Bone Sentinel
- HP
- 14
- Defense
- 8
- AR
- 3
- Mettle
- 1
Attacks
Traits
- Construct: Immune to Fear, Poison, Bleeding, Strain, Erosion, and all mental effects. Does not eat, sleep, or breathe.
- Dormant: Appears as a natural bone formation until activated. Awareness TN 15 to recognize a dormant Sentinel. Activation triggers: approaching within Close range of a burial mound, attempting to dig, or making loud noise near the mounds at dusk (when the Humming begins).
- Reassemble: If reduced to 0 HP, the Sentinel collapses into a pile of bones. Unless the bones are scattered across a wide area (10+ minutes of work), salted, or burned, it reassembles in 1d6 hours.
- Ancient: The Sentinel does not register as Veil-Born to Psi-Sense or Smell the Witch. It predates both the Veil and the Current. It simply *is*.
Ancient guardians of the Graven Plain — massive humanoid constructs assembled from the colossal bones that litter the region, animated by a Current so old it predates the Rupture. They stand twelve feet tall, assembled from rib-cage armor, femur limbs, and skulls that serve as sense organs. They do not move until disturbed — and disturbance, to a Bone Sentinel, means approaching the burial mounds they guard.
The Circle of Ash believes the Sentinels are the remains of a pre-human civilization’s defense system, still following orders from masters who died millennia ago. Whatever they guard, it is buried deep beneath the mounds and sealed behind doors that the Circle has not yet learned to open.
Bone Sentinels stand motionless among the bone-hills, indistinguishable from the landscape until they move. The first warning is a sound like an avalanche of skulls.
Speed 5. Note: creature_type is “construct” rather than “veil-born”
per the Ancient trait — the Sentinels predate the Veil.
Tactics
Bone Sentinels do not pursue. They activate when their threshold is crossed, attack anything within their patrol radius (Far range from the mound), and return to dormancy when the intruders leave or die. They fight with brutal simplicity — Bone Club to smash, Bone Shard Burst if surrounded, Trample if enemies try to flee through their space.
Encounter Design
Bone Sentinels are guardian encounters. The party needs something from a burial mound — a relic, a Circle text, a sealed door that might lead to answers about the pre-Rupture world. The Sentinel stands between them and their objective. They can fight it (hard, and it reassembles), sneak past it (very hard), or find a way to deactivate it (the Circle might have theories).