Introduction

Creepy Cottage is a four to five-hour adventure for 4th-level characters set within the Creepy Cottage map.

The characters find a cottage that is warm, lived in, and empty. The further they explore, the less it feels like a home. The basement gives way to sinew, the sinew gives way to acid, and somewhere beneath it all, a heart beats. Once they hurt it badly enough, the cottage spits them back into the pumpkin patch and shows them its true face.

Content warning: body horror, claustrophobia, gore, and organs.

Running the Cottage

Creepy Cottage works in any fantasy setting. Place it beside a well-travelled road where nobody remembers a cottage standing before.

The cottage is empty, yet someone clearly lives here. Let the characters enjoy the warmth of the humble abode for a moment. Then feed them the details that don’t sit right, until they realize the thing living in the house is the house.

Tracking Damage. The characters spend most of this adventure inside the Cottage Mimic. From the moment they step through the door, track its hit points. 

Although they may damage the Cottage Mimic throughout the dungeon crawl, only the damage the characters deal inside the Heart counts toward the regurgitation in Area 7.

Adventure Background

Years ago, a meteor shower lit up the sky. Many took it as a blessing from the gods. In truth, it was the wreckage of a world destroyed somewhere among the stars, and some of what fell was still alive.

The Mimics. The survivors fed on people and multiplied. Their species became known as mimics. If mimics have a longer history in your world, this was the latest shower to bring them.

The Cottage Mimic. One of the first to land has lived long enough to mimic an entire building. It lures weary travelers straight into its bowels. A green hag tends to it, and keeps whatever its victims leave behind.

The Threat. The Cottage Mimic has grown big enough to reproduce. Its young already roam the land, quietly infesting the roads travelers use most. If nothing is done, the realm will realize its fall too late.

Lifecycle of a Mimic

Egg Sac. Every mimic begins in an egg sac, fed by whatever its parent digests. When the larvae inside grow teeth, they tear their way out.

Larva. Larvae hunt in clusters (Swarm of Mimic Larvae) and eat anything they can chew, from rock and wood to flesh. As they grow into larger worms (Giant Mimic Larva), they eat nothing but meat.

Mimic. Well-fed worms melt into the shapeless form of an adult Mimic. New mimics start small, copying objects no bigger than themselves. Around the cottage, that means pumpkins (Pumpkin Mimic).

Dwelling. A mimic that grows large enough roots itself in rich soil and swells to the size of a building. There, it grows an egg sac without a mate, and the cycle begins again.

Adventure Hooks

Weary Travelers. After a long day on the road, the characters spot smoke curling from a cottage chimney, with warm light flooding out of the open front door.

Secondhand Goods. A farmer at the local market sells fine adventuring gear for next to nothing. One of the characters recognizes a piece. It belonged to a friend who went missing on the road. Tailing the farmer leads straight to the cottage.

Fallen Stars. A sage studying the old meteor shower pays well for fragments of what fell. Her charts point to farmland beside the road, and a cottage that wasn’t on last year’s maps.

Key NPCs

Harnsellin Grethel

Role: Caretaker of the Cottage Mimic.

Appearance: An old farm woman: long white hair, a wide straw hat, a gray dress with a maroon bodice, and a broom she never puts down. Beneath the illusion, a stooped hag with mossy green skin and long black nails.

Personality: Polite, practical, and deceitful. She talks like a landlady showing off a property.

Motivation: Tend the house. Keep the spoils.

Harnsellin has looked after the Cottage Mimic since she found it. She keeps the fire lit and the table set so the cottage always looks lived in. In return, she takes her pick of whatever its victims carried. She uses the Green Hag stat block.

Dungeon Overview

General Features

Light. Inside, the cottage is dark unless an area describes a light source.

Sound. The cottage’s flesh absorbs sound, so nothing inside can be heard from outside. Every so often, something beats beneath the floor.

Doors. The doors look like wood but feel soft and slimy to the touch. The Cottage Mimic may lash a tongue from a door at one creature within 15 feet of that door: Melee Attack Roll: +4, reach 15 ft. Hit: 3 (1d6) Bludgeoning damage. Each tongue attack costs the Cottage Mimic 6 hit points.

Walls. Outside, the cottage is mostly wood and stone. Inside, most of what looks like wood or stone is flesh, and damaged walls weep purple blood like sap. Damaging a wall doesn’t hurt the Cottage Mimic unless a single attack or spell deals more than 20 damage to it. If one does, the Cottage Mimic takes that damage. When a creature lingers within 5 feet of a wall, the Cottage Mimic may grow a toothy maw and bite it: Melee Attack Roll: +4, reach 5 ft. Hit: 5 (1d10) Piercing damage. Each bite costs the Cottage Mimic 10 hit points.

Mimicry. The cottage sometimes mimics the characters’ voices. A creature that hears it can tell it’s an imitation with a successful DC 14 Wisdom (Insight) check.

