What creatures would you expect in an abandoned/haunted castle?

[shido321]

Hey everyone, I just need some ideas thrown my way. I'm putting my players into a castle that's been (mostly)abandoned due to a plague and I'm having a rough time figuring out what types of creatures/obstacles I should put in it.

So far I've got animated objects of all size categories and your ever-popular mimic. I'm thinking some sort of ghost/banshees of past tenants, but then I get stuck.



I have most of the source materials so if you let me know which book it comes from as well(IE: Ghostwalk, MM3, etc) I could find the stat block easily.

TY in advance!

[Fitz10019]

It would be better to know the level of your players' party.

I like the aranea from Monster Manual I. It's an intelligent sorcerous spider with shape-changing (into a humanoid form) and illusion abilities. In a castle that is currently a mess, the aranea might (by illusion, Silent Image) make one room very nice and inviting to lure travellers in.

[Fero]

A Remorhaz (MMI) could explain the animated objects.

The castle wizard could have had a bad habit of flushing magical waste through the castles sewage/latrine, leading to an Excremental (refluff Water Elemental from MMI that gives Filth Fever on a failed save).

Ghosts (MMI) are classic, as are bat or rat swarms (MMI).

The Ocularon (FF) is an aberation that takes people's eyeballs and seems suitable.

[Metastachydium]

A Remorhaz (MMI) could explain the animated objects.

I think the word you're looking for is Ravid (unless the Remorhaz has some trick I'm not aware of). Anyhow, fi you want to make a theme out of animated stuff, gargoyles and caryatid columnsFF may likewise be both good picks and appropriate for the setting.


The castle wizard could have had a bad habit of flushing magical waste through the castles sewage/latrine, leading to an Excremental (refluff Water Elemental from MMI that gives Filth Fever on a failed save).

I have another suggestion in a similar vein. Have an oubliette. With a lifeleech otyughMM3 in it! That gives you a magical Otyugh Hole! Feel free to add excrement for flavour (residing around that is very much an otyugh thing).

Yet another idea: if it's a temperate to cold climate, have an underground vault somewhere and in it, large blocks of ice the formation of which the local climate should not be cold enough for – with macabre, vaguely humanoid figures curled up inside, following anyone who enters with their glacial stares. In other words, cursed cold onesSand. It's good for creeping out the unprepared, but they are perfectly harmless unless Fireballed or something: they won't thaw in anything short of a desert.

[Particle_Man]

If it is abandoned then that is fair game for green slime, brown mold, etc.

If you feel like it you could make the entire castle a colossal+ animated object or construct, but not yet triggered to do anything.

Oh and rats. They are thematically associated with plagues, rightly or wrongly. Maybe dire rats too?

Oh and Spiders! Of various sizes!

[Fero]

I think the word you're looking for is Ravid (unless the Remorhaz has some trick I'm not aware of). Anyhow, fi you want to make a theme out of animated stuff, gargoyles and caryatid columnsFF may likewise be both good picks and appropriate for the setting.

Oops! Thank you for the correction!

[Melcar]

It would be better to know the level of your players' party.

I like the aranea from Monster Manual I. It's an intelligent sorcerous spider with shape-changing (into a humanoid form) and illusion abilities. In a castle that is currently a mess, the aranea might (by illusion, Silent Image) make one room very nice and inviting to lure travellers in.

It depends on the ecosystemÂ… large carnivores require large amounts of prey!

That is why I most often use undead or constructs in tombs or abandoned placesÂ…

[Bohandas]

How wealthy were the former owners? That will determime the likelihood of the presence of high end constructs

[Maat Mons]

Did the owners of the castle flee the plague, but intend to return when the danger has passed? If so, you should primarily consider what sort of defenses they'd leave behind to keep the place from becoming infested with monsters in their absence.

[Malphegor]

Instead of ghosts I recommend haunt shifted other forms of undead bound to the grounds.

