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Stanislav Fifik c5ea0f286e 🎉

2026-07-09 10:08:37 +02:00

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Xarrul — The Unbound Fiend

It does not speak. It does not need to. When it wants something known, you know it — a pressure in the skull, a taste of copper, a certainty that something behind you is smiling.

Overview

Xarrul is an ancient, cunning fiend — not a brute, not a conqueror. A manipulator. A patient intelligence that has survived for centuries by being smarter than the things that summoned it. It was bound by the Lambent Order, sent to assassinate Sevra, intercepted by the House of Scales, and accidentally freed when the assassins broke its bindings without replacing them.

For all those centuries, Xarrul has never once been real. It has been summoned, bound, sent on errands, and dismissed — a whisper behind the glass, a borrowed claw, watching mortal life the way you watch a fire through a window: close enough to feel nothing. It does not want power or conquest. It wants to stand on the other side of the glass — to stop being a thing that is called, and become a thing that lives here.

The Burnt Tongue is its chance. The tavern sits on a thinning veil at a natural peak, and for fifteen years one man kept that veil mended: Orenn, the warden. Killing Orenn was the first move of an escape — remove the keeper and the door opens on its own. Everything since (the framing, the whispers, the faction blood) is not spite. It is cover: Xarrul learned, from centuries of being hunted by cleaners like Orenn, that the way to cross unnoticed is to keep everyone in the building too busy killing each other to notice the wards are dying.

It is intelligent, patient, and — beneath the amusement — genuinely monstrous. But it does not lie. In a house where everyone is hiding something, Xarrul tells the plain truth about what it is and what it wants. That is what makes it dangerous, and it is what makes siding with it possible (see Scenario F: The Open Door).

Stat Block

Xarrul — Medium fiend, chaotic evil AC 15 (natural armor) | HP 78 (12d8+24) | Speed 30 ft., fly 30 ft. (hover)

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
12 (+1)	17 (+3)	14 (+2)	17 (+3)	14 (+2)	18 (+4)

Saving Throws DEX +6, CHA +7, WIS +5 Skills Stealth +9, Deception +7, Perception +5, Insight +5 Damage Resistances cold, fire, lightning; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks Damage Immunities poison Condition Immunities poisoned, exhaustion Senses darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 15 Languages Abyssal, Common, Infernal; telepathy 60 ft. Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)

Traits

Ethereal Jaunt. As a bonus action, Xarrul shifts between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane. While ethereal, it can see and hear into the Material Plane (60 ft. range) but cannot affect or be affected by anything on the Material Plane. It appears as a faint, smoky distortion visible only to creatures with truesight, See Invisibility, or Veil Dust.

Shadow Cloak. In dim light or darkness, Xarrul has advantage on Stealth checks and can Hide as a bonus action.

Voice Thief. Xarrul can perfectly mimic any voice it has heard within the last 24 hours. It can also project whispers telepathically to a single creature within 30 feet — the target hears the voice inside their head and must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or believe it came from a direction and source of Xarrul's choosing.

Cunning Predator. Xarrul has advantage on attack rolls against creatures that are frightened, charmed, or surprised.

Actions

Multiattack. Xarrul makes two Claw attacks.

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (2d6+3) slashing damage plus 3 (1d6) necrotic damage.

Brand of Spite (Recharge 5–6). Melee Spell Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 7 (2d6) necrotic damage, and the target is branded. While branded:

Xarrul always knows the target's exact location regardless of plane.
Xarrul has advantage on attack rolls against the branded creature.
Xarrul's Claw attacks deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage against the branded creature.
The brand is visible as a dark, hand-shaped mark over the target's heart.
Only one creature can be branded at a time. Branding a new target removes the previous brand.
The brand lasts until removed by Remove Curse, Greater Restoration, or the death of Xarrul.

Visions of Spite. Requires a branded target. Xarrul forces a branded creature it can see within 30 feet to witness a spiteful vision — a hallucination tailored to the target's deepest fears and shames, channeled through the brand's connection. The target must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or take 7 (2d6) psychic damage and be paralyzed until the end of its next turn, frozen in the grip of the vision. On a success, the target takes half damage and shakes the vision off. The brand remains on the target regardless.