Random Treasures and Encounters

When the characters want to search for loot in a crate, a sack, or anything else worth rummaging through, roll 2d6. If both dice show the same number, the container is a Mimic, with the treasure in its belly.

Key Locations

1. The Pumpkin Patch

A dirt road winds through a misty clearing toward a thatched cottage, smoke curling from its chimney into the evening sky. A pumpkin patch runs wild around the cottage, every pumpkin fat and ripe for picking. A warm and gentle light floods out of the wide open front door of the cottage.

The Cottage Mimic has rooted itself here, and the pumpkin patch feeds on what’s left of its meals.

Purple Roots. Twisted purple roots creep through the grass and coil around old stumps. Anyone who follows one finds it leads back to the cottage.

Pumpkin Mimics. Six Pumpkin Mimics hide among the pumpkins. They wait until the characters are halfway to the front door, then attack from range to drive them inside. They never follow anyone into the cottage.

2. Cottage Interior

The cottage is warm and cozy. A candle burns on a table set for supper, and embers glow in the hearth, but nobody is home.

Signs of Life. Someone clearly lives here. Fresh produce sits by the hearth, a pot of stew simmers over the embers, and the supper on the table is untouched. Yet there’s no bed, and no sign of where anyone sleeps.

Paintings. Portraits hang on every wall, and something is off about each one. Hands have too many fingers, faces are missing features, and skin is the wrong color. The Cottage Mimic grew these paintings. It can copy a room perfectly, but it still struggles with people.

Possessed Furniture. The spirits of the cottage’s past victims hide in a book, a chair, and the rug. Use the Possessed Book, Possessed Chair, and Possessed Rug stat blocks. The spirits want to scare the characters off before the cottage eats them too. The overturned chair and scattered books are their work. If the characters head for the basement, the spirits attack. They stop the moment the characters leave the cottage.

Stairs. A staircase in the western alcove leads down to the basement (Area 3).

3. Basement

The stairs creak down into warm, damp air. From below comes the scrape of wood dragged across stone, as a farmer rummages through crates and sacks of goods.

The Farmer. Harnsellin Grethel (Green Hag) is here in disguise, picking through a hoard of adventuring gear for anything worth taking home. She tells the characters her family is selling the cottage, but something has infested the basement. She offers them a Robe of Useful Items and a Potion of Speed from the hoard if they’ll deal with it. If they agree, she promises to wait upstairs, then slips away once they’re out of sight.

Seeing Through Her. A character who takes the Study action and succeeds on a DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation) check notices her clothes glimmer like an illusion. Caught out, she tries a new lie. She only stumbled on this place, something monstrous lives below, and the characters can keep the hoard if they let her go. If a character catches this lie with a successful DC 15 Wisdom (Insight) check, Harnsellin casts Invisibility and flees.

Flesh Corridor. Past the cellar, the winding corridor turns from stone to flesh, and thick sinew chokes it at two bends. A character can tear through each one with a successful DC 15 Strength (Athletics) check, dealing damage to the Cottage Mimic equal to the check’s total. On a failure, the sinew lashes out from the walls (see General Features).

Trapdoor. At the end of the corridor, a trapdoor leads down to the Bowels (Area 4). A cluster of arm-length worms (Swarm of Mimic Larvae) writhes on top of it. A character who succeeds on a DC 12 Intelligence (Nature) or Wisdom (Insight) check can tell the larvae are hungry, and that the stew simmering upstairs might lure them away. If the characters attack the swarm, a Giant Mimic Larva bursts from the wall and joins the fight.

Treasure. Along with rations and rope, Harnsellin’s hoard holds two Potions of Greater Healing, a Potion of Speed, a Wand of Lightning Bolts, a Scimitar of Speed, and a Robe of Useful Items.

4. Bowels

The trapdoor opens onto a chamber of sinew and flesh, half-flooded with bubbling green acid. Skulls and ribcages break the surface.

A creature that spends more than 1 minute in the Bowels has the Poisoned condition until it leaves.

Blood Cells. The cottage defends itself here. Six blood cells (Gray Ooze) rise from the acid and attack.

Acid Pool. The acid is Difficult Terrain for Medium or smaller creatures. At the end of each minute a creature spends in the acid, it takes 2 (1d4) Acid damage. Any armor it wears also takes a cumulative −1 penalty to the AC it offers, which Mending removes. If the penalty would pass −3, the armor is destroyed.

Sphincter Door. At the end of the western passage, a puckered door of muscle leads to the Heart (Area 7). A character can force it open with a successful DC 15 Strength (Athletics) check. The door also bursts open once it takes 15 damage, flooding the room with acid, and each creature in the pool takes 5 (2d4) Acid damage. Damage to the door counts against the Cottage Mimic’s hit points.

Slip Walls. Where this chamber meets the Appendix (Area 5) and the Egg Sac (Area 6), the walls are tubes of compressed muscle. A character with a passive Perception of 14 or higher notices acid seeping through them into the rooms beyond. Forcing through the Egg Sac’s wall takes a successful DC 17 Strength (Athletics) check. If you’re using the Secondhand Goods hook, the character who recognised their friend’s gear hears that friend calling their name from behind the Appendix wall.

