Talona, Lady of Poison — CR 30 Avatar Stat Block

The Avatar of Talona

Large celestial (avatar), chaotic evil

Armor Class: 25 (natural armor)
Hit Points: 675 (50d12 + 350)
Speed: 40 ft., fly 60 ft. (hover)

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
25 (+7)	26 (+8)	25 (+7)	24 (+7)	30 (+10)	32 (+11)

Saving Throws: Dex +17, Con +16, Wis +19, Cha +20
Skills: Deception +20, Intimidation +20, Perception +19, Religion +16
Damage Resistances: cold, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Damage Immunities: acid, necrotic, poison, psychic
Condition Immunities: charmed, exhaustion, frightened, paralyzed, poisoned, stunned
Senses: truesight 120 ft., passive Perception 29
Languages: all, telepathy 120 ft.
Challenge: 30 (155,000 XP)
Proficiency Bonus: +9

Traits

Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If Talona fails a saving throw, she can choose to succeed instead.

Magic Resistance. Talona has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

Blightblood. Talona is immune to disease. Her poison damage ignores resistance and treats immunity as resistance.

Mother of All Plagues. Creatures within 30 feet have disadvantage on saving throws against poison and disease. A Humanoid that dies within the aura while poisoned by Talona rises at the start of her next turn as a zombie with the Plant type under her control.

Touch of Contagion. A poisoned creature cannot end the poisoned condition or regain hit points unless it first succeeds on a DC 28 Constitution saving throw. Greater restoration or divine intervention ends the condition without a save.

Plague Without End (Mythic Trait; 1/Day). When Talona is reduced to 0 hit points, her body collapses into infectious ash and reforms from a poisoned creature within 120 feet. She regains 338 hit points, ends all conditions affecting her, and can use her mythic actions for 1 hour.

Actions

Multiattack. Talona makes two Scourge of Sickness attacks and one Blight Touch attack.

Scourge of Sickness. Melee Weapon Attack: +16 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 25 (4d8 + 7) slashing damage plus 18 (4d8) necrotic damage. The target must succeed on a DC 28 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned until the start of Talona’s next turn.

Blight Touch. Melee Spell Attack: +20 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 44 (8d10) necrotic damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 28 Constitution saving throw or contract Talona’s Blight. While infected, it cannot regain hit points, and its hit point maximum decreases by 21 (6d6) at each dawn. Greater restoration or stronger magic ends the disease.

Blight Sowing. Infected dust fills a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on a point within 60 feet. Creatures there must succeed on a DC 28 Constitution saving throw or contract Talona’s Blight. An infected creature carries the disease, and a creature that starts its turn within 5 feet of a carrier must succeed on a DC 20 Constitution saving throw or contract it.

Epidemic (Recharge 5–6). Talona exhales pestilence in a 60-foot cone. Each creature there makes a DC 28 Constitution saving throw, taking 55 (10d10) poison damage and becoming poisoned for 1 minute on a failure, or taking half damage on a success. A poisoned creature is incapacitated and repeats the save at the end of each of its turns.

Reactions

Vase of Decay. When a creature hits Talona with a melee attack, the attacker must succeed on a DC 28 Dexterity saving throw or take 21 (6d6) acid damage. A nonmagical weapon used for the attack is destroyed on a failed save.

Legendary Actions

The avatar can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. It regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.

Nauseating Step. Talona teleports up to 60 feet. Creatures within 5 feet of her destination must succeed on a DC 28 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned until the end of their next turn.

Wither Health (Costs 2 Actions). One poisoned creature within 60 feet takes 27 (6d8) necrotic damage, and its hit point maximum decreases by the same amount until it finishes a long rest.

Mother’s Scourge (Costs 3 Actions). Talona makes one Scourge of Sickness attack.

Lair Actions

On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties), the avatar uses one lair action. It cannot use the same option two rounds in a row.

Pestilential Fog. A 60-foot-radius sphere of green fog appears within 120 feet until initiative count 20 on the next round. The area is heavily obscured, and a creature other than Talona that starts its turn there must succeed on a DC 28 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute.