[Vaern]

Will-o-wisps that lure people into the castle
Gargoyles perched outside
Animate suits of armor, or trapped suits of armor that'll swing their axe/polearm if someone steps on a pressure plate
Rats, spiders, centipedes
Old Man Jenkins
Dire rats, monstrous spiders, monstrous centipedes
Another group of adventurers who have stumbled into the castle for the same reason as the players
Ghosts of previous residents
Zombies or skeletons of previous prisoners in the dungeon
Whatever intelligent creatures have decided to take up residence in the castle; I hear vampire and liches are fond of creepy haunted castles
Molds
Fungi
A gelatinous cube
A mimic, except instead of the stereotypical treasure chest it's actually a colossal mimic that has taken the form of the castle itself

[Metastachydium]

A mimic, except instead of the stereotypical treasure chest it's actually a colossal mimic that has taken the form of the castle itself

That doesn't really work out by RAW. Granted, by RAW, a mimic can only use Mimic Shape to assume the shape of an "object that fills roughly 150 cubic feet (5 feet by 5 feet by 6 feet)" regardless of its size category, but that's so stupid we better just ignore it and focus on the rest. Now, mimics that advance past HD become Huge. The Large mimic has a 10' reach and is therefore considered a tall creature, so a HUge mimic is also a tall creature with a 15' space. The guidelines indicate that a tall Huge creature can have a height of 32'. This gives us, say, up to a 15 by 15 by 32' (if we go by maximum possible height rather than proportionate increase from the Large dimensions and we don't make a creature bigger than its space because that's weird).

Let's take a look at these rudimentary pictures here:

https://i.ibb.co/QvW9JPP/Capture.png
https://i.ibb.co/qkCnxNt/Capture1.png


It depicts a four-storey stone tower topped with a 3' tall, crenelated parapet. Its floors, excepting the ground floor with its 7' 6", are roughly 6' 6" tall each. The external walls are 2' thick. It can be entered through one of two double doors at the ground floor or a somewhat more modest door on the first floor (at level with the ground behind the tower which leans on a rock face).

The ground floor has a third door as well, made of steel. It has sturdy hinges but no visible lock. There's nothing behind this door; if opened somehow, it is revealed to stand tightly against the rock itself. The second floor has a balcony facing the front, accessible through another steel door, jammed shut. The only immediately conspicuous feature of the structure's inside is the stairwell in its middle, housing a steep, narrow spiral stairway that leads up all the way to the top through an unreasonably heavy trapdoor.

This tower,is not a defensive structure. This tower is not a former gatehouse of the abandoned castle. This tower is not a tower at all. It is a Huge mimic, 15' long and wide and 32' tall, trying to lure people inside itself and providing plenty of crammed space for that purpose. There are a couple of telling signs hinting at the true nature of the "building":

1. all doors seem to be easy to close from the outside and difficult to open from the inside in some manner or another;
2. there is no living creature to be seen inside, no spiders, no pill bugs, no ants – not even mold;
3. most floors have narrow slits for windows; the ground floor and the stairwell doesn't even have that, nor are there so much as simplistic loops for torches or lanterns;
4. the building doesn't seem to serve a clear purpose. It's too squat to be a watchtower and it's inconveniently located to function as one; its balcony actively hurts its defensibility; and its stairs are neither comfortable nor practical as a means of facilitating the moving of goods and people.
5. Also, needless to say, at some point it will try to eat you.

There. As far as I can tell, that's about the closest one can get to a castle-sized/castle-shaped mimic without resorting to fiat.


♣

On an unrelated note, if you go the Ravid route, you might want to double down on that and add some more positive energy-based critters. Crypt WardenBOED strikes me as a decent pick; it looks like a skeletal undead (good for that "haunted" feeling), can animate objects (if not as easily as a ravid), defending an important, abandoned area from would-be ravagers and robbers is kind of its thing; and it's a fully sapient Deathless creature (which gives it novelty value), damn it!

Creatures with the VivaciousPlanarH template come to mind as well. They are likewise positive-powered, but also incorporeal and they have a SA that either heals a living opponent or makes their head explode from vitality overload.

Sticking to the same theme, adding some LumiMM3 presence (or evidence of previous Lumi presence) to the mix might also be a interesting choice. They shed eerie light and have glowing, floating heads so it's not like they'd look out of place in a haunted keep.