OpenFray

Brood & Bloom

A bestiary of parasites, compatible with 5.5e and 5e.

Sixty-seven creatures whose lives run through other bodies — living, dead, or built — with the rules for what they leave behind in the people, the ground, and the buildings that survive them, the order of physicians that has been writing all of it down for longer than anyone can remember, and the cult that reads the same files and welcomes what is in them.

  • 67 creatures
  • CR 0–17
  • 3 broods, 10 lines, 7 diseases
  • 23 spells
  • 19 items

Open the consoleStart reading

Contents

  1. Using this libraryWhat the three broods are, how the library is organized, what the people around them carry, and the licensing terms for its stat blocks and lore.
  2. Chapter 1The broodsWhat a brood parasite is, how each of the three reproduces, what magic does and does not do against them, and the rule for the cases nothing cures.
  3. Chapter 2LazaretThe order that catalogs the broods: its first house, its ranks and files, the classifications the whole library is written in, and the three officers it fields.
  4. Chapter 3Hands of the HostThe cult that welcomes the broods: the book it was founded on, the rite it performs once, the grades and offices a graft decides, and six creatures from the almoner to the First Graft.
  5. Chapter 4InquilineThe attaching brood: grafts and Depth, the three lines and their diseases, extraction, expulsion, and surgery, and eighteen creatures from the latchling to the Exemplar.
  6. Chapter 5SporophoreThe sporing brood: the shared colony traits, Spore Load, four lines with four diseases, the brooding ground, and twenty-four creatures from the driftling to the Nave.
  7. Chapter 6NecrophoreThe pupating brood: three lines of moths that lay in the dead, the husk rule, colony territory, and sixteen creatures from the cinder nit to the Lychfield.
  8. Chapter 7Alchemy & MagicThe preparations both sides carry, rendered from the broods themselves, and the twenty-three spells the order, the cult, and a scattering of practitioners have each written and each kept.
  9. Appendix AIndex: By CREvery creature in Brood & Bloom listed by challenge rating, from CR 0 to CR 17.
  10. Appendix BIndex: By TypeEvery creature in Brood & Bloom listed by creature type — aberrations, plants, monstrosities, and humanoids.
  11. Appendix CIndex: Alchemy & MagicEvery preparation and every spell in the library, in one place: what each one costs, what it is made from, and what it does.

Run it in the console

Every creature on these pages is already in OpenFray. Open the console, then turn on Brood & Bloom in Settings (the gear at the top right). After that the whole bestiary shows up in Add creature and in the compendium, with its attacks, saves, and recharge abilities ready to roll. See Settings and appearance in the handbook.