monstersdownthepath

[monstersdownthepath]

Was rereading Dungeon Meshi the other day, and a thought but how controversial do you think eating sapient creatures on Golarion is? Most of the 'normal' races tend to have cannibalism taboos in their mainstream societies, but that only applies to each other and isn't a sure thing either. And plenty of monsters have basic / complex societies of their own and are sapient but eat the flesh of other sapient creatures, such as giants. Not to mention 'wild' monsters that are maneaters but are also still sapient, like dragons.

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Sapients eat sapients all the time on Golarion. Like you said, you can't really throw a rock without hitting another creature with 3+ Int (who will then start swearing at you for hitting them with a rock). If you restrict your diet to only nonsapients, you'll... well, you'll probably be fine, because there's still lots of common wildlife, but you're really missing out.

Eating dragons is basically a rite of passage in many cultures, and many Magical Beasts and Aberrations have entire paragraphs in their lore describing how people cook and eat them regardless of their intelligence... but there's no talk of humans eating giants regardless of how often giants eat humans, nor do you really see lore blocks talking about how people snatch humanoid fey out of the air and shovel them in their mouths. In general, I think it boils down to "the more human a creature looks, the more uncomfortable it becomes thinking about eating them."

It's probably controversial in most human societies to eat more humanoid creatures, if only because of the discomfort it can cause, but in my personal opinion even commonfolk would probably not turn up their nose at the idea of eating something inhuman that was still capable of speech, because while such a phenomenon exists only in ethical thought experiments on Earth, on Golarion intelligent wildlife has lived alongside humanity since humanity's dawn, so the culture around it is likely wildly different. Who cares if they can talk, those are just animals! And they're real good fried!

Note: cannibalism is taboo amongst humanoids for reasons beyond mere spiritual/religious concerns, because the act of eating raw humanoid flesh can sometimes cause Ghoul Fever, which can quickly spiral into a whole host of problems.

[monstersdownthepath]

How do you feel about the nindoru? A new type of Fiend in second edition.

Their write up is a bit confusing they represent cycles or the breaking of cycles or toxic cycles.

They eat souls but unlike Daemons they don’t eat the whole soul just suck on it a bit and let it go

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They feel kind of like more advanced or specialized versions of daemon or sahkil, in my opinion; they're born from and feed upon souls who've reincarnated multiple times, which in Pathfinder tends to either mean souls that did so little in their lives that the Boneyard puts them in for another spin cycle, or someone whose soul refuses to rest but who cannot or will not embrace undeath and seeks out a new vessel instead. This isn't every case--especially in cultures whose beliefs strongly tie with reincarnation, which the Boneyard appears to grant, and among Samsarans, for whom reincarnation is the norm--but it's the usual case.

Nindoru originated in Tian Xia, where the faith of Sangpotshi--which teaches reincarnation as a means to perfect one's final journey into the afterlife--is common, and they exist in direct opposition to this specific faith, making them a unique case in Pathfinder. Rather than being opposed to order (demons), will (devils), or life itself (daemons), they're opposed to the idea that souls have to reincarnate over and over again to achieve perfection and have torn themselves from the cycle to enjoy this new eternity, making them closer to oni than anything else. They do share much in common with daemons as well, with the book--Season of Ghosts: No Breath Left to Cry--stating that one must choose to become a nindoru, to eschew their potential for becoming better and to revel in making life, and the world, worse. They also enjoy devouring souls... but like you said, not the whole thing.

They prize souls that have reincarnated multiple times, and they cut 'choice pieces' from the soul to consume and let the rest go, something morbidly comparable to a gardener plucking ripe fruit (excess quintessence) off a tree (the soul), though in this case the harvest requires violently tearing at branches and peeling bark. The soul of anyone defiled by a nindoru often become corrupted by the spiritual agony that's been inflicted and fixates on how much of their past was taken by the attack. Such poor souls may turn to darker and darker means to quell their pain and elect to become nindoru themselves.

I really like how they look, though they feel quite close to the Sahkil flavor-wise, up to and including the fact that they are not assigned forms by some arbitrary higher will, but instead choose their forms based on the pains they enjoy inflicting and the cycles they enjoy breaking. Overall, I think their niche as a fiend specific to one faith that's slowly spreading outwards to menace the rest of the universe is pretty neat!

