Villainous Cookbook: The Eternal Host

Howdy! I've been looking forward to writing this article a lot. My ideas started to take form back in September of 2019, and since then I've been teasing it outside of the blog every now and then. While I don't plan to make a write-up of each tier, this time I'm making an exception—instead of one villain, I'm going to give you multiple. Well, there's technically plenty of each of these, so they're less of a villain, and more of a nation. I'll also include some of the lore derived from the game mechanics used, so that should be fun.

Before I begin the article itself, I should make a warning. This might be broken. Like, very broken. But then again, I like to see where the limits of a villain are, so that's why I'm doing this. There will be people who will dislike this, and say that there's no chance that a group of players could defeat these. I'll say that such person underestimates the players' ingenuity and that this isn't a villain they're meant to take down over the course of one game session, or five. I won't sugarcoat this for you by giving you suggestions on how the players could defeat them. If you want to make up an applied phlebotinum that makes this nation go extinct, go right ahead. Anyway, my point is: Use this villainous group at your own risk.

Another warning—keep in mind that these are supposed to be villains. I don't condone of their practices, they're literally supposed to be the baddies for players and others to fight against.

The Eternal Host

Of Cain awoke all that woful breed, 
Etins and elves and evil-spirits
— Beowulf (modern English translation), translated by Frances B. Grummere

"We are not here to end the world. We are here to end your world, and to begin a new era."
Elven Army, by JasonTN

The Eternal Host is an elven nation that's aggressively taking over the world with great numbers, expertise in fighting, and ability to never truly perish. Let's start it all with some theory regarding elven biology, and metabiology.

According to the Player's Handbook, the elves are considered mature when they reach the age of 100 years. Though, let's see what it actually says:

Although elves reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience.

In other words, the elves don't need to be 100 to be considered mature. They are very capable of reproducing at the age of 20.

So here's another question: How many babies could a pair of elves make during their lifetime? This will be hard to judge because there are at least two unknown variables. How long does an elven pregnancy last, and what's the age when an elf is unable to bear children. Since the answers for the first question that I find online are rather unsurprisingly inconsistent, I'll choose a rounded, generous duration of five years to be a default gap between two children being born. As for the age, at which the elves are unable to bear children, I will say that there is no such age for them. Assuming that their physiology is similar to the human one depending on their age, we can use the page 39 quote from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes for the reference:

Even the oldest elves look similar in age to a human of perhaps 30 years.

Assuming that each elven woman would live up to the ripe old age of 750 years, and start having children every 5 years starting at the age of 20, this means that they'd be able to have about 147 children. And that... is per single elven couple. While the number does ignore twins, triplets, and so on, it also ignores miscarriages, so I'll call that even and move on. What's more, this number can be boosted further by introducing a biological anomaly. If we toy with the ratio of men to women in this elven nation, we could multiply this number enormously. Let's say that for every man in this nation, there are 20 women. Needless to say, they're too numerous.

There's a canonical reply I've received a couple of times to this. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes says supposedly that there is a limited number of elven souls. First of all, I am not doing this for DMs who will try to argue with me that this shouldn't be possible. A nice saying I've heard for this is, that "If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse." But still, I'll fancy the idea, because I figured there could be players who bring this up. Time for the metabiology! Let's begin by addressing the parts this claim is made up of:

1. The elf requires an elven soul. (This fact is not explicit, it's implied.)
2. There's a limited amount of elven souls.
3. The elven soul is distinct from a regular mortal soul.

The biggest flaw within this line of thoughts lies in the spell reincarnate. Suppose that a non-elf is reincarnated into an elven body. Question is: Do they now have an elven soul? There's a couple of possibilities:

• Their soul is unchanged. Which means that the part number 1 is contradicted, their elven body doesn't require a non-elven soul.
• Their soul is transformed into an elven one. This means that elven souls can be created (and possibly destroyed if an elf reincarnating into a non-elven body would have their soul transformed too). And thus, there could be theoretically unlimited number of elven souls created, contradicting the 2nd part.
• Or maybe... there is no such thing as an "elven soul". A contradiction to the third part states that everyone's soul is just the same, and that's what I would personally choose to believe.