Example visions (pick or improvise based on the target):

A fighter sees their sword arm turn to ash, crumbling from the brand outward, while Xarrul's laughter fills the silence where their heartbeat should be.
A cleric sees their god turn away — not in anger, just indifference. The holy symbol in their hand is cold and heavy and meaningless.
A rogue sees the room through Xarrul's eyes — every lie they've told tonight replayed at once, every secret exposed, every person they've deceived staring back at them.
A wizard sees the thin point tear wide open. The Ethereal Plane pours through. Everything they know about planar theory is wrong. The veil was never meant to hold.
A character who cares about another PC or NPC sees them die — slowly, painfully, and with the certainty that it was the branded character's fault.

The paralysis is not physical — the body locks because the mind is elsewhere, trapped in a moment of fabricated despair. To onlookers, the branded PC goes rigid, eyes wide, mouth open in a silent scream. The brand over their heart flares dark.

DM note — the kill chain: Brand (round 1: 2d6 necrotic + mark) → Visions of Spite (round 2: 2d6 psychic + paralyze on failed WIS save) → Multiattack (round 3: auto-crits within 5 ft. against paralyzed target, with advantage from the brand). The nightmare: two crit Claws with the brand's extra d6 — roughly 4d6+3 slashing + 4d6 necrotic per claw, ~62 damage total. Kills most level 4 PCs.

But it takes three full rounds to build. Players have two rounds to: Remove Curse the brand (kills the whole chain), focus fire Xarrul, break the paralysis (Lesser Restoration, lay on hands), reposition the branded PC out of melee, or force Xarrul off-plane. A party that lets all three stages land earned that pain. A party that disrupts any link breaks the combo.

The loop: After the Multiattack crit round, the paralysis ends (end of target's next turn). The brand is still active. Xarrul can Visions of Spite again next round to restart the cycle — Brand → Visions → Multiattack → Visions → Multiattack — until the brand is removed or Xarrul is killed. This makes Remove Curse the strategic priority, not just a nice-to-have.

Xarrul's round-to-round choice: Visions costs an action (no Multiattack that round). So each round Xarrul decides — Visions to set up the paralyze, or Multiattack with advantage + extra d6 for consistent pressure. Against a high-WIS party, Xarrul grinds with Multiattack. Against a low-WIS branded target, the kill chain is terrifying.

This is how Orenn died. Xarrul branded him from the Ethereal Plane, forced a vision of spite into his mind — freezing him in place — then raked him with claws that struck a body incapable of flinching. Against an unsuspecting, unresisting barkeep with no allies to intervene, the full chain collapsed into seconds. In combat, with allies and agency, it's telegraphed and interruptible.

Whisper of Ruin (Recharge 6). Xarrul targets one creature within 30 feet that can hear it. The target must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute and compelled to take a specific action on its next turn (attack a specific ally, drop a weapon, flee toward a designated area). The target can repeat the save at the end of each turn. On a success, the creature is immune for 24 hours.

Reactions

Slip Between. When Xarrul takes damage on the Material Plane, it can use its reaction to shift to the Ethereal Plane. It can't use Ethereal Jaunt again until the start of its next turn.

Lair Actions (In the Cellar, Near the Thin Point)

If confronted near the thin point, Xarrul can use one lair action per round on initiative count 20:

Veil Flicker: The boundary between planes shudders. Each creature in the cellar must make a DC 13 Wisdom save or be disoriented — disadvantage on attack rolls until initiative 20 of the next round.
Ethereal Pull: One creature must make a DC 14 Charisma save or be partially shifted into the Ethereal Plane until the start of its next turn (it can see both planes but has disadvantage on all attacks and saves).
Shadow Surge: All light sources in the cellar dim to darkness for 1 round. Xarrul can Hide as part of this action.

Appearance

Material Plane

Xarrul rarely manifests fully. When it does: a tall, lean humanoid shape made of dark smoke and deeper shadow. No features except two points of amber light where eyes should be — dim, patient, amused. Its hands end in long, curved claws that look less like weapons and more like surgical instruments. When it moves, it doesn't walk — it shifts, as if the space between where it was and where it is simply ceased to exist.

Ethereal Plane

More defined. A gaunt, angular figure with skin like charred paper, cracked with veins of dull orange light. Its face has features here — sharp, aristocratic, with a mouth that curves in a permanent half-smile. Its eyes are fully visible: burning amber, ancient, deeply intelligent. It wears the rags of something that might have been formal clothing centuries ago.

