Vespera
Vespera — The Encounter
Chitin-armed temptress of the drowned cities of sin · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Vespera
Among the spirits that crawled from the salt-cracked ruins of the cities of the plain, Vespera is counted a temptress-warden, set to guard the sunken treasuries of Sodom and Gomorrah. The grimoires name her a daughter of the fire that fell, her mortal beauty preserved above the waist while the judgment of brimstone fused chitin and pincer to her arms and venom to her heel. She does not strike first; she beckons. The lonely and the avaricious follow her sulfur-sweet glamour down the flooded stairs, and there the great claws take them. Folk who fish those poisoned shallows leave coins on the broken pillars to be spared her notice. Exorcists hold that she cannot abide a name spoken in repentance, and that she fears the rising tide of dawn upon the ash, when the buried cities seem to burn again.
Run Vespera in Sixty Seconds
- She beckons, she does not charge. Open every fight with Brimstone Lure to drag one PC into claw range, then grapple them — that's her whole engine.
- Pincer Grip is the threat clock. A grappled PC takes 2d6 automatic slashing at the start of each of her turns. Free them or kill her; stalling kills the captive.
- Kill-priority for players: break the grapple (escape DC 15) or drop her. Magic damage matters — she resists nonmagical bludgeoning/piercing/slashing.
- When bloodied, she clamps and refuses to let go, using Sidestep to dodge the rescue party's first swing each round.
- Three ways to run her: lone temptress-ambush in a flooded ruin (T1), claw-isolator backed by minions (T2), or a charming gatekeeper guarding a bigger boss (T3) — never a solo capstone.
Vespera
Medium fiend, neutral evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEPincer Grip. Vespera has two great chitinous claws. While she grapples a creature in one claw (escape DC 15), that claw cannot make claw attacks, but the grappled creature is restrained and takes 7 (2d6) slashing damage at the start of each of Vespera's turns as the serrated edges close.
Magic Resistance. Vespera has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Actions
Multiattack. Vespera makes two Claw attacks. She can replace one Claw attack with a use of Brimstone Lure if it is available.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (2d10 + 4) slashing damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 15) and pulled into the claw's pincer (see Pincer Grip).
Brimstone Lure (Recharge 5-6). Vespera exhales seductive sulfur-laced glamour at one creature she can see within 30 ft. The target must succeed on a DC 14 Wisdom saving throw or be charmed until the end of its next turn and move up to its speed toward Vespera by the most direct route, willingly stepping within reach of her claws.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Sidestep. When a creature Vespera can see misses her with a melee attack, she can use her reaction to move up to half her speed without provoking opportunity attacks.
A bald, smiling thing of drowned splendor: a woman's torso and venom-spined legs joined to two immense crab claws that drag and crush. She wears the gilded corselet of a fallen court, and her skin glows the bruised violet of a city sunk in sin.
Vespera, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEWarding Pincer (signature). When an ally within 5 ft. of the bound Vespera is hit by an attack, she can clamp a claw to shield them, reducing the damage by 7 (2d6).
Actions
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) slashing damage, and a Medium or smaller target is grappled (escape DC 14).
Reactions
Drag Down. When an enemy within 10 ft. moves, the bound Vespera can use her reaction to make a Claw attack against it; on a hit the target's speed is halved until the end of its turn.
Bargained into a fragile truce, she fights at the party's flank, claws raised to shelter as readily as to seize.
Guideline numbers — formula-tuned and read from the miniature's design, not yet table-proven. Tell us how it ran in the comments.
How It Fights — by Tier
Same creature, scaled threat. The traits never change; only the numbers move.
Open with Brimstone Lure to walk the party's healer into pincer range, then grapple and grind. Kill-priority is whatever she has clamped — free it fast, because Pincer Grip ticks every round. At this tier run her as a lone ambusher in a flooded ruin.
Lure the squishiest PC in, claw-grapple them, and let Pincer Grip do the work while the second claw threatens rescuers. If the party clusters to free the grappled ally, that is fine — she only has two claws, so make them choose who bleeds. Pair her with lesser ash-spawn minions to soak the front line while she isolates a target.
She charms, grapples, and crushes one PC per round while Sidestep keeps her slipping melee. Do not run her alone here — she has no legendary kit and a four-PC party out-acts her; give her a flagship boss to guard or a lair of drowned passages so she can isolate stragglers. Kill-priority for the party is breaking her grapple before the saw-edges finish a friend.
Put Vespera on the table
Download the presupported STL and run the fight tonight — the model, and the encounter that comes with it.
Get the STL on MyMiniFactory →Clay Cyanide Companion Rules v1
How a bound creature acts
- A companion acts on its owner's initiative, immediately after the owner.
- It uses the Companion block above — roughly ×0.6 HP and damage, no recharge abilities, and at most one reaction trait.
- It moves freely; it takes its Action only while its owner is conscious.
- At 0 HP a companion is broken, not dead — restored on a long rest unless your table rules otherwise.
Original Clay Cyanide material © Clay Cyanide LLC — explicitly not the non-SRD official sidekick rules.
Questions, Asked at the Table
What CR is Vespera?
Her home stat block is CR 6 (2,300 XP), tuned for a tier-2 party of levels 5-10. The record also gives drop-in tier-1 (~CR 2) and tier-3 (~CR 11) versions so you can field her at any table — the traits stay identical, only AC, HP, to-hit, save DC, and damage shift between the bands.
Can Vespera be a companion or ally?
Yes. The 'Vespera, Bound' companion profile (AC 15, 71 HP) plays her as a wary truce-bound ally — her Warding Pincer shields an adjacent friend and Drag Down lets her pin a fleeing enemy. Use her as a grappling bodyguard who can shelter the soft casters at the party's flank.
Why is Vespera a fiend rather than a monstrosity?
She is a brimstone-judged spirit of the sunken cities of the plain — a folkloric temptress-warden whose mortal form was fused with chitin and venom by the fire that fell. That places her firmly in fiendish lineage, with darkvision, magic resistance, and infernal speech, rather than being a natural beast.
Tell Us How It Ran
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 ("SRD 5.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Clay Cyanide Miniatures is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This content is compatible with the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Companion rules, lore, names, and original mechanics © Clay Cyanide LLC.
Technical Specifications
32mm, 75mm
STL, Pre-supported STL
Standard or ABS-like resin, 0.05mm layer height
Yes — ready to print, optimized supports included
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