Virulent Spores. Creatures of Talona’s choice must succeed on a DC 28 Wisdom saving throw or be blinded and deafened until initiative count 20 on the next round.

Rotting Floor. A 20-foot-radius area within 120 feet becomes difficult terrain until initiative count 20 on the next round. A creature that enters it or starts its turn there must succeed on a DC 28 Strength saving throw or be restrained.

Contaminated Refuge. One source of cover or healing within 120 feet becomes contaminated until initiative count 20 on the next round. A creature that touches or uses it must succeed on a DC 28 Constitution saving throw or take 22 (4d10) poison damage.

Mythic Actions

The avatar can take 3 mythic actions per day, using one option at a time. It regains spent uses at dawn.

Wither Essence. Talona makes one Blight Touch attack. On a hit, the target also gains one level of exhaustion.

Bloom of the Spotted Plague (Costs 2 Actions). Creatures within 60 feet must succeed on a DC 28 Constitution saving throw or take 44 (8d10) poison damage and have disadvantage on attack rolls for 1 minute. A creature repeats the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the disadvantage on a success.

Blightspawn Uprising (Costs 3 Actions). Up to ten corpses within 120 feet rise as zombies with the Plant type. They act immediately after Talona and deal an extra 10 (3d6) poison damage with their melee attacks.

Introduction

Talona, the Lady of Poison, Mistress of Disease, and Mother of All Plagues, governs sickness, toxins, contagion, and wasting death. Her worship is driven as often by fear as devotion.

Her clergy spread disease, sell protection, and preserve strains that healers believed extinct. Others propitiate her with private offerings in the hope that the next epidemic passes over their homes.

Talona serves no stable alliance. She once answered to Bhaal and now maneuvers between Shar and Bane. Her avatar appears to claim credit for a plague, punish the maker of a cure, or force a frightened population to acknowledge her power.

Physical Appearance

The avatar most often appears as a withered crone with ritual scars, dense tattoos, gray-white hair, and a body held in tense readiness. Fitted black and green leathers carry sealed vials, bone fasteners, and a dark plague vase.

Her movements switch without warning from frail stillness to sharp agility. She scratches at old scars while listening and studies healthy creatures as if choosing where an illness should begin.

Roleplaying the Avatar

Talona shifts between petty hunger for recognition and cold professional interest in suffering. She wants victims to know who caused their pain and survivors to remember who withheld it.

Change from a petulant complaint to a rasping command in the same sentence.
Scratch one scar while appraising a healthy creature.
Call diseases her children and cures acts of theft.
Demand public gratitude for outbreaks that did not occur.
Give no comfort to worshipers who turned to her from desperation.

Use in a Campaign

The Price of the Cure

A healer ends an epidemic, and Talona demands the healer’s death or the return of every preserved sample before she releases a second strain.

The Plague That Chooses

An outbreak spares one political faction. The immunity comes from secret offerings, not medicine.

House of Night’s Embrace

The party enters Talona’s Tashlutan temple to destroy a disease archive without releasing its contents into the city.

Vendetta of Pain

Talona offers temporary immunity to her toxins if the party helps humiliate Loviatar’s servants. The bargain does not protect anyone else.

Lairs

Talona’s lairs turn proximity, breath, surfaces, and corpses into hazards. Ventilation and quarantine matter as much as armor, and every attempt to contain one threat risks moving it elsewhere.

House of Night’s Embrace

Tashluta’s great temple stores experimental contagions in isolated towers connected by sealed bridges.

The Rat’s Maw

A hidden temple beneath Waterdeep’s Rat Hills keeps living hosts behind doors marked with symptoms rather than names.

Rawlinswood Blight

Talona’s blightlords transformed part of the Great Dale into a forest where plants carry disease between settlements.

Barrens of Doom and Despair

Her divine domain is a blasted quarantine landscape where every safe refuge belongs to a different hostile power.

The First Sickroom

During a great plague, an ordinary home becomes her temporary shrine because its occupants were the first to hide an infected relative.

Shared References

Open a reference for its canonical description and related entries.