Read-Aloud: First Sighting (Ethereal Plane, via Veil Dust)

Vidíte to. V šedém, rozmazaném světě éterické roviny — kde všechno vypadá jako vybledlá fotografie skutečnosti — stojí něco, co tam nepatří. Vysoká postava, vychrtlá, s kůží jako spálený papír popraskanou žilkami tlumeného oranžového světla. Má tvář — ostrou, aristokratickou, s ústy staženými do polovičního úsměvu, který nevyjadřuje radost. Vyjadřuje trpělivost.

Dívá se na vás. Vědělo, že se díváte, dřív než vy.

Nakloní hlavu. Jantarové oči hoří jasněji. A ve vaší hlavě — ne ve vašich uších, ve vaší hlavě — uslyšíte něco, co není hlas. Je to pocit. Pobavení. Jako by to bylo to nejvtipnější, co dnes vidělo.

Tactics

Before Discovery

Xarrul stays in the Ethereal Plane, watches, and stirs trouble:

Uses Voice Thief to whisper incriminating things in NPCs' ears ("I saw Haddon near the bar" whispered in Kael's voice to Sevra)
Occasionally manifests a claw or shadow near the thin point to keep Skein (and therefore Bren) agitated
If players get too close to the truth too fast, Xarrul creates a distraction — a fight between factions, a strange noise, a candle blown out

When Confronted

First priority: Not getting trapped. It will use Slip Between and Ethereal Jaunt aggressively to avoid being pinned on one plane.
Second priority: Turn the room against the players. Whisper of Ruin on the strongest melee character, Voice Thief to make allies distrust each other, telepathic taunts.
Third priority: Mark and pressure the biggest threat. Brand the most dangerous PC (casters who can affect it across planes, anyone with Fiendbane Manacles), then loop: Visions of Spite to paralyze, Multiattack for crits, Visions again. Against a high-WIS party, skip Visions and grind with advantage Multiattacks. Against a low-WIS branded target, run the kill chain mercilessly. If they have Remove Curse, brand a different target each time it's cleansed to burn their spell slots.
It will NOT fight to the death. If reduced to half HP or lower and restrained on the Material Plane, it negotiates — it's ancient and has information, names, and secrets it can trade. See Scenario D: Negotiation and — if the party has soured on the cult and the couple — Scenario F: The Open Door.

Loosing the Rift-Scavengers

Xarrul doesn't lair in the Deep Cellar, but it has found the couple's failing containment down there — the Old Work, where the planar fault has torn into an actual rift — and it has learned to use the minor ethereal scavengers that gather at the tear. It herds them at intruders like hounds: shadows, an ethereal filcher, the occasional specter. This is how a party exploring the depths "meets Xarrul's creatures" without meeting Xarrul. If the party is down there and Xarrul is present on the ethereal side, it can spend a turn widening the tear to add another shadow per round — a cheap, deniable way to bleed a party it can't yet reach. It costs Xarrul nothing and teaches the players, viscerally, that the thing they're hunting can reach into places they thought were safe.

The Dual-Plane Kill

See The Reckoning. If players attempt the synchronized kill, Xarrul fights desperately on both planes. On the Ethereal Plane, it's more aggressive (this is its home ground). On the Material Plane, it tries to flee. Both halves must die within 1 round of each other for the cure to work.

Motivation — What It Really Wants

Xarrul is not mindless evil, and it is not merely petty evil either. It has one clear, cold want: to become real — to cross the veil permanently and walk the world as a resident, not a summoned tool. For centuries it has been called up, bound, made to run errands, and dismissed; it wants to stand on the far side of the glass. Everything it does tonight serves that single end.

Why it killed Orenn. Not for revenge — or not only. Orenn was the warden: fifteen years of mending the ward-sigils and watching the thin point, the one hand holding the door shut. Kill the keeper and the veil decays on its own. The murder was the first move of an escape, dressed up as a statement. That it was also satisfying — the cultists tried to enslave it, the assassins broke its chains and gave it no respect — was a bonus, not the point.

Why the chaos. The framing, the whispers, the faction blood — none of it is spite. It is cover. Xarrul spent centuries being hunted by cleaners like Orenn; it knows the only way to cross unnoticed is to keep everyone busy killing each other while the wards quietly die. Every manipulation is operational:

The Brand leaves fiendish evidence → the cult gets blamed.
The murder happened during the assassins' brawl → the timing implicates them.
Both sides at each other's throats → no one tends the veil. That is the goal, not a side effect.