Finally, before we get to the subraces, maybe we could figure out what subraces to use. Honestly, it doesn't matter too much, all of them are pretty cool. I would personally go with the wood elves, but anything can work, maybe with exception of the drow because Sunlight Sensitivity would likely suck for a nation that tries to take over the world. Understandably, you could also mix-and-match them as you see fit.

Alright! Now that that's sorted out, let's check out some social roles! Once more, this time I'll just give them to you at level 20 each described briefly, because otherwise this article would take me years to write. And I would prefer to publish this before the 6th edition could be announced. I should also add that these are not a complete list, you can come up with roles of your own as you see fitting.

Resolute Gunner

• Barbarian 14: Path of the Cannoneer (Caim's homebrew)
• Fighter 3: Champion (Player's Handbook)
• Warlock 1: Gray Portrait (Genuine Fantasy Press)

Starting with Fighter, we get Action Surge, letting the Gunner take two actions in one turn once per short rest. We also get Second Wind, an ability that lets us heal a little, and Improved Critical chance of 10% instead of 5%.

Path of the Cannoneer grants us a weapon that can shoot projectiles which deal 4d8 damage, 4d12 if we modify the cannon (which we will, and for free), though you don't add your ability score modifier to either of these. While we can only shoot this cannon once regardless of how many attacks we can make as part of any action, bonus action, or reaction, we also get the unique ability to use it as a weapon for clobbering enemies. In melee range, it's a heavy two-handed weapon that deals 1d12 damage. I would recommend picking up the Sharpshooter feat for a range of 600 feet with no disadvantage on attacks, ignoring half and three quarters covers, and then some stuff.

Finally, the Gray Portrait warlock gives us a painting that can be used to resurrect our fallen soldier for free. Think of this as a way to back them up. Awesome!

But what weapon will they wield? Well...

Eldritch Minigun

• Warlock 2: Banished Gunsmith (Genuine Fantasy Press)
• Sorcerer 18: Seer Bloodline (Caim's homebrew)

Through the Banished Gunsmith, our warlock is transformed into a weapon that can be wielded by others. While they lose plenty of stuff, they also gain some benefits from it. I should note that as part of the sorcerer levels, you should probably pick the Eldritch Adept invocation, and we'll bend a rule here by picking up the Bloody Bayonet invocation, without fulfilling its prerequisites. While we could do well without it, I wanted to merge the Eldritch Minigun build with the Resolute Gunner. If you wish to though, you could in theory also have the Eldritch Minigun serve someone else. The other invocations we should choose are Agonizing Blast, and Eldritch Spear for extra damage and massive range.

The Bloody Bayonet invocation lets us transform the weapon that this warlock is into any other melee weapon. Well... time to bend another rule. How about a ranged weapon that could be used as a melee weapon? Like say, … a cannon? Now it sounds fun.

Sidenote: The Banished Gunsmith is capable of controlling the body of its wielder even after it's reduced to 0 hit points. Which is just awesome. But it only lasts as long as the wielder keeps failing Wisdom saves against the warlock's spell save DC. The wielder's Wisdom score could probably be dumped to allow this, but it doesn't have to be this way.

We invest 18 levels into sorcerer for three big reasons. One: With the metamagics, we can double the range, so we could burn many sorcery points in order to achieve that. Two: Feats. Besides Eldritch Adept, we should get Spell Sniper, which lets us double the range passively to whopping 1200 feet (assuming we're using the Distant Spell metamagic too). Three: The capstone of the Seer Bloodline. While I could describe it with words, I'll just paste it here for you all to see, it's something lovely.

Change the Future
Starting at 18th level, you can grasp the future you wish for, even if you suffer for it. Whenever you finish a long rest, note the location. If you die, your corpse and any memory of you since that long rest vanish as if you were never there. Any illogical outcomes of your actions since that long rest are rationalized. For example, if you damaged a creature before you died, the creature rationalizes that another creature damaged it instead. You then appear at the location where you finished your last long rest, alive and in the state you were when you finished the rest.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again for 7 days.

