Cryptid · Codex
A Field Guide to the Unverified · Issue № 0 · From Scoundrel Games
Cryptid № 0The Jersey Devil
Three centuries in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. A cursed thirteenth child that came out wrong and never stopped hunting. Here is its legend, and two ways to loose it on your table.
“It does not want your gold or your soul. It wants the sound you make when the wings block out the moon.”
They say Mother Leeds had twelve children and cursed the thirteenth before it drew breath. “Let this one be the Devil,” she spat, on a storm-black night in the Pine Barrens, 1735. It came out human enough. Then it changed on the midwife’s table: the body stretched, the face lengthened into a horse’s skull, bat wings tore from its back, and it beat once around the room and out the chimney into the pines, where it has hunted ever since.
For three hundred years the Barrens have kept it. Trappers find their dogs gutted and hung in the trees. Whole towns have seen it in a single week: hoofprints across snow-covered rooftops, a scream like a woman burning, cloven tracks that stop at a wall and start again on the far side.
Bring a lantern into the Pine Barrens if you must. It only tells the Devil where you are.
The Jersey Devil
Large monstrosity, chaotic evil
(+4)
(+3)
(+3)
(−2)
(+1)
(+0)
Flyby. The Devil doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks when it flies out of a creature’s reach.
Keen Smell. Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell.
Terror of the Pines. The first time a creature sees the Devil on its turn, it must succeed on a DC 14 Wisdom save or be frightened until the end of its next turn.
Actions
Multiattack. Two Claw attacks and one Bite attack.
Claw. Melee Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) slashing.
Bite. Melee Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft. Hit: 9 (1d10 + 4) piercing.
Damned Bleat (Recharge 5–6). Each creature in a 30-ft cone makes a DC 14 Wisdom save: on a failure, 18 (4d8) psychic damage (one time only) and frightened 1 minute; on a success, half as much damage and not frightened. A frightened creature repeats the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the fright on a success. This later save only shakes the fear, it deals no further damage.
Recharge 5–6: once used, roll a d6 at the start of each of the Devil’s turns; on a 5 or 6 it’s available again (≈ once every 3 rounds, but unpredictable).
The Jersey Devil
No stat lines. Just what it is and how to point it at your players, whatever system you run. It hunts by fear, not hunger.
How it behaves
- Ambush predator, never a duelist. Appears, terrifies, strikes the isolated one, vanishes.
- Hunts the senses. Kills the lights, screams to scatter, stalks by smell. Reward going dark and quiet.
- Signs before bodies. Cloven tracks on a rooftop that stop at a wall. A dog growling at the chimney, then silent.
Ways to use it
- The Barrens hunt. Snowed into a trapper’s cabin. Something is on the roof.
- The cursed-birth mystery. A village blames the Devil for missing children. The truth is worse.
- The escort gone wrong. The lantern that keeps travelers calm is exactly what draws it.
- A recurring omen. Not a fight, just a thing glimpsed three times before something terrible.
- Any dark wilderness. Cut it loose from the Barrens. A winged, hoofed terror haunts any moor, marsh, or black forest. Keep the silhouette and the fear; reskin the rest.
Difficulty dial
- Scarier: never let them get a clean look.
- Beatable: give them the folklore (light draws it, silence hides them) as a clue to earn.
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