rampages of their own.

Unseelie Agents. Phantasmagoria wagons are solitary nonesuches, existing only to test, torment, or terrify according to no particular strategy. They do respond to the commands of the eldest and the Tane that rule the Fey Realms, lending support to the claims that they were purpose-built for spreading mayhem and mystery, though they also rumble across the verges between worlds and into the Material Plane on no particular errand but their own.

Phantasmagoria wagons acting under the direction of the fey rulers may be sent to recover creatures that have escaped from their fey masters, or to seek out mortals to entice into the pleasure of the fey. Some creatures they entice may be made to serve as beasts of burden, shrouded in illusion as simple drover’s animals, or as impossibly tiny creatures to pull an entire wagon, or as supernatural beasts from unicorns to nightmares. Others are swallowed up within the phantom zone that lies within every phantasmagoria wagon, disgorged only when their minds are reduced to rubble.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Faerie Bestiary (5E) © 2022, Legendary Games; Authors Matt Kimmel, Michael “solomani” Mifsud, Miguel Colon, Robert J. Grady, Jason Nelson, Jeff Ibach, Tim Hitchcock.

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