Take it, run it, remix it, sell the session. Credit appreciated, never required.
A CR 12 confectioner necromancer and the four thralls she makes. Content note: her crimes are against children, written to be run through aftermath and implication rather than depiction — check with your table before you put it on it.
Medium humanoid (human, necromancer), neutral evil
Gelatin is rendered bone, and every confectioner knows it. Mother Saccharine has kept the corner shop for forty years, gives generously to the almshouse, and is the woman you send for when a child will not eat after a fever. Her ledger runs to thirty-one names, each with a date, a weight, and a note on how well it set.
Sweet Tooth. Any creature that has eaten her confectionery in the last 24 hours has disadvantage on saving throws against her spells and features. She offers samples. She always offers samples.
The Recipe Remembers. When a thrall within 60 feet drops to 0 hit points, she regains 10 hit points and the thrall's victim screams, in the child's own voice, audible within 120 feet. A creature that recognizes the voice must make a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or be stunned until the end of its next turn.
Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If she fails a saving throw, she can choose to succeed instead.
Spellcasting. She is a 15th-level spellcaster (spell save DC 18, +10 to hit with spell attacks, Intelligence). She prepares only necromancy and transmutation:
Actions
Multiattack. She makes two Candy-Pull Lash attacks, or one Lash and uses Ladle of the Rendering.
Candy-Pull Lash. Melee Spell Attack: +10 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 18 (4d6 + 5) necrotic damage, and the target is restrained. It can use its action to make a DC 17 Strength check, taking 7 (2d6) acid damage on a failure — the taffy is still hot.
Ladle of the Rendering Recharge 5–6 She hurls boiling gelatin in a 30-foot cone. Each creature there makes a DC 18 Dexterity saving throw, taking 44 (8d10) fire damage on a failure, half as much on a success. A creature that fails is glazed: its speed is halved and it takes 10 (3d6) necrotic damage at the start of each of its turns until it or an adjacent creature uses an action to scrape the glaze away. A humanoid that dies while glazed rises as a gummy thrall under her control at the start of her next turn.
Confection of Waking (1/Day). She bites into a sugarplum. She regains 50 hit points, and every thrall she controls gains 30 temporary hit points and has advantage on attack rolls until the end of her next turn.
Bonus Actions
Portion Control. She commands up to three thralls within 60 feet. Each moves up to its speed and makes one attack.
Reactions
Sweeten the Deal. When she is targeted by an attack, she moves a thrall within 5 feet of her into the path. The thrall takes the damage instead. She does not flinch.
Legendary Actions
She takes 3 legendary actions, choosing from below. Only one can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature's turn. She regains spent actions at the start of her turn.
She is charming, maternal and entirely unbothered. She calls the party poppet and lamb. She never raises her voice, not once, not at 0 hit points. If she loses, she does not beg — she asks whether they have considered what happens to a town when its confectioner is gone.
Small construct (undead), unaligned
Amorphous. It squeezes through a 1-inch gap without squeezing.
Sticky Grasp. A creature that hits it with a melee weapon makes a DC 13 Strength save or the weapon sticks fast (action to retrieve).
Death Throes. At 0 hit points it bursts — 10-ft. radius, DC 13 Dexterity, 7 (2d6) acid damage.
Actions
Clinging Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) bludgeoning, and the target is grappled (escape DC 13).
Translucent and child-shaped. Look closely: a milk tooth suspended in the chest, a braid of hair through the arm.
Large construct (undead), unaligned
Actions
Multiattack. It makes two Slam attacks.
Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 10 ft. Hit: 16 (3d8 + 4) bludgeoning damage.
Smother. If it hits one creature with both slams, that creature is engulfed: restrained, unable to breathe, and taking 14 (4d6) necrotic damage at the start of each of its turns until it escapes (DC 15 Strength).
Two children's worth of bone-broth went into the batch. It is soft, and warm, and patient.
Medium construct (undead), unaligned
Actions
Tendril. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 20 ft. Hit: 10 (2d6 + 3) bludgeoning damage, and the target is pulled 15 feet toward the vats.
Bonus Actions
Reel. It drags one creature it has grappled 15 feet along with it.
It exists to move people toward the kitchen. It is not trying to kill anyone. That is the frightening part.
Medium undead, neutral evil
Slow Set. It regains 15 hit points at the start of its turn unless it took fire damage since the end of its last turn.
Nine Children. It has nine thresholds. Each time it drops another 15 hit points, a different child speaks through it.
Actions
Multiattack. It makes three Claw attacks.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 5 ft. Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) slashing damage.
If a player freed a child in an earlier session, that is the voice they hear. Use this once, at one table, and never again.
Running her: describe the aftermath objects — paired shoes on a shelf, a ledger in a
careful hand, the milk tooth in the resin — never the killings. The table's imagination does
more than you can.
Encounter math: at CR 12 with thralls on the field she runs about 2× a level
9–10 party's Deadly budget under the DMG thresholds. Run her one tier below the party and
cap the field at two thralls — the CR 9 version against level 9 comes to 1.23×, a hard
fight rather than a coin flip.