[monstersdownthepath]

Monster Spotlight: Erodaemon

CR 11

Neutral Evil Medium Outsider

Bestiary 6, pg. 70

At some point, every single branch and breed of Outsider realizes that more or less every form of mortal life has something in common: lust. Be it viewed as a means to joyousously and passionately display emotions and form of bonds among the celestials, or as a method of corruption via reckless and harmful pursuit of pleasure above all else common among fiends, pretty much every Outsider species (with very few exceptions) regardless of personal alignments or philosophies tends to have some specific species dedicated to swaying mortal opinions via the (second) most basic desire of all life. Even the daemons get in on the action, though their reasons are actually quite unique; rather than being directly created to exploit lust, Erodaemons arise from souls who perished because of love.

Personifying death through heartbreak specifically, Erodaemons are the hate-filled souls of anyone who perished as love was torn from them. Perhaps they lost their partner to another lover, to death, or to boredom, or perhaps they were injured or slain by their partner; whatever the case may be, a nascent Erodaemon lost someone they once loved and they began to use the jagged shards of their shattered heart as a weapon, either before or after they died (or even both!). After congealing in Abaddon for a few decades, the resulting fiend lives to destroy relationships and string along those desperate for affection and warmth.

Where a Succubus lives to have fun and spread corruption for its own sake, an Erodaemon makes cruelty the #1 objective in its doings. All daemons exist to spread their own misery and death to others, so these fiends eschew shapeshifting into any old Jane Doe and instead become Objects of Desire, their shapeshifting powers tied directly to their at-will Detect Thoughts (which should, in my opinion, be Detect Desires). When they read a victim's mind, they can then instantly become whatever Humanoid being their target desires the most, their disguise so flawless they get a +20 to Bluff and Disguise checks to imitate that person... which carries their Bluff and Disguise skills from an already-imposing +33 and +24 to an unbeatable +53 and +44, assuring their disguise is essentially unbreakable, even if the victim knows their target intimately (which would normally confer a +10 bonus).

While this incredible stat boost SHOULD make them undetectable and unstoppable, it carries with it some pretty pronounced weaknesses. They lack Change Shape and any form of disguising magic, relying wholly on Object of Desire's full-round shift to become the dream girl/boy to one specific person, and they have to make their act work from there if they want to get results! Erodaemons cannot go walking around outdoors in disguise like a Succubus can, and if their disguise is broken they cannot instantly shift into another in an emergency. This is more of a hazard than it seems, because not only can their disguise be dispelled, it breaks the instant they attack any other creature for any reason and through any means, which forces them to be peaceful, demure, and harmless in every situation lest their disguise shatter the instant they so much as throw a punch, or try and fight off someone attacking them! This limits them even further, forcing them to always choose victims whose ideal lovers aren't combative or aggressive and likely forcing them out of any city where gladiator games are common.

They still have things they can do without breaking their disguise, though, such as the ability to cast Unnatural Lust at-will to immediately set up some pretty disturbing domino reactions, usually creating enough of a kerfuffle to let them quickly teleport away or slink into the shadows with their +22 to Stealth. Unnatural Lust is bad enough in the hands of a daemon, and worse still in the hands of one so devoted to ruining established relationships and shattering bonds between friends and lovers alike, but it doesn't stop there: the Erodaemons can also use Quickened Suggestion 3/day to give out sadistic orders or set up a tragic scene (or simply avert unwanted attention), or curse a single target 1/day with Utter Contempt to turn even the most kind-hearted and loving human on the planet into a complete bastard for 14 straight minutes. Utter Contempt is especially dangerous in an urban setting, because it turns 'indifference'--the most common attitude for a normal person to feel towards another in an urban setting!--into hostility, serving as yet another potential distraction or another method for the daemon to force an otherwise normal person into a potentially reputation- or life-destroying situation.

Their most dangerous ability in or out of combat is their Wilting Kiss, a mind-warping curse they can unleash as a free action against a willing, helpless, or grappled target. Anyone who fails a DC 23 Will save becomes supernaturally obsessed with the daemon and does everything in their power to stay near them, suffering 1 Charisma damage each and every round they spend further than 30ft from the fiend that cursed them... which can potentially be lethal if it teleports away! Another DC 23 Will save can save someone from this damage, and succeeding the save twice in a row breaks the curse, but most commoners simply can't succeed a save that high, and many low-Will PCs will find themselves longing for the fiend's poisonous presence so much it may literally kill them. This ability CAN be a double-edged sword, as the daemon has no control of HOW this obsession actually manifests, but it's got ways to keep its victims under control, and most creatures it's going to be using this ability on are no real threat to it anyway, even if it kisses an entire crowd of people one at a time to make them fight over it.

