Long Island Dungeon Master · A Creature Keeper

The Quicksilver Pack

They don't want to eat you. They want you to run.

Feywild hounds that hunt for sport, not survival. They don't need to kill fast, so they don't: the toying with prey is the whole point of the hunt, and prey that's still afraid is worth more to them than prey that's already dead.

They never open with teeth. First comes a voice: a friend calling for help, a dog barking somewhere it shouldn't be, your own voice answering from ground you haven't walked. By the time anyone hears a growl, the party is already split up and the hounds are already circling whoever went to check.

This is a free monster: everything on this page is table-ready, and the whole file loads into Gnasher's Grimoire as a Creature Keeper, tables and all.

Field Notes

how to run a hunt that starts before the fight does

Gnasher's Take

The fight doesn't start when the fangs come out. It starts the moment your table hears a voice that shouldn't be there. Let them argue about whether to go check. That argument is the encounter, and if you run it right, your players split the party themselves and blame nobody but the woods.

How to run it

The plain-English version: a pack ambush where the trap is a sound, not a pit.

Flip for the five-beat breakdowntap to flip

The setup. Someone hears something impossible before anyone sees a hound. Roll on What You Hear, or pick the sound that would pull one specific character away from the group.
Seed the omens. One roll on Signs You're Being Hunted as the party investigates, escalating. Let them notice the pattern before you explain it.
The split. If someone goes to check the sound alone, that's the whole design working. The nearest 2-3 hounds converge on them using Encircle; the rest keep the remaining party occupied with more false sounds so reinforcements don't arrive fast.
The fight, when it comes, is quick and mobile. Bite, Encircle, and Blink-Step to flank or bail. No hound trades a losing exchange it doesn't have to.
They quit the moment it stops being fun for them: a hound down, or the prey stops reacting with fear. The whole pack blinks out at once and the woods go dead quiet. That's worse for a table than watching them lose a fight, and they know it.

The win condition isn't just the kill. Staying together when a voice calls you away is the actual test; the fight is what happens to the party that fails it.

The Tables

roll the hunt

What You Hear (d8)
1	A companion's voice, calling your name, from off in the dark, pain in it.
2	A dog barking in the distance, then a yelp cut short.
3	Someone singing, off-key, a song only one of you would know.
4	Hoofbeats approaching fast, then nothing.
5	A child crying, alone, close by.
6	Your own voice, calling back to you from somewhere you haven't been.
7	The clatter of a dropped weapon and a startled shout.
8	Laughter, soft, right behind you, gone when you turn.

Signs You're Being Hunted (escalating) (d10)
1	Every animal sound in the area stops at once.
2	Silver hairs caught on bark, too fine to be wolf.
3	A perfect paw print in soft earth, and no others leading to or from it.
4	The temperature drops sharply for no reason.
5	Something answers a question nobody asked out loud.
6	Your own shadow moves a half-step out of time with you.
7	A distant howl, then a second, closer, then a third, closer still, then silence.
8	Mist gathers at ankle height, moving against the wind.
9	You find one of your own footprints ahead of where you've walked.
10	Something laughs, delighted, from very close, and there's nothing there.

Where the Hunt Finds You (d6)
1	An old fae ring of standing stones, half-sunk in a bog.
2	A logging road that shouldn't dead-end this deep in, but does.
3	A hollow where the trees grow in a perfect, unnatural circle.
4	The ruins of a hunting lodge, doors still swinging.
5	A frozen-over pond that groans underfoot even in summer.
6	A crossroads where the signpost points four directions to the same town.

Who it’s for. Run as a pack of 4-6, the Quicksilver Pack is a CR 1/2-per-hound encounter (five hounds = 500 XP raw, 1,000 XP adjusted): a hard-to-deadly ambush for four 3rd-level PCs, a solid medium for four 4th-level, and a warm-up by 5th. It opens with Voice-Throwing to split the party, never teeth first, and disengages the moment a hound drops or the prey stops flinching. If the ambush actually lands and the party splits up, run it a step hotter than the math says: a divided party is fighting a worse fight than the numbers alone suggest.

The Stat Block

one whole monster, free, forever

An original creature, compatible with fifth edition. Drop this file onto the Grimoire and the Quicksilver Hound walks onto the War Table (add a copy per hound in the pack): its attacks roll themselves, and all three tables load into the Summon.

Quicksilver Hound

Medium fey, chaotic neutral

Armor Class 13 (quicksilver-quick)Hit Points 27 (5d8 + 5)Speed 50 ft.

STR12 (+1)

DEX14 (+2)

CON12 (+1)

INT10 (+0)

WIS13 (+1)

CHA8 (-1)

Skills Perception +3, Stealth +4

Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13

Languages understands Sylvan but doesn't speak

CR 1/2 (100 XP) · Proficiency Bonus +2 · typically hunts in a pack of 4-6

Encircle. The hound has advantage on its attack roll against a creature that has another Quicksilver Hound within 5 feet of it and able to fight.

Voice-Throwing. As an action, the hound perfectly mimics any sound or voice it has heard, seeming to come from any point it can see within 120 feet. A creature can tell the sound isn't real only by succeeding on a DC 12 Wisdom (Insight) check.

Actions

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (2d4 + 2) piercing damage.

Bonus Actions

Blink-Step (Recharge 5-6). The hound vanishes in a flicker of quicksilver light and reappears in an unoccupied space it can see within 30 feet.

Gnasher's Notes

A pack that hunts for sport is the best kind of trouble, because the fight doesn't start when the fangs come out. It starts the moment your table hears a voice that shouldn't be there. Let them argue about whether to go check. That argument is the encounter. Don't play the hounds as cruel, play them as delighted, the way a cat is delighted by a string, and your table will feel the wrongness faster than any growl could sell it. Split the party for real if they take the bait, because the whole design lives or dies on someone standing alone in the dark for one bad minute. Once steel comes out, they don't linger: whichever hound isolated a target gangs up with whoever's nearest, and any hound in a losing spot blinks clear rather than trade a hit it doesn't need to trade. The second the game stops being fun for them, whether that's one hound down or the party simply stops flinching, the whole pack blinks out at once and the woods go quiet. That's worse for a table than watching it lose, and the hounds know it. Stay hungry, Gnasher.

Ossa Vane, the one who came back alone

Role: a trapper who led four companions into the fae woods and returned by herself.
Wants: to warn everyone away, or, if desperate enough for coin, to guide the party in exchange for never having to go back alone.
Voice: flat, catalogues the tells like a checklist, won’t meet your eyes when asked what she saw.
The line: “They don’t want to eat you. They want you to run. Don’t run.”

Stay hungry. — Gnasher

The Quicksilver Pack is original and fully compatible with fifth edition. This file is a Creature Keeper: open it anywhere (it works offline), or load it into Gnasher’s Grimoire — the free DM app at longislanddungeonmaster.com/grimoire — and its monster and tables come along with it.

↑ back to top

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC, 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.

Long Island Dungeon Master · Set in Breathe Fire by Chequered Ink