The story is what i'm after

Lecter by JasonEngle

Most kobold art takes the form of primitive drawings, scrawled on cave walls and stones, painted with berry juices, colored mud, blood(if available), or chalk, charcoal, and ink taken from an unfortunate adventurer. For the most part, these cave drawings depict great hunts the clan went on, a successful raid, and other events worth recording.

If a clan of kobolds is religious, a shaman may draw depictions of their deity. Many also make “shrines” to their god out of sticks and stones, and even build little idols out of clay and other scrounged up material. The shamans also create masks, often out of skulls(though a chunk of bark pulled off of a tree may work as well), and decorate it with feathers and paints, turning it into a vibrant work of wearable art.

Kobolds that serve a dragon, along with the previously mentioned activities, like to arrange the dragon’s hoard in a way they find to look nice(though their dragon leaders may differ in opinion, and ruin the kobolds’ handiwork). Kobolds also enjoy finding scales that the dragon has shed(and, if any is available, eggshells from a hatched dragon egg) and creating arrangements from them.

Vivek, warforged Fiend-pact warlock

This character comes from my attempts to illustrate a fellow player’s concept for a warforged character. Since warforged aren’t really an integral part of the forgotten realms setting, I think that there is quite a lot of leeway to be had with what they look like, while keeping within the armoured, artificial humanoid format. Hence, Vivek has an immobile, enameled steel face with a body of ornamental armour.

Sophia, Aasimar Druid

Sophia’s eyes glow with the radiance of her celestial heritage, and it was expected by her mother that she would one day take up vows and join a holy order as a cleric. However Sophia as a lover of animals and a scholar of nature rather than religious tomes; chose instead the more grounded lifestyle of a Druid of the Circle of the Moon. This is not to say that she has turned from the destiny to stand against evil that her heritage demands, as she despises the forces of evil and corruption in all forms, and protects the natural world fiercely.

‘Aurora’, the Blue Phoenix (commission)

“Aurora” keeper of the Gray Volcanoes, Mother of the blue flame’s secrets. Rumor has it that she disappeared into Mount Tymah, the largest of the Gray Volcanoes, and after they all went dormant. No one is sure of what holds the volcanoes at bay. Sailors tell of a great blue light coming from Tymah on the nights of the full moon though. For now Aurora remains at Tymah resting, waiting for something to come.

The best advice I can give you is to just have fun, that’s really the important thing.

I started out as a DM for my friends because we didn’t have anyone else and I made a very generic original campaign, but we had fun. If there’s any point where the players want to do something and you don’t know what to roll, just figure out a percentage chance of it working and roll for it with a percentile die.

One thing to keep in mind is that what the players think of as a goal might not be the same as you, the DM. Maybe the players want to chat up an NPC you didn’t expect to flesh out or they want to explore a forest or cave that isn’t on your maps just because they feel like it. In those cases, don’t tell them they can’t do it or it’s not part of the story, just add something like a random encounter or maybe a treasure chest to reward them for creative thinking.

This is the first isometric map I’ve made for tabletop, and I always loved the popout type maps that reveal hidden elements within the original, kind of inspired by Alex Drummond and Mike Schley. I didn’t realize how labor-intensive it was going to be to map in this style, but I’m really happy with how it turned out!

CR 11

Neutral Evil Medium Outsider

Pathfinder Occult Bestiary, pg. 22

When a Night Hag begins snacking on her own merchandise, she may undergo an unholy transformation into a powerful Dreamthief Hag, one of the most powerful breeds of Hag in existence. In all honesty, they’re not that mechanically different from the base Night Hag, keeping the at-will Deep Slumber, Magic Missile, and Invisibility but losing access to Ray of Enfeeblement while only gaining access to Psychic powers… Their powers being Dream Council, Dream Scan, and Dream Voyage, none of which are particularly intimidating, barring Dream Voyage’s potential for hopping country to country, surfing on the dreams of others.

While Dreamthief Hags may not have any more spellcasting prowess than their lesser brethren, they certainly have more melee damage. A Dreamthief Hag is terrifying in melee, beating out even the Annis Hags in terms of potential damage, their claw-claw bite dealing 2d6+6 damage on the claws and 2d10+6 damage on the bite. What makes this even worse is knowing the Hag’s teeth drip with a potent venom that completely locks up the victim’s mind for 1 round, preventing them from making any Intelligence-based checks… or casting any spells. That covers all bases, by the way–Arcane, Divine, Occult, or Psychic, if you’re not immune to poison and fail the saving throw versus the Hag’s Mind Block, you just lost all your toys for a round.