Capping their emotional manipulation off is a 3/day Crushing Despair to blast an entire crowd with sudden, sickening sadness, and at the very top of the pyramid lays a 1/day Modify Memory, a spell dangerous enough in a normal caster's hands, let alone a daemon with a modus operandi as sadistic as an Erodaemon! Whether it's erasing the daemon's terrifying initial appearance before it slipped into its Object of Desire disguise or making some unfortunate sucker believe they committed the murder they've just discovered, there's a thousand uses for Modify Memory... especially when the daemon starts combining its spells, filling a target with artificial sadness and hate via Despair and Contempt before implanting a memory justifying both feelings.

And we've spent six entire paragraphs talking about what happens before an Erodaemon enters combat! Though they prefer to stay out of a fight until they're primed to pounce on a heartbroken victim and devour their soul, Erodaemons are far from the helpless handmaidens they're forced to pretend to be. Their primary threat lays not in their two claws (1d6+5), but the serpentine tail which makes their bite attack, dealing 1d8+5 damage... and 1d4 Charisma drain. Succeeding on the DC 22 Fortitude save against this drain doesn't negate it, but simply lowers it to 1d2 damage. Still, this means the average party frontliner can take two, maybe three good hits from this bite before they're simply rendered insensate, though this is only if they don't cut the daemon down first.

Defensively, Erodaemons have DR 10 that's bypassed by a Good or silver weapon, and a party hovering around this level should have access to one or both for everyone planning to bash, slash, or stab. Indeed, hurting one with magic is a lot harder, as they have SR 22, 10 Resistance to Cold, Electricity, and Fire, as well as outright immunity to Acid damage. Like all daemons, they're also immune to death effects, disease, and poison, though this is unlikely to truly come up... unless their partner is trying to kill them subtly, in which case they might think it's cute. Even WITH these defenses they're more resilient than they appear to be, as they can use Enervation 3/day to shave a chunk of stats off anyone trying to hit them, their Quickened Suggestion to keep anyone capable of hurting them off their backs, and Unnatural Lust to force someone to skip their turn by making another party member extremely uncomfortable... or forcing someone to run up and accept a Wilting Kiss and fall head-over-heels in love with the thing trying to kill them, putting a haplessly smitten shield between the daemon and the party desperately trying to blast it.

You can read more about them here.

[monstersdownthepath]

What kind of monsters are there that are associated with books? Whether destroying them, protecting them, or whatever. Designing a bibliophile Green Dragon (I like the new lore but I will be in the cold hard ground before I get rid of the originals for them in my games) and wondering what sort of pests or allies or ornamental guardians they might have.

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If you want to go direct: Gishvit are living tomes from Axis that record the thoughts of anyone who wants them to, and on the opposite end are the Akizendri, which are proteans that exist to confound the written word.

Scrivenites are lore given form, and obsessively catalogue everything and everyone they see, and Guardian Scrolls are often used by mages to guard their archives.

Raelis Azata are the transformed souls of authors and poets that wish to copy and preserve works, and in opposition to this are the Hyakume, who go out of their way to read over anything they can get their hands on before destroying the original to assure only they can know a fact.

There's a few more I can think of but this should be a good starting point!

[monstersdownthepath]

Monster Spotlight: Fungus Queen

CR 9

Chaotic Evil Medium Plant

Bestiary 6, pg. 130-131

These seductive heralds of rot and decay are the end result of a cabal of succubi assassins that attempted to infiltrate the rotting layer of Cyth-V'sug, Demon Lord of Fungi, to dispatch one of his blighted followers. As you can plainly tell, this did not go as planned; not only was every assassin slain, but their corpses were mulched and used as fertilizer... from which the first of these beauties grew. Since then, innumerable Fungus Queens have budded from demonic remains and spread throughout the cosmos to act as the mouthpieces for Cyth-V'sug and, on rarer occasions, his wretched son Treerazer. Mouthpieces and uh... other pieces.