Treasure. Among the bones lie things the acid hasn’t finished: a pouch of 4d10gp, a dented steel helm, and a sealed Potion of Resistance (Acid).

5. Appendix

Bone spikes jut from the walls of this cramped space, all angled inward. Acid pools at the bottom and begins to rise.

The appendix helps the cottage break down its toughest meals. A character who searches its slip wall must succeed on a DC 17 Strength saving throw or be pulled inside.

Trapped. A creature pulled inside must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw as acid floods in. On a successful save, it can climb back out through the slip wall. On a failed save, it takes 5 (1d10) Piercing damage from the spikes and has the Restrained condition. At the start of each of its turns, a creature Restrained this way takes 5 (2d4) Acid damage and makes a DC 14 Strength (Athletics) check. On a success, it pulls free. On a failure, it takes 5 (1d10) Piercing damage.

Treasure. A Ring of Protection lies among the spikes. If you’re using the Secondhand Goods hook, that victim was the character’s missing friend, and their name is engraved inside the band.

6. Egg Sac

A swollen red sac fills half the room. Dark shapes squirm inside.

This is where the Cottage Mimic grows its young. Destroying the sac stops the next generation before it hatches.

The Sac. The egg sac has AC 12 and 30 hit points. The first time it takes damage, four blood cells (Gray Ooze) squeeze from the walls to defend it. If the sac is destroyed, it bursts, and two Swarms of Mimic Larvae spill out and attack the nearest living creatures.

Larval Ichor. A creature can smear itself with fluid from the burst sac. For the next hour, it smells like the Cottage Mimic’s young. The Sphincter Door

7. Heart

A heart larger than a horse beats in the corner of this chamber, wrapped in veins and flecked with something that glitters like starlight. Every beat shakes the floor.

The Heart. It shares the Cottage Mimic’s AC. Damage dealt to the heart is doubled and dealt to the Cottage Mimic. The first time it takes damage, three blood cells (Gray Ooze) and two Giant Mimic Larvae appear to defend it.

Meteor Material. Alien material from the meteor shower is woven through the heart, and damaging the heart shakes it loose. A character proficient in Arcana or Nature can tell it isn’t natural. What the characters gather is worth 100pp, and a skilled crafter can use it to make a Ring of Shooting Stars or a Robe of Stars. If you’re using the Fallen Stars hook, this is what the sage is after.

Regurgitation. If the characters deal 70 damage to the Cottage Mimic in this chamber, the chamber convulses, the ceiling peels open, and the Cottage Mimic spits the characters out into the pumpkin patch (Area 8). Its defenders stay behind.

8. Regurgitated

Night has fallen over the pumpkin patch. Five yellow eyes blink open across the cottage’s gable, purple flesh bulges between its timbers, and the front door splits into a mouth full of fangs.

Wounded and furious, the Cottage Mimic drops its disguise and turns on the intruders who went for its heart. It starts this fight with whatever hit points it has left.

Fight Choreography

The Cottage Mimic is too big to move, so it relies on its attacks to move its prey around. It uses Monstrous Uproot to throw creatures within reach of its tongue, setting them up for its bite.

Weak Points. Each of the Cottage Mimic’s five eyes is a weak point. A character can target one with an attack against AC 19. A hit on an eye is a Critical Hit, and the eye bursts. With all five burst, the Cottage Mimic has Disadvantage on attack rolls.

Adjusting the Encounter

If Harnsellin is still alive, she fights beside the Cottage Mimic, and more Pumpkin Mimics and Giant Mimic Larvae can join her. 

If your party is struggling, trim the heart’s defenders in Area 7 so they arrive here with more to give.

Conclusion

When the Cottage Mimic dies, it comes apart into timber, thatch, and purple meat, and the pumpkin patch starts feeding on the pieces.

The Egg Sac. If the characters left it intact, it hatches within the month, and a fresh crawl of larvae works its way along the road.

The Hag. If she got away, she’ll find another young mimic to keep house for, and she remembers everyone who cost her a hoard.

The Others. This was one of many that fell. Somewhere down the road, another building stands where nobody remembers one being built.

Appendix A: New Monster Statblocks

Aberration Mimics

The mimics found in this adventure are different to what you usually find. They are otherworldly beings and so are considered a different creature type to the typical mimic in the SRD.

Possessed Furniture

Appendix B: Adapting Other Map Variants

The Cottage Mimic slips between planes and centuries, which is why nobody remembers it arriving. Use other variants of this map for that. The cottage the characters walk into and the one that spits them out don’t have to be in the same season, country, or year.

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Credits

• Design and maps by Connor Johnston
• Scene art by Kelly-Louise Roake
• ‘The Creeping Cottage’ adventure by Ian Arguilles
• Token art by Fairbanks
• Post-processing and formatting by Ross McConnell

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