Tiny beast
Mundane; material, hazard
Speed fly 30 ft.

Regions: Fiery Hellscape, Lofty Mountains (volcanic regions, the Elemental Plane of Fire)

Whereas many bees collect nectar to produce honey, bombees instead congregate near sources of sulfur, which they collect and take back to their hive. This means that their hives are often extremely reactive, giving rise to their name. Those with a light touch and a delicate hand may extract the explosive elements from a bombee’s hive with a successful alchemist’s tools check (DC 18). On a success, enough explosive material is extracted to create 4 explosive arrows or 10 firearm bullets On a failure, the hive explodes, dealing 5d6 bludgeoning damage to every creature within a 30-foot radius and destroying the hive. A DC 14 alchemist’s tools check yields the following materials.

Bombee Honeycomb (3 uses, 10 gold). The wax from this honeycomb can be used to make insect and animal repellent. It works like lavender paste , except mundane beasts will avoid the creature if possible.

Bombee Sulfur Honey (25 gold). This bright yellow honey tastes strongly of sulfur, making it inedible to most creatures (with tieflings, fiends, and stone giants being notable exceptions). It is used in a variety of alchemic concoctions.

Tiny monstrosity
Mundane; boon
Speed 5 ft., fly 30 ft.

Regions: Country Shire, Feywood, Rolling Grasslands, Tangled Forest (flower fields, woodland clearings)

Resembling tiny pastel-colored stingrays that fly through the air rather than water, blossom rays are typically found in groves of flowering trees, where they feed off of nectar. Many people claim that watching blossom rays is inherently soothing. Adventurers who spend 30 minutes observing a squadron of these rays in their natural habitat receive the benefits of a short rest . Creatures can only benefits from this effect once per long rest .

Tiny construct
Magical; boon
Speed 10 ft.

Resembling a ceramic teapot with four legs, awakened teapots are actually small constructs that can be found in teahouses and the private homes of wealthy nobility. While many are purposefully constructed, they have been known to gain life spontaneously in areas where magic has been used often, such as a wizard’s atelier, or at the casting site of a particularly potent spell. This sudden creation means that one may see the somewhat absurd sight of a pristine teapot scampering about an otherwise abandoned ruin.

An awakened teapot can boil water in 1 minute and brew a given tea or infusion to perfection in another minute. While it is brewing, an awakened teapot cannot move, as all of its energy is diverted to warming the water. Any liquid stored within an awakened teapot is kept warm for up to 6 hours, at which point the construct pours it out. An awakened teapot can sometimes be found in major cities and purchased for 250 gold

Adventurers encounter many terrifying beasts in their travels. From mighty owlbears to multi-headed hydras, the wilderness offers no shortage in hazardous fauna. Some, like the elegant pegasus or a curious pseudodragon may react to the party’s presence without hostility, but even these typically benign beasts are often ready to defend themselves at a moment’s notice.

But not all creatures found in one’s travels pose such a threat, real or potential. Some are simply a part of the world, too small to offer much of a challenge against an adventurer’s might. The following creatures are what is known as endemic life: creatures, usually Tiny- or Small-size, that an adventuring party may encounter in their travels. Though some of these creatures are magical in nature and some can cause harm, none of them are combatants; rather, they are an intriguing part of the environment, meant to be admired and potentially interacted with—or avoided!—by inquisitive adventurers. Some provide boons, some may lead a curious follower to treasure— and at least one of them might steal it if you aren’t paying attention!

Each of these curious creatures is designed to be dropped into any campaign to provide Narrators with added environmental flavor, whimsical additions to exploration challenges, or merely a way to reward player curiosity and interaction with the world. While some of them can appear almost anywhere, others are tied to specific areas. A creature’s entry lists regions it is commonly found in, followed by a specific area or biome it favors. These regions are not absolute, however; as long as a region includes the correct biome, that form of endemic life can potentially be found there. For instance, a Country Shire region may have a cave system that has attracted glowbats and calcite geckos. A creature’s entry also lists its Speed and states whether it is a mundane creature or intrinsically magical, but there are also several other descriptors that may apply.