Any further jokes are purposely withheld.

Fungus Queens are boss-level threats on their own, easily serving as the Big Bads of lower-level adventures where themes of corruption and decay are overt and literal instead of figurative (though metaphors still work). They thrive in just about any environment but work best where they can set up shop and be thorough in their actions, because much like the succubi they descend from, they enjoy working slowly to assure the damnation and destruction of as many souls as possible. This typically means they hole up somewhere sheltered from the outside world, such as a lonely glade in a forest or swamp, an abandoned building, an unwelcoming cave, or a stretch of sewer line. Anywhere they can disappear to... and make their victims disappear.

Regardless of environment or species, Fungus Queens have tools of corruption at the ready, their Plant Empathy letting them use words alone to sway the opinions of other Plant creatures, even nonsapient ones. When a more stern touch is needed, Compel Plants allows all of their mind-affecting spells and abilities to affect Plants just as easily as anything else, letting them wrap the guardians of nature around their fingers with Charm Monster or order them around with Suggestion, both of which they have at 3/day. This also allows them the ability to turn away non-Plant authorities investigating their activities, disguising themselves as harmless townsfolk, druids, or hermits with their at-will Veil to complete the illusion, Veil having the amusing clause that the affected smells different as well, likely a godsend for these mold maids. When people begin investigating a little too closely, Fungus Queens can abandon mere trickery and simply take complete control of them with Dominate Person, which they have at 1/day.

One a Queen is established, she's hard to dislodge. While not AS subtle as a Succubus due to the fact they bring infestations of mold wherever they go, it goes without saying that by the time anyone realizes how bad the problem is, it's already too late; that wall's gotta be torn out completely. With numerous patsies guarding her, a Fungus Queen can set up shop and shield herself from any actual scrutiny until her infestation is ready to enter its terminal stage. Any creature the Queen does so much as kisses is subjected to her Energy Drain, automatically slapped with a single negative level and forced to succeed a DC 23 Will save or be bound to accept another kiss via an automatic Suggestion effect and thus get slapped with another negative level. Any creature that would normally die from these negative levels instead becomes infused with Abyssal spores and transformed into a Fungoid Creature (though Vermin instead become Spore Zombies). A DM wishing to do some additional work can instead use the Fungal Creature Template as the Fungoid Creature Template itself suggests, which has the added benefit of allowing the infected creatures to spread their infection and thus the Fungus Queen's influence entirely on their own!

Fungus Queens can communicate with their spawn from across any range, and Fungoid/Fungal creatures can communicate telepathically with one another while within 100ft, giving the horror at the center a pseudo-hivemind and preventing her from ever being surprised by the party's shenanigans unless they can avoid being spotted by any of her minions. Fungus-infested creatures retain all the abilities they had in life (though whether they keep their memories and personality largely depends on the DM, as Fungoid creatures DO, but Fungal creatures DO NOT) and can be directed by the Queen to disguise their infected condition, letting them spread their master's infection and influence even further than she could on their own, up to and including collecting victims to bring her for further direct corruption.

Though Fungus Queens can only control a limited number of spawn directly (24 HD worth, for a normal Queen), infested minions count as Plants and thus can still be commanded and directed with Plant Empathy and magic enhanced by Compel Plants, so their makers will not be short on servants when the player party finally comes knocking. Since Fungus Queens more or less always know when a party is coming without some extreme stealth on their part, this allows them to set up their most annoying ability ahead of time: Sporepod. A Fungus Queen can use a standard action to raise a pillar of fungal matter anywhere within 60ft, and once raised, this pillar stays in place until she either moves more than 120ft away or the pillar is destroyed (15 AC, 20 HP), and these pods act as dangerous impediments for the party.

Not only can they block movement, but Fungus Queens can use a move action to instantly appear in a square adjacent to any of her pods, giving her incredible mobility if she's set up beforehand. Since creating a pod is a standard action and teleporting to it is a move action, AND the Queen does not have to have line of sight to the point she's podding, Spore Queens can do a discount Dimension Door by repeatedly creating and transporting to the pods, but this isn't their actual purpose; their actual purpose is to act as vectors for her natural attacks. Spore Queens can attack with two claws for 1d6+5 damage each and can also lash out with four fungal tendrils for 1d6+2 damage each, but a Queen can also force her pods to sprout tentacles and attack with those in place of her own, letting her make melee attacks across the battlefield if she so wishes.