This is a psychological warfare on a whole another level. Sure the miniguns will be useless for several days afterwards, but hey it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.

Bonus points if you give each of these Illusionist's Bracers, letting them cast the same cantrip they did with action as a bonus action, doubling the number of blasts they can make.

Alright, you might be thinking that we got the shooters in the back sorted out. What about the front-liners though? I'm glad you've asked!

The Bjornsworn

• Barbarian 18: Totem Warrior (Player's Handbook)
• Warlock 2: Gray Portrait (Genuine Fantasy Press)

I couldn't resist calling it this, and judging by the name you probably already know what's coming. Bear totem at level 3 of the barbarian gives the Bjornsworn resistance to all damage types, with the exception of psychic. It also makes for a pretty good front-liner generally. The only improvement I could come up with for it is giving it some levels of Gray Portrait warlock for yet another soldier unit that's backed up after death as a painting, and also some invocations that you can go hog-wild with. I feel like you could go even deeper into the warlock, but this felt like a good balance to me.

While a lot more boring description-wise, similar role could be accomplished by a 20th level Atavist who chooses the Bloodied Aspect. Their preservation could be achieved by cutting off their pinky finger, keeping it in a jar somewhere, and casting gentle repose on it once every 10 days. Even if the rest of their body would be destroyed, they could regenerate from this pinky finger since it's their body part. The reason I'm making this a side-note instead of its own build is because it doesn't really need any changes. One thing I should point out besides the pinky finger trick is the fact, that this one gets to automatically kill humanoids who have 25 hit points or less, provided you've rended to its damage. Which is just hardcore if you ask me.

Primal Cleanser

• Druid 20: Circle of the Land (Player's Handbook)

While this unit is less of a battlefield soldier, it's a simple enough build to include here if you wish to make the elven army more threatening. A level 20 druid can cast spells even while wildshaped, requiring no components save for the costly ones. In order to make it work though, we'll need to do another little cheat. Here's a custom table of Circle of the Land spells for a new environment, the "eternia". Basically, it's a biome heavily influenced by magic to last forever. Think Hallownest from Hollow Knight. I should maybe write an article on that in the future, sounds like a fun topic.

Druid Level	Circle Spells
2nd	continual flame, Nystul's magic aura
3rd	glyph of warding, major image
4th	fabricate, Mordenkainen's private sanctum
5th	hallow, teleportation circle

Key component for us here being Mordenkainen's private sanctum. This spell can be cast over the course of 10 minutes with no costly components over and over, becoming permanent after being cast in the same place for a year., though it must be cast with the same effects. What effects are possible? Well...

• Sound can't pass through the barrier at the edge of the warded area.
• The barrier of the warded area appears dark and foggy, preventing vision (including darkvision) through it.
• Sensors created by divination spells can't appear inside the protected area or pass through the barrier at its perimeter.
• Creatures in the area can't be targeted by divination spells.
• Nothing can teleport into or out of the warded area.
• Planar travel is blocked within the warded area.

So what does this mean? It means that you could have a plague of wild shaped druids, looking like normal animals just chilling in a place or flying around a spot for 10 minutes at a time, turning the world slowly but surely into a massive private sanctum of sorts. Disabling teleportation, disabling planar travel, possibly divination spells too. Others could be used at your own discretion.

How much land can a single one of these druids cover in a day? A level 20 druid has three 4th level, three 5th level, two 6th level, two 7th level, one 8th level, and one 9th level spell slots for a day. Add to this their ability to recharge two 5th level spell slots, and we have... a lot of spell slots. When cast at 4th level, Mordenkainen's private sanctum encompasses a 100 ft. cube. This cube's side increases by 100 feet with every spell slot level above 4th, which is wild if you ask me, but also fine by me. Instead of figuring out how could one honeycomb a space indefinitely using cubes of these sizes, I'll just abstract it into a big rectangle. This rectangle would be 600 ft. high (since that's the highest of these cubes), and at a base roughly 970 by 970 feet. This is how much area could a single druid sanctum-ify in a year by going over it every day and casting the spell over and over. This process would take them 2 hours and 20 minutes, plus 1 extra hour for a short rest to recharge the 5th level spell slots. For the context, this area is roughly 1.6 times bigger than the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

