Rapunzel? No, Not Really...

“Rapunzel”

N Diminutive Vermin (Swarm)

Init: +3, Senses: Tremorsense 30’

Languages: Speak Common

AC: 12 (+2 Dex); t: 12, ff: 10

Hp: 9 (2HD)

Immune: as Swarm (see below)

Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +0

Spd: 20’ (4 squares), climb 20’

Melee +1 Unarmed: 1d3 nonlethal

Grapple +5 Hair: entangle foes, 50’ reach

Combat Gear: - -

Str 11, Dex 15, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 2

SA: Improved Grab, Poison,

SQ: Partial Swarm Traits, Prehensile Hair

Feats: Alertness, Combat Reflexes (b)

Skills: Climb +12, Hide +4, Listen +5, Spot +5

Possessions: Tattered gowns

Height: 5’4”     Weight: 105 lbs.

Hair: Blond      Eyes: Blue

Appearance: In life, Rapunzel was a beautiful young woman with long golden hair. After the spiders killed her and began animating her body, they conceal her face with her hair and wear long-sleeved gowns to hide the rest of her dry, desiccated body. “She” walks in a clumsy, disjointed manner and her voice is harsh and raspy.

• Partial Swarm Traits (Ex): The creatures making up the swarm inside of Rapunzel’s body are diminutive spiders. As such, they are immune to all weapon damage (although Rapunzel’s body shows the ravages of all such attacks). They are not subject to critical hits and cannot be flanked. They are immune to spells that target a specific number of beings unless it is a mind-affecting effect (due to hive mind) but suffer an additional +50% damage from area of attack spells. She is also subject to being tripped, grappled, or bull rushed while the spiders occupy her body.

• Poison (Ex): Kiss, Fort DC11, 1d3 Str/1d3 Str

• Prehensile Hair (Ex): The spiders have the ability to move Rapunzel’s hair almost like a series of tiny tentacles. She can use the hair to climb or grapple foes (up to four at once without penalty). She gains a +4 bonus to Grapple checks when using her hair. Her hair has 10 hp and DR10/- -. She gains an additional +2 bonus for each additional strand of hair used in the grapple attempt.

• Web (Ex): Can throw a web 8/day, as a net but with a maximum range of 50’ and can be used against target up to one size category larger than itself (or in this case, than Rapunzel’s body). An entangled creature can escape with the web with an Escape Artist check (DC13) or Strength check (DC17). The DC for both checks is Con-based and the Str check includes a +4 racial bonus. A 5’ section of webbing has 6 hp and DR5/- -.

• Ability Score – Int: Vermin are normally considered to be mindless and have no Intelligence score. However, when gathered together in a swarm, they form a Hive Mind that allows the individual members to act as a single unit.

• Skills: Spiders gain a +8 racial bonus to Climb check (and can always Take 10) and use Dex instead of Strength for Climb checks.

Alternate Versions of Rapunzel

“Rapunzel” is basically a standard swarm of spiders inhabiting a human-shaped package. For any other edition of D&D, I would just use the standard Spider Swarm and give it the ability to grab and manipulate things with her hair plus the ability to talk. Her hair would ignore the first 10 points of damage at any attack directed at it and have as many starting hp as she does.

Rapunzel’s Tower (excerpted from the Grimm RPG pg. 131-132)

This lonely tower stands as a testament of what happens when magic goes astray and is left untended for too long. Rapunzel is long since escaped, her jailer long since dead, but the tower itself, the oft-forgotten star of the stories, lives on. While Rapunzel was imprisoned there, the tower sympathized with her plight and helped her pass the time. It couldn’t defy Rapunzel’s jailer by letting her go, but it could at least make life more amenable for its guest. The tower called for birds to sing for her, and chased away dark clouds that would ruin her mood (or brought them when she was feeling melancholy).

In time, the tower came to love Rapunzel, and its stone heart keened with anguish when she left it. The tower remained abandoned for decades, and eventually spiders became its only occupants. The tower made friends with the vermin, and focused its good intentions on providing them with a good home for their broods. The tower’s interior became a tangle of cobwebs, and the vermin thrived, growing disturbingly large and maliciously intelligent. The spiders provided a sort of company and a unique brand of maintenance for the tower, doing what they could to bind it together with their webs and prevent its decay. The tower, meanwhile, protected them from the elements, made sure they were always warm, and attracted food in the form of the selfsame birds that it once called for Rapunzel’s pleasure.

After years of this arrangement, the tower received an unexpected visit. Rapunzel, having gained a measure of wisdom with her years of maturity, returned to the tower to express her gratitude for its efforts and its company.