1d6+2 isn't an especially frightening amount of damage, but the sticky tentacles Grab onto whatever they hit, Constricting for an additional 1d6+5 damage a round... which is STILL not scary, but the REAL purpose of these attacks is to pin enemies in place for the Queen's infested minions to dispatch or to keep them in her 1/day Mind Fog so it can make them vulnerable to her mind-affecting effects, and to waste the party's time getting free or attacking the Sporepods. Destroying the pods is simple (again, 15 AC and 20 HP), but the Queen can make them at-will and takes no damage if any of them are slain, so they're literally just distractions and swift escape routes to keep the party from engaging the demonic fungi in melee, making for a potentially harrowing game of keep-away. A single Mind Fog into Dominate Person may just turn her from annoyance to an enemy that's impossible to defeat.

Fungus Queens have quite a few defenses; even if one DOES get caught in melee or shot at from afar, the attack had better be cold iron or Good aligned, or it will barely scratch her through her DR 10. With Slow available 1/day and impressive mobility thanks to her pods, actually harming a prepared Queen with weapon attacks is unlikely, forcing the party's melee tanks to deal with the threats directly coming to them instead of the other way around. Magic-wise, casters must contend with SR 20 and even more defenses on top of that: Acid and Cold damage is reduced by 10, and the advanced grounding the Queens have going on means that Electricity damage is entirely nullified, while the defensive bonuses gifted by the Plant trait means most reliable forms of crowd control (mind-affecting effects, paralysis, sleep effects) simply will not work on either the Queen or her minions.

Fungus Queens work best as subtle threats that are built up over time, slowly infesting larger and larger areas with their wicked servants before their machinations become too overt to keep hidden, though they CAN work as drop-in hazards the party stumbles into. In the latter case, they're significantly easier to beat due to likely not having as many minions or nearly as many Sporepods already set up. In my opinion, however, this isn't an especially satisfying way to portray these creatures; they're highly intelligent, wise, AND charismatic, so their ability to Veil themselves and puppet their controlled minions across any distance should be used to much better potential. If her plans are interrupted far too early, some contingencies may be sprung: perhaps the most outwardly hideous infested minions keep a 'fair maiden' to be sacrificed to their foul god locked in a rotting cage and surrounded by giant mounds of fungus that lash out with sticky tendrils, all for the purpose of this maiden being 'rescued' by a band of intrepid heroes and brought back to civilization where the real campaign begins...

You can read more about them here.

[monstersdownthepath]

Homebrew Artifact: The Tome of the Deep

Major Artifact

Aura: Strong all

CL: 20th

Weight: 5lbs

Slot: —

This mystical tome is remarkably tame-looking for what it is, possessing a simple red cover with the its title written in Aklo on the front, the words spelled out with shards of silver. The pages are simple white paper that resists all forms of damage or attempts to alter its contents, with new ink sliding directly off. The text itself in a bizarre mixture of Aklo and Aquan, the language being used often changing mid-sentence, and is largely incomprehensible word salads even to those who can read it. It has numerous multicolored ribbons trailing from its spine, ostensibly to aid in marking important pages, but when free they flutter and flow as though they were underwater. These ribbons frequently wrap around whatever comes close, sometimes preventing whoever is holding it from easily putting it down. The book is constantly cold--enough that precipitation often forms on nearby surfaces--and emits the smell of the ocean.

The Tome contains unusual power over the seas and allows its holder to navigate and manipulate them with ease, its incoherence actually a cipher that can be understood with study, revealing the author(s) to harbor a deep cruelty towards sea life. After studying the Tome of the Deep for at total of 24 hours (across any number of days), its powers begin to unlock; the base benefit allows the holder to gain the benefits of Water Walk and/or Water Breathing as a swift action, and they can dismiss the effects as a free action. They also gain a swim speed equal to twice their walking speed, and gain the benefits of the Know Direction and Tongues spell at all times, though the holder hears all voices through a bizarre reverberation, as if the speakers were talking underwater.