Boon. The creature provides some magical or mundane benefit.

Hazard. The creature poses some sort of environmental hazard and can be used in place of or in conjunction with an exploration challenge.

Material. The creature can provide some sort of harvestable material that can be sold or used in crafting.

Finally, most of the creatures here do not have a price assigned to them, as many have utility only in their natural habitats and several are either too delicate, too hazardous, or too magically connected to the land to be safely removed. If a creature is commonly sold, the price is listed in its description.

Table: Harvestable Materials

Awakened Teapot || Blossom Ray || Bombees || Brush Dog || Calcite Gecko || Celestial Moth || Glowbat || Emperor Porpoise || Frenzyfish || Fungal Drake || Lucite Slug || Prismatic Tortoise || Rivercat || Rosy Spinehog || Sepulchral Fox || Shadowfly || Siren Gull || Snowflake Boa || Trinket Crab || Verdant Owl || Wyverkeet

Reef Singers will generally take things in good part and are always pleased to have someone perform for them. A feat of strength, a new song, or some well-turned trick of conjuring will win good-natured and enthusiastic applause. They prize being good-natured and the ability to laugh at one’s own mistakes. An easy way to upset them is to set oneself up as more important, or to be obviously wasteful either through excessive consumption leaving things uneaten or through destruction of property and beauty. These sorts of actions strike against the egalitarian and thrifty nature of these people.

Characters raised in the Reef Singer culture share a variety of traits in common with one another.

Coral Singer. Given access to warm water and sufficient nutrients, a coral singer can easily create a Haven for up to four creatures within 8 hours. Over the course of 24 hours of effort, the coral singer can expand this to up to 8 creatures keeping them warm and dry and safe from the elements. Further efforts are possible, but require monthly maintenance, care, and a great deal of food for the coral. Such efforts can, over the course of a year, provide a level 1 Encampment, Farm, House, Menagerie, Sacred Grove or Temple stronghold. Such a stronghold requires yearly maintenance by a reef singer lasting 1 week or it will fall into disrepair and lose its status as a stronghold.

Increasing the level of this stronghold or combining it with another stronghold is a task best designated by the Narrator and likely involves additional reef singers, alternate construction efforts, magic, or, most likely, all three.

Skills of the Seas. Choose two from the following list: Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Athletics, Culture, Medicine, Performance, Survival. You gain proficiency with the chosen skills. You also gain proficiency with water vehicles.

Coastal Weapon Training. You have proficiency with blowguns, nets, spear-throwers, and tridents.

Reef Craft. You are proficient with two of the following: carpenter’s tools, cook’s utensils, herbalism kit, leatherworker’s tools, mason’s tools, musical instrument, painter’s supplies, poisoner’s kit, sewing kit, tinker’s tools.

Languages. You can speak, read, write and sign in Common and Aquan, plus up to three others of your choice.

Coral reefs are more than colorful, stately structures—they are countless animals banding together and providing food, home, and protection to countless others. In turn, those who tend these reefs, too, exercise both teamwork and hospitality. Not only do these folk tend the coral, however, they are able to grow them at an astonishing rate.

Warm Ocean Builders and Travellers. The people of the Reef Singer culture are well known to enjoy traveling the warm parts of oceans, looking for areas that are naturally rich in nutrients and safe from storms, such as sheltered lagoons. When they find a suitable spot, they form nurseries of coral and begin to grow their reefs and atolls. Rather like caring for trees in an orchard, these people build fences around the coral to protect it from sea creatures and, after their work is done, they leave. Every year or so, they return, shaping the coral further to their liking and expanding and producing these rainforests of the sea such that fish, plants and other living things flourish there, making them ripe to be harvested again and again. The intricate structures they can make from coral are impressive, for they possess the art of coral-singing. This ability also allows them to create dwelling places, under the right circumstances.

