Sklaggan

Medium aberration, neutral evil

Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 68 (8d8 + 32)
Speed 40 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
16 (+3)	18 (+4)	19 (+4)	18 (+4)	15 (+2)	14 (+2)

Saving Throws Wis +4
Skills Deception +4, Medicine +4, Perception +6, Stealth +6
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 16
Languages understands Deep Speech but can’t speak; telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)
Proficiency Bonus +2

SPECIAL TRAITS

• Innate Spellcasting. The sklaggan’s innate spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 14). The sklaggan can innately cast the following spells, requiring no components:
  • 1/day each: blur, calm emotions, plane shift (self only; to the Plane of Shadow only), sending, shield

ACTIONS

• Multiattack. The sklaggan makes two slam attacks.
• Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (2d6 + 3) bludgeoning damage.
• Toxic Shadows (Recharge 5-6). The sklaggan releases shadowy organic compounds in its armor to debilitate creatures it approaches. The sklaggan moves up to its speed. Each creature within 5 feet of the sklaggan during this movement must make a DC 14 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the target takes 14 (4d6) poison damage and is poisoned until the end of its next turn. On a success, the target takes half as much damage and isn’t poisoned.

REACTIONS

• Snag Weapon. When a creature the sklaggan can see misses the sklaggan with an attack with a melee weapon, the sklaggan encloses its biological armor around the weapon. The creature must make a DC 13 Strength saving throw. On a failure, the weapon becomes stuck in the armor. A creature can use an action to make a DC 13 Strength saving throw, recovering the weapon on a success, and the sklaggan can release the weapon as a bonus action. The sklaggan can’t have more than one weapon enclosed in this way.

ABOUT

Hailing from the subterranean depths of the Plane of Shadow, sklaggans are scrawny, bipedal abominations with mouthless faces, wiry limbs, and spindly fingers tipped with dirt-encrusted claws. They invade other planes and use perverse organic technology to capture and conduct experiments on native inhabitants. To a sklaggan, every living creature is worthy of invasive-and thorough-examination.

The organic materials and weapons sklaggans employ are far from any natural substance familiar to dwellers of the Material Plane. Rather, these tools are as alien as the sklaggans themselves, consisting of disturbing biological parts such as writhing coils made of muscle tissue, slimy stones that visibly inhale and exhale from microscopic pores, and tentacular rods of spongy brain-like matter wrapped in slick black chitin.

One of a sklaggan’s most popular implements is a throbbing, fist-sized siphoning device called a skagappa. When a sklaggan has selected a subject for experimentation, it notes the creature’s sleeping patterns and hides a skagappa near the subject’s bedside. Repeated exposure to this device, usually about a week, can leave a subject exhausted enough for easy capture, to say nothing of the psychic information intercepted by and stored within the skagappa. Sklaggans set up semi-mobile laboratories in remote parts of the region they are studying in order to conduct their gruesome experiments on abducted locals more quickly.

Sklaggans shift from their subterranean laboratories to other planes and back via strange rituals that make use of their unique bio-technology. Non-sklaggan researchers’ attempts to replicate these rituals always result in failure and, more often than not, nightmarish physical mutations.