After studying the Tome for 48 total hours, further benefits unlock as the reader comes to understand that despite the author's apparent dislike of the sea, they are a fanatical devotee to some mysterious cabal of "Forgotten Gods of the Depths" that lay hidden in the sea's darkest and deepest trenches, bound there in ancient times by the gods of mankind. The holder gains a +4 profane bonus to saving throws against all spells with the Cold and Water descriptors, as well as against the abilities and spells of all creatures with the Aquatic or Water subtypes. In addition, the holder gains the ability to use the following spell-like abilities:

At-will--Fog Cloud, Hydraulic Torrent, River Whip

3/day--Control Water, Find the Path, Geyser (DC 25)

1/day--Control Weather (as a Druid), Submerge Ship

After studying the Tome in its entirety for 96 total hours and coming to learn the supposed names of the Forgotten Gods of the Depths, its final benefits unlock, enhancing the profane bonus the holder gained from the previous unlock to +8 and granting them the ability to perform truly bizarre feats by speaking prayers to these gods aloud:

Atrophic Harvest: Once per day, the holder may chant a litany of bounty, causing sea life to suicidally fling themselves into nets, onto the deck, or even into waiting mouths. This litany requires 10 uninterrupted minutes to perform, but if allowed to conclude, results in the harvest of 1d4+4 tons of sea life in the form of fish, sharks, small whales, crabs, and other animals. This can manifest as the sea life filling up a trawling net or leaping onto a ship's deck, leaping into the waiting arms of fishermen, or simply washing up on the nearest beach. Utilizing this power deals 1d6 Wisdom damage to the holder, and may have far-reaching effects on the sea's ecology, at the DMs discretion.

Banish: Once per day, the holder may utter a word that inspires mortal terror in sea life as a full-round action. All creatures with the Aquatic or Water subtype within 300ft of the holder hear this word regardless of intervening barriers, and become panicked for 1 minute upon hearing it, attempting to flee the holder as swiftly as they can via whatever means they possibly can. Utilizing this power deals 1d6 Wisdom damage to the holder, and prevents them from speaking at all for one hour.

Cruel Drive: The holder may chant a litany of haste from the Tome while standing on the deck of a ship. So long as the holder maintains their chant, the ship's speed is doubled, it ignores the sinking condition, it takes no penalties for moving against the wind, and it ignores penalties it would take for operating at half crew capacity. Performing this litany requires the holder's full concentration; they cannot take any actions but to chant, or the litany ends. Each minute (minimum 1) the holder maintains the chant, they take 1 Wisdom damage. Whenever the litany ends, this ability cannot be used again for 1d4 hours.

Dredge: The holder may pull treasures from the bottom of the ocean. Once per day over the course of 1 hour, the holder may produce 500gp x their own HD worth of valuables by sitting within 100ft of the shoreline and chanting, the valuables washing ashore with every toss of the waves. These valuables take the shape of coins, gems, art objects, and other tradable goods lost to the tides. At the DMs discretion, the holder may request a specific object that was lost to see be returned to them with this power. Once this action has been performed, it cannot be performed within one mile of the previous location until 30 days have passed. Utilizing this power inflicts 1d6 Wisdom damage to the user.

Vengeance of the Deep: Once per day, the holder may cast Vortex, Seamantle, OR Tsunami as a spell-like ability.

At the DMs discretion, further research may yield powers ever stranger, including details of the rituals needed to release the Forgotten Gods.

Curse: The Tome of the Deep possesses a powerful curse and a vengeful, malevolent, alien will of its own. A holder that has unlocked even the basic powers of the Tome becomes unwilling to part with it, utilizing all of their strength and resources to retain possession of it. Similarly, the cursed holder becomes unwilling to travel further than 1 mile per HD they possess from the nearest shore, becoming compelled by an irremovable Geas to return to the sea if they do as the blasphemous gods call for them. No ability score damage caused to the holder by utilizing the Tome's power can be healed through any means for 24 hours after sustaining it. All creatures with the Aquatic or Water subtypes can sense the Tome's malevolent presence from up to 100ft away, and their attitude to the holder drops two stages and cannot be improved past "indifferent" through nonmagical means. Finally, a dread fog follows the holder wherever they may go, rolling in every night from the sea to surround the holder in a roughly 5 mile radius. This fog is mundane in most respects, but eerie shapes, disconcerting sounds, and bizarre scents often emanate from it; this stimulus can be experienced by every creature in the area, not just the holder. This dread fog is not directly dangerous beyond the hazards it creates by obscuring sight, but at the DMs discretion, its distressing emanations may have a deleterious effect on the populace experiencing it.