Open Arms and Open Hearts. The reef singers are an open and gregarious people who freely adopt others of different heritages and consider them Reef Singers for purposes of marriage and inheritance. Bargains are struck by word of mouth and both sides are expected to adhere to them freely. However, writing down contracts is regarded as a grave insult and is considered tantamount to declaring either or both parties untrustworthy and seeking to cheat the other.

The singers’ social structure is fairly flat and while they can support specialists and artisans, the maximum size of their coral structures and their preference to build in shallow lagoons means that they often avoid building large cities. Some groups travel between several different islands and atolls over the course of a year or several years, checking and tending their sung-coral structures and leaving in time to allow the resources that have been depleted by their presence to replenish.

From the Depths. Reef singers believe their way of life originated in the deep song of the whales that cruise the long dark abyssal depths of the ocean, that in the before times all was chaos and churning water. There the whales sang to each other and the ground descended from above to split the water, eventually ending the chaos and bringing solidity to the world. At the side of the ocean were the great sandbanks. The whirling and swirling of the water over these sandbanks carved out strange and novel shapes. These shapes, filled with the deep song of the whales, became the first people, and with them the beasts of the air and land and sea.

Making a Splash. Reef singers have a wide variety of different ways to adorn themselves. Fabrics are useful for sails and providing warmth when coming in and out of the water, but for day-to-day use one of the more common features of reef singer culture is self-adornment using a specially bred (or magically altered) species of sea anemones as wigs or accessories. Unlike the hairpieces of humans, these sea anemones have their own sticking capability, but must also be fed regularly and regularly submerged in salt water to keep them healthy, fresh and clean. If neglected, they may wander off, which can be distressing for all concerned.

These coastal people also favor the use of shells, bits of coral, pearls, coconut shells, and sheets of tanned shark hide to create adornments for themselves. The brighter and more ornate the costume, the higher the status of the individual that has had the spare time and dedication to collect the pieces of their outfit, though even this status translates more to respect than true authority.

Siren Sounds of Surf and Sand. Reef singers favor shakers, horns, and bottles. They prefer to avoid most stringed instruments and other instruments that water and salt will warp and rust. The highest form of art is storytelling through dance, which captures the feel of flowing underwater. Some podes, with their ability to transform their skins into different colors, hone this talent to new heights, with the most talented performers able to produce kaleidoscopic, shifting multi-coloured and faintly glowing patterns of rings and stars. Galeoni and those of other heritages can and do mimic this effect with tattoos and glowing body paint.

Songs from outsiders are often a big hit due to their novelty value and frequently enjoy popularity with the younger podes. Such younglings have not developed sufficient skin control to lean into story-telling dances, but they can still weave their magic through coral in song and are always looking for fresh and exciting ways to practice.

Waste Not, Want Not. Greed and wastefulness are considered great social faux pas, and everything taken from the ocean must be used with respect. Each community is in frequent contact with others, but the coral cannot support great numbers, so the search for new locations can be frequent. This exposes them to the dangers of traveling into the unknown, so every member able is expected to use their resources wisely. To this end, a combination of hard muscle and soft paunch is admired, showing a prosperous individual capable of making long journeys.

High Seas? Highways! Reef singers have a very strong preference for travel via water. Decorative anemones need frequent watering, and why walk when you can sail or drift? It is a coming-of-age ritual in most reef singer groups for an adolescent to craft their own small, basket-like boats, similar to coracles. Those inclined to the craft continue their studies, but whether is obtained from an artisan or built by hand, to a reef singer decorating their craft is done with as much purpose and deliberation as adorning themselves and yearly competitions to judge the artistry of such ships are common.

Attitudes Towards Adventurers. Reef singers may come across adventurers in several ways, such as meeting them as they travel through the interstitial zone of the shallows between dry land and the high seas or greeting a party as they return to their seemingly abandoned homes as part of a routine migration. As described above, they happily offer their hospitality to visitors, but those seeking violence should beware—the sea is not kind, no matter its face, making reef singers a hearty folk more than capable of defending themselves if their welcoming nature is abused.