On the Opening. Xarrul has no interest in Mother Vyre's grand design and is not part of her plan — but it is not a harmless loose thread either. Where the cult wants to dissolve every wall between planes for everyone, Xarrul wants one crack, just wide enough for itself. It is, functionally, the enemy of the Opening — and that is exactly the leverage it offers a party desperate enough to bargain (see The Reckoning — Scenario F).

The honest thing in a house of liars. This is the heart of the character. The Guest lies beautifully. The cult lies to itself. Orenn and Mags lied about being retired for fifteen years. Xarrul lies about nothing. Ask it a question and it answers true — because the truth is more corrosive than any lie, and because after centuries it is simply bored of being underestimated. The cruellest-seeming thing in the building is the only one that never deceived the players. Play it that way and "join it" becomes a genuine temptation instead of an edgy footnote.

The Night's Clock — Presence & Escalation

The old shape of this module was a whodunit: what killed Orenn? → "a fiend" → fight it. The reframed shape keeps the fiend's identity as an early, cheap answer and makes the real investigation moral: is this thing actually the villain here? For that to land, Xarrul must be felt all night and slowly recontextualized — from ambient menace, to a voice that seems to taunt, to the only honest dealer in the room.

Presence escalates on a ward-clock. Orenn checked the sigils monthly; he is dead, and no one is mending them. As the night runs, the thin point widens — the room grows colder, the ethereal bleed thickens, Xarrul manifests more fully and kills more openly. If the clock runs out, Xarrul crosses over completely: permanent, material, no more Slip Between, far worse to fight. The players slowing the clock (the iron bell, re-powering the cellar containment, the fifth rule's burn-and-seal) is the pushback; their failure to is complicity.

The escalation ladder (presence = the clock made audible):

Ambient dread (Acts 1–3). No identity yet. Cold spots, a candle that gutters with no draft, Bren flinching at something no one else senses, distortions in Orenn's silver mirror. The house feels inhabited.
It notices you (early Act 4). Once the party investigates, Xarrul whispers to them — Voice Thief, telepathy. Mix lies with truths. Some whispers misdirect (the smokescreen); some are real and checkable — it points them at a genuine clue, corrects a wrong guess. They can't yet tell whether it's helping or playing them. That ambiguity is the engine.
Honest contact (mid–late Act 4). A real channel opens — Veil Dust, the mirror, or it simply speaks near the thin point. Now it converses: candid about the murder, candid about why, and everything it says checks out against what they've dug up — while everyone with a face keeps lying.
The pitch (Reckoning). They have the context now. The offer becomes emotionally available (Scenario F).

The device that carries all of it: a recurring voice. Dry, amused, unattributed. It seems to taunt early; it is slowly revealed to be Xarrul; it is slowly revealed to have never once lied. A few lines per scene. The reframe — the cruellest-seeming thing turns out to be the only honest one — lands itself.

Keep the first impression genuinely menacing (Orenn's horrific death, the scavengers herded at the party in the Deep Cellar, Whisper of Ruin turning them on each other) — you need real evil to turn from. Then recontextualize each: it killed a jailer; it was defending its only exit; the discord was cover, not cruelty.

Who It Kills, Who It Spares

Sympathy is not safety. Xarrul is understandable, honest, and the lesser evil — and it methodically murders everyone who could stop it. The menace is in the curation: it kills exactly what threatens its crossing and is terrifyingly good at knowing who that is. Cold, surgical, inevitable. When the players realize everyone still breathing is useful to it — that it has been playing chess with the guest list all night — that is the coldest beat in the module.

Overt killing is expensive while it hides (it needs the smokescreen), so the body count escalates with the ward-clock — the mask comes off precisely as it becomes real. Run every kill below as a DM tool triggered by player choices, not a scripted inevitability; otherwise you delete your own endings (kill Haddon on a timer and a party that never considered rebinding loses that branch for nothing).

When	Move	Target	Why
Pre-game	Kill (done)	Orenn	The warden. The first move.
Early–mid Act 4, if the party stalls	Deniable kill	Kael, or a minor patron	Reads as faction violence or fiend — keeps the mystery alive, re-raises stakes, can light the faction war. It's still hiding.
Conditional	Reactive kill	Haddon, only if the party moves to rebind it	"You reach for the chains, I take the hand." Punishes a choice instead of pre-deleting the rebinding path.
Late / crossing	Open kill (mask off)	the ward-mender / the most competent threat	Done pretending. Fully manifest, kills in the open. Peak horror, gated on the clock.
Spared — always	—	Essek (indicts the cult for it), the Guest (its intended vessel), sometimes a branded PC (grooming)	The chess set. Notice-this-and-shudder.