Unfortunately, the tower was slumbering when she came to visit, so it could not warn her of its new residents. The girl climbed to the window, leapt in, and was promptly swarmed and sucked dry by the spiders within. Too late to stop them, the eldest of the weavers recognized the girl by her long, beautiful hair. She knew that the tower, should it awaken to find its beloved dead, would destroy itself and them in its throes of despair. Thus, a dark plan was hatched and enacted. The spider matriarch directed her many young to fill the husk of Rapunzel and give it a semblance of life, stirring its limbs when appropriate, creating vocal chords from their webs, and the like. The tower, overjoyed at the unlikely prospect of its beloved Rapunzel returning, let itself be fooled.

Now, the spiders use Rapunzel’s body as an additional lure for their victims. They let her long hair down from the highest window, tempting unwitting heroes to climb up and find a princess to save. Boys who see the hair must resist the urge to climb it and rescue the beautiful girl who they believe to be at its end. The spiders have woven strands of their sticky webs into the hair, making it an easy task (reduce Climb DC by 5). However, upon reaching the tower’s only window, would-be rescuers find no princess to rescue. Instead, they behold a grisly, desiccated husk, jerking about erratically and spewing spiders from every orifice, all of which are intent on eating the poor boy. Worse, the hair they climbed is nearly entirely made of spider webs at the Rapunzel-husk’s scalp, requiring opposed Grapple checks to pull free.

The tower is a little disturbed by what it thinks is Rapunzel’s new diet, but thinks little of it. Defeating the spider-animated corpse shows the tower the horror that the arachnids committed against its precious girl. It then destroys itself in order to crush all of its ghastly tenants.

Rapunzel’s Tower

CR12

N Colossal Construct

Init: -5, Senses: Listen +4, Spot +4, Darkvision 60’, Low-Light Vision, Tremorsense 30’

Languages: Understand Common

AC: 17 (-8 size, -5 Dex, +20 Natural); t: -3, ff: 17

Hp: 173 (15HD+80hp)

Immune: Construct traits

Fort +5, Ref +0, Will +5

Spd: 5’ (1 square)

Melee +18 Crush: 6d4+16 (30’ reach, affects a 30’ area)

Combat Gear: - -

Str 43, Dex 1, Con - -, Int 1, Wis 10, Cha 4

SA: - -

SQ: Construct traits, DR5/adamantite, SR13

Feats: Animal Affinity, Toughness (x5)

Skills: Handle Animal +2, Listen +4, Sense Motive +5, Spot +4

Rapunzel’s tower can make one attack each round that affects all creatures inside of it or within its reach but must roll separately for each target. The tower will actually bend and twist to strike at creatures or objects outside of its wall

• Construct traits: Immunity to all mind-affecting effects, poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, and necromancy effects; cannot heal damage on its own, not subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, massive damage, ability drain, ability damage, fatigue, exhaustion, or energy drain, immune to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless it is harmless or affects objects)

• Treated as an object for purposes of energy-based damage (divide damage from electricity/fire by 2 and cold damage by 4)

• for AD&D use statistics for a Greater Mimic with adjustments for intelligence (from High to Low), all AC is 2 (interior and exterior), remove Glue and Camouflage abilities, add only hit by magic weapons special defense (Xp Value drops to 5,000)

FOR THIS ADVENTURE (Please note that this was written before Frozen II was released)

Tensions between Arendelle, Weselton, and the Southern Isles remain high. The events following Queen Elsa’s coronation and the subsequent banishment of the Duke of Weselton and Prince Hans caused the two kingdoms to ally themselves against Arendelle and its queen. A blockade, carried out by ships of the Southern Isles, is in place and Weselton’s army probes the mountain passes for a way into Elsa’s kingdom by land.

Elsa, while capable of creating a blizzard that would hold Weselton’s forces at bay, is unable to do so without affecting her own troops so she is in need of allies. Her sister, Anna, and a commoner named Kristoff went to enlist aid from other kingdoms Arendelle has had friendly relationships with in the past but they haven’t been heard from in months.

Princess Anna and Kristoff did manage to slip past the blockade and their first stop was Rapunzel's Tower. As both were unaware of Rapunzel's fate, they entered the tower expecting a warm welcome. They were horrified to discover Rapunzel's rotted corpse being animated by the very spiders that had killed her. The spiders, not sure of the tower's attitude toward the visitors, captured the pair and locked them in rooms on the second floor. “Rapunzel” (or the spiders pretending to be her) occupies the room that was used to confine her when she was younger. If she hears any disturbance downstairs, she heads to the rooms she has confined Anna and Kristoff to ensure they cannot escape.