And that's a single druid. Even if any elf who isn't a Cleanser themselves would have just one sibling who is, there would be 21.6 thousand of them three generations in. This many of them would cover more than half of the area of Rhode Island in a year. Let's also not forget the fact that they age 10 times slower, so assuming they'd reach level 18 at 100 years, they could still live on for 6500 more years. Which also means they'd have more children, but I really don't feel like redoing all the calculations by this point, so I'll leave the implications up to your imagination. And that's just a tip of the iceberg that shows what's possible with them.

Elven Caretaker

• Cleric 18: Arcana domain (Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide)
• Warlock 2: Currency Conspiracy (Genuine Fantasy Press)

With the Arcana domain, the clerics get the best of both worlds—supportive spells for helping out their buddies, but also some super strong wizard spells. Like clone that lets them preserve themselves. Or wish that lets them cast any spell for free once. Or the one we'll focus a bit of our attention on: Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion. Heavens bless Mordenkainen for all his wonderful gifts to the elfkind, as well as the rest of the humanity.

With a single cast of this spell, you can create an extradimensional space that contains, and I have to quote this,

[…] sufficient food to serve a nine course banquet for up to 100 people. […]

Assuming that an average human could survive on three courses a day, this means one mansion could in theory feed 300 people. Even if every average elven couple had only one Caretaker child out of their whole family of 147 (not including parents), this would be more than enough to feed them. Hey, even if one out of 50 elves would be a Caretaker, if you're a pedant thinking that the spell's intent is to feed only 100 people and never more.

With the clone spell, you could have the cleric make a backup of themselves in case of troubles. After they die, assuming the clone had enough time to develop, they come back to life without any issues.

And with the wish, you could cast literally any spell you want as long as it's of 8th level or lower for free! You want simulacrum? How about yet another Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion? Or maybe you want to help one of those few unfortunate ones who don't get to revive for free with a resurrection spell? Or you could possibly make a demiplane in which the time flies twice as fast as outside, letting the elves train there faster. Any of that and so much more is all possible.

You might be skeptical now. You only get one wish a day, and yet here I am talking about spells with costly components. How do we deal with that? Do the Caretakers go to the battlefield and murder tons of people? As you might have guessed if you know me, Currency Conspiracy comes to help us. They use gilt for their expensive spells. If you think that they'll need to breed a ton of rats to murder every day in order to make 1000 gold pieces required for an average resurrection though, you might be missing a more important point of the feature. Let me highlight it for you:

Also, whenever you reduce a Small or larger creature to 0 hit points using a cantrip or a spell cast using a warlock spell slot or when a creature swears a binding oath of loyalty to you, you can choose to capture a fraction of their soul, granting you an amount of Gilt equal to the creature’s hit point maximum.

Guess what do we have here on our hands? Millions of trained warriors, with plenty of hit points, who are free to swear loyalty to the Caretakers. They would literally have more money than they could spend in their lives. Nothing about the oath says that a creature can swear it only to one creature at a time either. If you want to juice even more money out of it, give them the Tough feat for extra hit points to their maximum, and thus extra money.

Why do we have two levels of warlock? For invocations. Invocations are fun, so once again you are free to customize the Caretakers as you see fit.

Queen of Shadows

• Sorcerer 19+: Imperial Birthright (CaelReader homebrew)
• Warlock 1: Currency Conspiracy (Genuine Fantasy Press)
• The allmage spell (MeowMagic)

Yes, this build is so frightening that I will break my own naming conventions for it.

Currency Conspiracy is for the same reason as with the Caretakers, infinite potential money. The 19 levels of sorcerer are there to provide you with metamagic, and plenty of features flavorfully fitting a ruler of the people.