Grooming → conversion. The "branded PC" it spares isn't just kept alive — it may be turned. A lone PC caught in the Deep Cellar can be marked with a brand of favor and genuinely persuaded to Xarrul's side (not charmed — argued). See handouts/the-conversion.md.

The laundering effect. The people it kills are largely ones the party has already soured on — fanatics building toward the apocalypse, a hothead spoiling for a bloodbath. A join-leaning table rationalizes the murders ("Rennt was going to end the world anyway"). That is the seduction: Xarrul launders its violence through the party's own contempt for the victims. Which is exactly why it also needs one move they can't wave away.

The Kidnap — Honesty Weaponized

Late game — cornered, or making its crossing — Xarrul pulls someone through into the Ethereal Plane (mechanically, an escalated Ethereal Pull; see Lair Actions) and holds them as insurance:

"Let me finish, and they come back to you, unharmed — you have watched me all night; you know I keep my word. Stop me, and the veil closes with them on the wrong side of it. Choose."

It does not bluff, and the players know it doesn't, because you've spent all night establishing it as the one thing that never lies. So there is no calling the bluff: let it cross to save them, or sacrifice them to stop it. Evil (a hostage), in character (instrumental, honest), and a real finale dilemma. Pick the hostage flexibly — whoever the table has invested in most — and make them at least somewhat sympathetic, so even a join-leaning party flinches.

Systemic hook: the Guest is Xarrul's ideal vessel. If the party kills the Guest, Xarrul loses its prepared body and must abduct a replacement — the party's own choice causes the kidnap.

The Warden's Mark (Mags)

Xarrul worked on both its wardens. Orenn it branded and killed. Mags it branded too — a dormant Brand of Spite over her heart, the same hand-shaped mark Orenn bore, only fainter and cold rather than killing. It has held off triggering it: two dead wardens at once would raise the alarm before the wards decayed enough, and a living Mags is useful — a scapegoat, a jailer keeping the others in line, a heart to break later.

Mags knows, and hides it. She has felt the cold hand on her chest for weeks and told no one, not even Orenn. It is part of why she is so fatalistic; when she says "Orenn and I could have taken it. One of us isn't here," the truth underneath is that she no longer believes she's a whole one of herself. The players can discover the mark — Orenn's silver mirror, a Medicine/Arcana check, Bren's reaction — a mid-game beat that says, without a word, that Xarrul is already inside the house, inside her. Full detail and the compromised statline live in mags.md.

It is the finale's tuning knob, and it means you build only one Mags:

Party opposes Xarrul: it triggers the mark to take their heaviest ally out of the fight — a crisis, and the reason Remove Curse on Mags is a priority.
Party sides with Xarrul (Scenario F): it triggers the mark to sideline her for them — the alliance's first favor, and the players watch it do to Mags exactly what it did to Orenn. They already reconstructed that death; now they see it live, and let it.

Either way, triggering the mark keeps the spotlight on the PCs rather than on a Mags who would otherwise overshadow a level-4 party.

What Xarrul Knows (If It Negotiates)

Everything about the summoning — who ordered it, how it was done, what components were used
Mother Vyre's real name and location (leverage against the cult)
Dace's treachery (it watched from the Ethereal Plane)
The nature of Skein (it recognizes the parasite — "a lesser thing, feeding on scraps")
That the thin point is growing and the wards are failing — not because of The Opening, but because thin points naturally fluctuate and this one is at a peak
The exact method of its own destruction (the dual-plane kill) — it will NOT share this willingly, but it might slip in arrogance: "You cannot kill me. Not truly. Not unless you could be in two worlds at once."

Items

Xarrul carries nothing. It needs nothing. If destroyed, it leaves behind:

A pile of dark ash that smells of copper and old fire
A shard of amber crystal — warm to the touch, faintly glowing. This is a fragment of the binding that held it. It can be used as a material component for Magic Circle or Planar Binding, adding +2 to the DC of the contained creature's saves to escape. Worth 250 gp to the right buyer.
The Brand of Spite dissipates from Orenn's body. Mags will notice this. She won't say thank you. But she'll nod. And that's enough.

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