Nobles of the Waning Court - The beauty of ripe fruit blended with the breach within autumn’s long shadows, every noble of the waning court is a vision to behold. Black, pupilless eyes dominate their fine-boned faces while sharp teeth lurk behind plush lips. The faeries’ ears are pointed like an elf’s, but slightly shorter. This is due to the antelope-like horns spiraling from their temples, the base of which are riddled with red-stained honeycombs. Waning court nobles wear their hair long, often braided with bones and sticks, and is a color of fall leaves. Their skin tone can best be described as bloodless. Commonly, these fey wear leathers cured of eldritch animals, cloaks made from a nightmare or displacer beast pelts, black iron plates, and amber adornments with petrified insects within. Most find their mien more savage than aristocratic. Stray direflies are their constant companions, always buzzing cryptic prophecies as they crawl about.

The harvestman is fused to a quartet of arachnid-like legs crafted from deadwood via a direfly honeycomb along their spine. Due to the poison running through their veins the harvestman exists in a constant state of mild-inebriation. Their once-black eyes have grown segmented, glow yellow in the dark and never blink. It is said they cannot sleep but are haunted by fragments of waking dreams. They wear hooded shrouds woven from gossamer and red chitin flakes. Red lattices fuse the segments of their extra legs together, lending them a venomous quality.

Wheat from Chaff. Harvestmen are charged with snatching mortals from their homes and delivering them to the clutches of the waning court. Those poor souls which make the grade become servants and playthings for the nobility. Those that do not are cut down by the harvestmen, their corpus used as fertilizer for the hive crofter’s surreal gardens. Occasionally, a harvestman will become enamored with a mortal and find itself unable to part with the prize. To keep the creature it ritually flays the mortal's soul away and binds it to a bag, creating a plucker.

Foul Foreman. The pluckers created by a harvestman are forever linked to it, willing servants to their master. Each plucker holds a place in the harvestman’s black heart, a target to a twisted love that will never die. It takes great pains ensuring a plucker is comfortable, but as a mortal looks after a cherished pet. To this end, the harvestman goes to great lengths to kill those that destroy its pluckers and mounts their corpses as grim scarecrows to dissuade others from doing so.

Harvestman

medium fey, lawful evil

Armor Class 16 (studded leather armor)

Hit Points 112 (15d8 + 45)

Speed 30ft

Climb 30ft

Str 18 Dex 14 Con 16 Int 12 Wis 14 Cha 16

Saving Throws Con +6, Wis +5

Skills Investigation +5, Stealth +5

Damage Resistances lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks not made with silvered weapons

Senses darkvision 60ft, tremorsense 10ft, passive Perception 13.

Languages common, sylvan.

Challenge 9 (5000 XP)

Fey Foreman:

A harvestman can telepathically communicated with all of its pluckers within 10 miles.

Magic Resistance:

The fey has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Spider Climb:

The harvestman can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.

Spider Silence:

The harvestman has advantage on all Stealth checks.

Actions

Multiattack:

The waning breach can make four attacks as one action.

Longleg:

Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 15ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6+4) poison damage and the target must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution save or be paralyzed for 1 minute. A paralyzed creature may repeat this save at the end of each of its turns, the effect ending on success.

Splinter Spinnerette:

Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, range 30/60ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d4+4) piercing damage. If a creature is hit by two or more splinter spinnerette attacks in one round it must succeed on a DC 14 Strength save or have their speed reduced to zero until the end of its next turn.

Spin Gate:(Recharge 6)

Using its longlegs, the harvestman traces an arcane circle of blood honey on the ground at a point within 15 feet of it. It chooses another point within 500 feet that it can see, or a point within 10 feet that one of its pluckers can see. A hexagonal gate, 10 feet in diameter, opens over each point. If the gate would open in the space occupied by a creature, the spell fails, and the casting is lost. The gates are two-dimensional hexagons of deadwood filled with buzzing direflies, hovering inches from the ground and perpendicular to it at the points chosen.

Any creature or object entering the gate exits from the other gate as if the two were adjacent to each other. The direfly swarms that fills each portal is opaque and blocks vision through it. The gates exist for 10 minutes.

As a bonus action the Harvestnan may direct the direflies in both portals to attack all non-fey creatures within 10 feet of the portal. These creatures must succeed on a DC 15 Charisma save or suffer 10 (3d6) psychic damage and must use their reaction to move their full speed away from the gate.

A harvestman may only have one gate active at a time.