Aside from the sheer difference in physical power, the biggest difference between a Dreamthief and Night Hag is their goal; a Dreamthief, as their name may suggest, has found that they can reap greater rewards by selling mortal dreams, rather than mortal souls. Clientele in search of dreams is especially difficult to come by, but more rewarding. Such clients can include many Great Old Ones, some Outer Gods, vile figures in the Dominion of the Black, the powerful inhabitants of the nightmare Plateau of Leng… Or even just other mortal folks in the Dimension of Dreams looking for slaves, experiment subjects, or ritual fodder. Dreamthief Hags acquire their fare by using their Dream Theft ability, physically entering a sleeping victim’s dreamscape and forcing them into a lucid body, which the Hag proceeds to kill.

If the Hag manages to kill the person within their dream, they don’t wake up harmlessly. Their mind is drawn inside the Hag’s Dreamstone, a more powerful version of the Night Hag’s Hearthstone that serves a similar function, allowing the Hag to become ethereal at will and store the minds of everyone they’ve defeated. A Dreamstone can hold up to 10 minds inside at once, the victims imprisoned while their bodies lay in comas that cannot be awoken from. Not even Miracle or Wish can free a victim from this prison, though it can teleport the user right to the Dream Hag’s doorstep. Once trapped, the Hag can sell either the dreams or the complete minds within the stone to interested parties, or perform functions such as using Dream Scan to probe the inner thoughts of her victims and selling the information… Or she can take a hit off her own product, sifting through the imprisoned minds for especially fertile imaginations and breathing them in, regaining 2 PE to fuel her own psychic abilities if she’s running dry on points. While this act frees one of the imprisoned minds and allows one of the victims to awaken, they may never be the same again, as having the Hag prod their consciousness and sup of their imagination is a deeply, horrifically violating process, to say nothing of having ones mind probed via Dream Scan.

Unfortunately for everyone a Hag may deal with but fortunately for adventuring parties needing to combat one, Dreamthief Hags are not prone to working with other Hags, even others of their own kind. They tend to see other Dreamthieves as unwelcome competition in a market already dangerously strangled by Hags who’ve been in the game for much longer and don’t need any snotty young’ns taking their customers. And speaking of customers, it goes without saying that many of the mortals who barter with Dreamthieves end up being products themselves, the Hags always ready to use the twisted imaginations of their mortal clients as fuel for dreams interesting enough to catch the attention of immortal ones. Even other Hags–especially other Hags–can be a nice source of delightfully twisted thoughts that many horrors in the outer spheres would love getting their grasping appendages on.

Image by Eric Lofgren, © Kenzer and Co.

[The Hacklopedias have no fewer than eight monstrous skinks, all of which have punny names. These include the teleporting blink skink, the metal-scaled clink skink and the super-intelligent think skink.]

Stink Skink This giant dark lizard is lean and elongated. It has a palpable musk about it.

Stink skinks are subterranean reptiles that prey on giant vermin. This habit might make stink skinks welcome in the peripheries of settlements, but their foul odor and peevish temperaments make them unpopular with most humanoids. The exception is, naturally, troglodytes, which frequently domesticate stink skinks and use them as guard animals and occasional meals.

Stink skinks are social animals, but not especially cooperative hunters. They may work together to take down large or aggressive prey, but this is more of a feeding frenzy than a coordinated assault. Dominance hierarchies among stink skinks are frequently shifting things, with fights between members of a pack being common. They are not territorial and frequently wander between hunting grounds—the exception is during mating season. Female stink skinks guard their eggs furiously, and male stink skinks will provision their partners with food while the eggs incubate.

Stink Skinks as Animal Companions

Starting Statistics: Size Medium; Speed 30 ft., climb 15 ft. ; AC +1 natural armor; Attack bite (1d4); Ability Scores Str 13, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 1, Wis 12, Cha 4; Special Attacks stench spray (15 ft. line); Special Qualities low light vision, +4 on saves vs. poison

4th level Advancement: Ability Scores +4 Str, +4 Con; Special Attacks stench spray (15 ft. cone)