D&D 5E What monsters should inhabit the oil sands?

[Shades of Eternity]

Athabasca oil sands - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This is an area that just seems fictional so naturally, I'm going to gameify it.

I'm definitely going to have oozes and spirits of energy for sure, but trying to figure out what creatures, in a dnd setting would also fit for encounters as low as 1 and as high as 20?

Personally, I want to figure out how to fit in the equivalent of the goddess of explosives.

 

[Stormonu]

Tar goblins and their oil sand scarecrows (wooden "bones" covered with bags filled with oil sand). Oil sand is the goblin's food source (whose consumption causes them to ooze a black, tarry sweat), and they viciously protect it from those that would mine the natural pits of their lands.

 

[Umbran]

...and they viciously protect it from those that would mine the natural pits of their lands.

Until you've gotten internal combustion engines, there's not a whole lot of call to mine tar sands. Indeed, in our real world, they became important because they'd been left alone as inefficient to extract - only recent technological development has made it seem more economically feasible.

Also, in the real world, the tar sands are under the surface - like, there's an entirely normal forest over them.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Naturally occurring mechanical organisms like zoids or transformers!

 

[Shades of Eternity]

I'm definitely having a Moose of unusual size (or MOUS),

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51-quirks-and-quarks/clip/15557018-incredible-dandelions-hold-key-growing-plants-oil-sands

alien plants suspiciously look like dandelions turning hydrocarbons into something special/dangerous.

automatic scooping technology, such as the following:

https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/vova_91/36948996/2791851/original.jpg

 

[Tonguez]

Prior to mining theyre bog standard boreal forest aren’t they?

after mining is when they get left a wasteland of slimes, ancient wurms and Scorched treants and bitumen golems

 

[Richards]

Frost worms explode when slain - you could create a variant that lives in the oil sands (and you have a built-in explanation for their explosive deaths).

Johnathan

 

[Scribe]

One of the saddest things you'll see...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Expatriate denizens of the elemental plane of earth? Especially those that consume minerals.

 

[Stormonu]

Until you've gotten internal combustion engines, there's not a whole lot of call to mine tar sands. Indeed, in our real world, they became important because they'd been left alone as inefficient to extract - only recent technological development has made it seem more economically feasible.

Also, in the real world, the tar sands are under the surface - like, there's an entirely normal forest over them.

Unless you have magic! Oil sand could be fuel for alchemical fire, components for everburning torches, summoning earth/fire elementals, fuel sources/material components for eberron-style fire elemental airships or landtrains or a whole slew of other magical uses.

And the tar goblins might be miners themselves, and were the first to discover their (basic) uses.