There are two more details though. One of these is usage of the sequester spell to preserve these queens eternally, for the time of dire need. The other one is the spell allmage that's cast upon her. The spell is cast upon an elected Queen by three Caretakers, who could possibly be accompanied by paladins and/or artificers who will assist them in preventing permanent loss of their spell slots. Let's face it though—even if they lost the spell slots, another Caretaker could possibly help them get their spell slots back.

After the ritual, the Queen possesses the ability to cast all spells, ability to cast unlimited amount of spells of 3rd level or lower, and gains an additional spell slot of every level above 5th. Such power however comes at a cost. This ritual creates a dead magic zone within a 1 mile radius.

"Beneath the Eternal Host's own land
Myriad of shadowed queens still stand
Time passes not for them, they await their calls
Their time shall come once the Eternal Host falls."

As far as I can track, the art was made by a former DeviantArt user named Exellero. While their account seems to be removed, I found one named that on ArtStation that seems somewhat similar.

The Society of Host

There are two major castes within the society: Warriors who go out into the wilderness to take over more territories and gather resources, and Guardians who stay in the kingdom in order to take care of the young, train those who haven't reached age of 100, and to defend the homeland. All of the men and the Queen are considered to be Guardians by default, and other roles are all determined on an individual basis, with large majority of the population consisting of Warriors.

When an elf is born, they spend first year of their life being taken care of by their parents, as well as the Guardians. After the first year, they continue to be raised by the Guardians, with the parents possibly visiting them every 5 years if they're Warriors. Once a child reaches the age of 20 and the coming of age ceremony comes, they begin their training as one of the above-listed social roles, or another unmentioned role (at your own discretion). Since a human could in theory achieve the maximum level within their lifetime, it's reasonable to assume that the elves with proper training, which is passed down the generations, would be capable of achieving the same. Understandably, this training would also come with an unhealthy dose of brainwashing, in order to keep the cycle intact.

Once they reach the age of 100, they start to fulfill their social role. The Warrior leaves their homeland in order to conquer the new lands, the Guardian raises the next generations and keeps everyone fed, the Cleanser begins to alter the world, and the Queen determines what should be conquered next. A Warrior is required to come back to the Homeland once every 5 years in order to give birth to and raise another child, safe from their conquering duties for one year.

One of the major buildings within the lands of the Eternal Host is the resurrectionist gallery. Thousands of paintings are stored within these, as the Caretakers look after them, checking regularly to see which soldiers have died so that they could bring them back to life using their Gray Portrait. What means exactly do they use to tell whether an owner of a Gray Portrait is dead is unknown to all but the Caretakers and the Queen, in order to keep it a secret from those that would wish to endanger the Host.

Every 10 years, one newborn girl is chosen to be raised as a Queen of Shadows. The crowning ceremony is performed when such woman reaches the age of 100. As part of this ceremony, the previous Queen of Shadows has her solar and pit fiend hand cut off, only to be regenerated by a Caretaker. She is afterwards sequestered, awakened only when the Queen that's being crowned falls, or when the kingdom of Eternal Host is invaded by an outside force. After being sequestered, the spell allmage is cast upon the next Queen, using the former Queen's hands and weapons as spell components and continuing the cycle. It is said that the kingdom hides thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Queens of Shadow, sequestered in some safe hidden place.

While a niche thing that doesn't have to apply to everyone, if I did something akin to this, I would create a new plane of existence for them that they could conquer over time in order to avoid running out of space too quickly. A personal favorite would be a fourth layer of Arcadia. Since the third layer of Arcadia is gone by now, it would add further mystery to these elves, giving them their very own corner of the multiverse that they have conquered, and work on conquering at all times.

Be thankful that the elves are usually peaceful and keep to their forests. And if they don't… fear them.
Elves, by Veli Nyström

And there we have it! After what felt like forever, my article is finished. I would like to thank Genuine Believer for inspiring me with his works, parts of which were present in almost all installments of the Villainous Cookbook, as well as to all other homebrewers and readers who supported me while working on this project. It was an honor. I really hope you've all enjoyed it, and I wish you all a wonderful day!