Scorpio
Scorpio — The Encounter
The Eighth House made flesh, the venom in heaven's wheel · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Scorpio
Scribes of the old star-courts name her the venom in heaven's wheel, the executioner who stands at the Eighth House where the year turns toward death and rebirth. She is no simple beast but a covenant given form: the cold patience of the scorpion wedded to a queen's pride and a queen's grudge. Those who study the zodiac in the grimoires say she keeps no quarrel small, that a slight remembered festers in her like the venom in her tail until the debt is paid in full and in flesh. She lairs where heat shimmers off broken stone, in tombs and ruined sanctuaries marked with her crooked sigil, and she suffers no living thing to pass her threshold uninvited. To meet her gaze is to feel the held breath before the strike; to feel her claws close is to learn that the wheel of the sky does not forgive, it only delays.
Run Scorpio in Sixty Seconds
- Hold until the party clusters or commits, then open on a wall-climb drop so she lands in the back line with both claws free to grapple.
- Kill-priority: claws lock the two nearest bodies, but the Sting always goes to the healer — the max-HP reduction means healing them back is half-wasted.
- When bloodied, stop grappling and go full Sting + Tail Lash to stack poison and the heart-seizing paralyze on whoever is lowest; trade reach for damage.
- Three ways to run her: the lockdown piece (grapple two, hold the front line for the boss), the assassin (single-target a caster to death by venom), or the zone-denier (perch in a tomb and Tail Lash anyone crossing her threshold).
- Remember her poison ignores resistance and her grapple DC is high — don't let players shrug the Sting or wriggle free for free.
Scorpio
Large monstrosity, lawful evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINESpider Climb. Scorpio can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without an ability check.
Venom of the Eighth House. Signature. A creature reduced to 0 hit points by Scorpio's Sting, or that fails its sting save by 5 or more, is also paralyzed until the end of its next turn as the venom seizes the heart. Scorpio's poison damage ignores resistance to poison (but not immunity).
Actions
Multiattack. Scorpio makes two Claw attacks and one Sting attack.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6+4) bludgeoning damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 15). Scorpio has two claws, each of which can grapple only one target.
Sting. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8+3) piercing damage plus 14 (4d6) poison damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute. While poisoned this way, the target's hit point maximum is reduced by the poison damage taken; it repeats the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on a success.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Tail Lash. Reaction. When a creature Scorpio can see ends its turn within 10 ft. of it, Scorpio can make one Sting attack against that creature.
A horned, demon-browed woman rises from the carapace of a great barbed scorpion, two crushing pincers spread and a venom-bright stinger arched above her crown, perched upon a stone graven with the Eighth House's sigil.
Scorpio, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINESkitter-Swarm Instinct (signature). While within 10 ft. of an ally, the Brood-Sister has advantage on attack rolls against any creature that ally is grappling.
Actions
Pincer. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d4+4) bludgeoning damage.
Reactions
Shield the Queen. Reaction. When Scorpio within 5 ft. is hit by an attack, the Brood-Sister can interpose itself; it takes the damage instead.
A lesser scorpion-kin sworn to the Eighth House, half her size and twice as eager, scuttling at her flank to pin what she means to kill.
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 by skittering up a wall, then drop with both claws to grapple a back-line caster. Sting the grappled target every round so the poison stacks its max-HP loss. Pairs with a bigger threat as the lockdown piece, not a fight on its own at this tier.
Open by grabbing two front-liners with the claws, then Sting whoever the party heals first to undo it with max-HP reduction. Kill-priority is the healer; Tail Lash punishes anyone who tries to walk away. This is the venom-and-grapple add-on — run it beside a flagship boss so the party can't disengage from either.
Open by grappling two and Stinging a third in the same turn; let Tail Lash and the paralyze rider thin the cluster. At high tier she's still a controller — keep her latched onto the squishiest target and let a legendary boss do the closing. Pull her off only to chase a fleeing healer.
Put Scorpio 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 Scorpio?
Natively CR 6 (Tier 2, ~levels 5-10): AC 16, 119 HP, +7 to hit, save DC 14. Scale her down to CR 2 for Tier 1 or up to roughly CR 11 for Tier 3 using the tier table — the traits and tactics never change, only the numbers.
Can Scorpio be a companion or ally?
Yes, though she's a proud, grudge-keeping patron rather than a pet. As an ally she's a brutal controller: she grapples a chosen foe and stings it down while her bound Brood-Sister pins the next target. Expect her loyalty to come with a price and a long memory.
Is Scorpio a solo boss?
No — she has no legendary actions, so a single party will action-economy her down. She's built as an add-on: pair her with a flagship boss as the grapple-and-venom piece so the party can't safely disengage from either threat.
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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