Tlaltecuhtli
Tlaltecuhtli — The Encounter
The Earth-Maw, crouching mother whose joints are hungry mouths · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Tlaltecuhtli
Before the sky was raised, the great waters bore a thing of nothing but appetite: a swollen earth-mother whose every joint snapped with teeth and whose eyes opened at elbow and knee. The makers tore her in two to fashion soil and firmament from her flesh, and in pity for the wound they decreed that mountains rise from her shoulders, rivers run from her hair, and caverns gape where her mouths still hunger. Yet she was never wholly killed. She crouches eternally in the posture of birth and of devouring, and she will not yield her bounty of harvest unless fed the hearts and blood of the fallen. Where she stirs, the ground softens into grasping lips; where she wails, the land itself buckles and screams. Priests carved her squatting on the undersides of their altars so she would forever face the spilled blood, drinking it down into the world she both is and holds aloft.
Run Tlaltecuhtli in Sixty Seconds
- She is a melee-trap boss. Her whole kit punishes the party for swarming her: Mouths at Every Joint bites anyone who melees her, and Talon grapples lock a hero in place for the Engulfing Bite.
- Kill-priority for the party is denying her food. Devourer of the Slain heals her 10 every time anything drops within 30 ft. — including their own downed allies — so don't let a friend bleed out near her.
- Open with Quaking Wail when they cluster. 6d10 thunder + prone in a 30-ft. cone resets the fight; otherwise burrow-strike the caster and grapple the tank turn one.
- When bloodied (80 HP), spend legendary actions aggressively. Hungry Earth restrains the back line so they can't kite her, Burrow repositions her onto a fresh target.
- Three ways to run her: solo titan with a feeding-altar of cultists; paired with the Cipactli companion as a grapple-and-drag duo; or a dungeon-lair hazard where the floor itself bites and the party fights to reach her crown.
Tlaltecuhtli
Large celestial (titan), chaotic neutral
CR 11 · 7,200 XP · GUIDELINEMouths at Every Joint. Signature. The Earth-Maw's elbows, knees, and wrists each bear a gnashing mouth. When a creature within 5 ft. of her makes a melee attack against her, or stands up from prone within 5 ft., one of these mouths can bite it as a reaction (see Joint-Bite under Reactions). She can use this reaction even while restrained or grappled.
Devourer of the Slain. Whenever a creature is reduced to 0 hit points within 30 ft. of the Earth-Maw, she regains 10 hit points and the ground beneath that creature drinks its blood, becoming difficult terrain in a 5-ft. radius until the end of her next turn.
Magic Resistance. The Earth-Maw has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Actions
Multiattack. The Earth-Maw makes one Talon attack and one Engulfing Bite, or she uses Quaking Wail and makes one Talon attack.
Talon. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 20 (3d8 + 5) slashing damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 16) as the talon-claws hook into it.
Engulfing Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature grappled by the Earth-Maw. Hit: 23 (4d8 + 5) piercing damage. The target must succeed on a DC 16 Constitution saving throw or take 9 (2d8) necrotic damage and have its hit point maximum reduced by that amount until it finishes a long rest.
Quaking Wail (Recharge 5-6). The Earth-Maw splits open her joint-mouths and screams the hunger of the world. Each creature within a 30-ft. cone must make a DC 16 Constitution saving throw, taking 33 (6d10) thunder damage and falling prone on a failure, or half as much damage and not falling prone on a success.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Joint-Bite. Reaction (see Mouths at Every Joint): The triggering creature takes 12 (2d8 + 3) piercing damage.
Legendary Actions (3/Round)
Talon Sweep. The Earth-Maw makes one Talon attack.
Burrow (Costs 1 Action). The Earth-Maw burrows up to half her speed without provoking opportunity attacks and resurfaces within 5 ft. of a creature, which must succeed on a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone.
Hungry Earth (Costs 2 Actions). The ground in a 15-ft. radius around the Earth-Maw becomes grasping mouths. Each other creature in the area must succeed on a DC 16 Strength saving throw or be restrained until the end of the Earth-Maw's next turn; a restrained creature takes 10 (3d6) necrotic damage at the start of its turn.
She crouches forever in a birthing squat atop a stepped altar, sun-disk blazing behind her feathered crown, wings half-spread and clawed hands offering and threatening at once. Every elbow and knee is a fanged mouth, and the serpent of her own self coils up her belly.
Tlaltecuhtli, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINERavenous Hide (signature). Whenever Tlaltecuhtli takes damage from a melee attack, the attacker takes 5 (1d10) piercing damage from its spined, toothed crocodilian skin.
Actions
Sawtooth Maw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (2d10 + 5) piercing damage, and a Large or smaller target is grappled (escape DC 15).
Reactions
Drag Under. When a creature it grapples tries to move away, Tlaltecuhtli submerges, pulling that creature 10 ft. with it and forcing a DC 14 Strength save or the creature is knocked prone.
The primordial earth-saurian from whose split body the world was first shaped, leashed at the Earth-Maw's altar to drag prey down into her waiting mouths.
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 burrowing under the cluster and surfacing prone-knocking the squishiest caster, then grapple-and-bite that target every round. If melee swings at her, let Joint-Bite punish them so the party second-guesses closing in. At this tier run her as a lair set-piece with one or two minions, not a solo.
Talon-grapple the front-liner, drag them onto the difficult terrain from Devourer of the Slain, and Engulf to crush their hit-point max so healing stops mattering. Save Quaking Wail for when 3+ heroes bunch up. Pair her with Cipactli or a swarm of cultists so the party can't all pile the boss.
Kill-priority is whoever drops first feeding her healing, so spread damage and burst her fast. Open Quaking Wail into the clustered party, grapple the tank, and spend legendary Burrow + Hungry Earth to restrain casters before they can stack control on her. Joint-Bite makes melee pile-ons costly; honors a true solo boss but plays best with Cipactli and a feeding altar of minions.
Put Tlaltecuhtli 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 Tlaltecuhtli?
Her native build is CR 11 (7,200 XP), tuned for an 11th-15th level party. The Tier 1 and Tier 2 columns rescale the same kit down to roughly CR 2 and CR 6 so you can drop her into lower-level games without changing how she plays.
Can Tlaltecuhtli be a companion or ally?
She's built as a centerpiece adversary, but the bound earth-saurian Cipactli is provided as a ready-made companion (AC 14, 96 HP) — a grapple-and-drag bruiser you can hand to a player or a friendly NPC. Tlaltecuhtli herself only allies with mortals who feed her the blood she demands.
Is she a demon or a devil?
Neither — she's a primordial earth-titan, statted as a Large celestial (titan) of chaotic neutral alignment. She predates notions of good and evil; she is the hungry land itself, and her bargains are paid in harvest and in hearts, not in souls.
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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