Destruction: The Tome of the Deep can be destroyed in one of two ways: the final death of all the forgotten gods, or if the Tome is consumed by a Colossal creature that is both Mythic and possesses the Aquatic or Water subtypes. This creature must then swim to the bottom of the ocean and remain there until the Tome is completely digested, which takes many years. When the Tome is finally destroyed, the creature that swallowed it irreversibly slain as well.

[monstersdownthepath]

So far sm Empyreal Lord I have I wanna have feedback on an ability for him.

A once a day 60 foot sphere that lasts for one minute.

It's called Send In The Clowns.

Just imagine, the Empyreal Lord snaps his fingers and suddenly,circus music begins playing and then the clowns arrive; robes/cloaks etc are lifted up as though the clowns were under it the whole time. Trees split open to have clowns pouring out like a clown car. A group 3 high on each other's shoulders emerges from under someone's hat. One pops up from the ground like he took that wrong turn at Albuquerque. Once they are assembled, the buffoonery begins. Allies have total concealment because of the clowny chaos, while enemies can't concentrate unless they're deaf because of the blaring music and have to make a reflex save to do any complex action like spellcasting,as to avoid pies to the face.

After the effect ends the clowns all burst in a spray of glitter so thick visibility becomes 0 for a round.

Too much?

------

[menacing honking growing closer and closer]

It's cute! Though you could probably get a lot of mileage out of modeling it more after Mad Monkeys.

[monstersdownthepath]

Monster Spotlight: Fungal Crawler

CR 3

Neutral Small Aberration

Bestiary 2, pg. 127

These oversized cave crickets can be found just about anywhere in the caverns of the world, having spent countless years evolving in and adapting to just about every environment you can conceive of. The book gives us just a few samples of their most extreme adaptations: flying variants that flit about enormous underground pits, long-limbed variants that skate across subterranean lakes... and even fireproof variants that live comfortably in volcanic chambers! The key to their evolutionary triumphs lays in the fungal caps you see on their head; at first glance, one may believe the fungus to be the true mind in the vein of cordycepts, but the truth is that they're NOT two separate creatures living in symbiosis, but a full merge in the same vein as mitochondria and human cells, creating a single organism capable of truly impressive feats.

Fungal Crawlers are one of the many reasons carrion doesn't have long to fester in the underground, as they serve the same ecological niche in the Darklands as hyenas do on the surface, skeletonizing any carrion they detect but just as able hunt and kill smaller animals on their own, or take down larger prey items in packs up to 12 members strong. The book states that the Fungal Crawlers are the top of the bottom of the food chain, their hunting parties easily bullying other scavengers away from kills but falling swiftly to more determined predators, for which they make an especially tantalizing feast: crunchy insect with a delicious fungal center! All they have to get through is 16 AC and 25 hitpoints, which should be no problem for the many inhabitants of the Darklands, who have enough tricks to catch such a scrumptious little morsel off-guard and--

sorry, hold on, I just noticed there's nine entire words after "Immunities." Ah, well, that explains it! The reason Fungal Crawlers are so good at what they do is because of their Plant Defenses, their fungal body easily metabolizing the poisons that otherwise drip freely from the fangs of many Darklands residents (Crawlers themselves included!) and rendering them immune to an enormous amount of tricks other predatory species' possess: paralysis, sleep, and stunning. They're also, importantly, immune to mind-affecting effects (and less importantly, polymorphing), meaning no mystical lures draw them into danger or waiting maws, and no efforts to magically control or redirect them will work... and meaning that anyone hoping to domesticate these creatures has to do it the hard way. Such efforts often end in either frustration or tragedy, because while these things can be bribed with food, they cannot be trained, and will turn on their handlers the moment they feel endangered or simply too hungry.

Any creature attacked by a Fungal Crawler is taught a swift and painful lesson in underestimating even lowly Darklands wildlife, the beasts capable of taking down prey significantly larger than themselves so long as they initiate... and they probably will, considering their +9 to Initiative checks! A Fungal Crawler opens pretty much every battle with a Leap, this dangerous maneuver requiring them to succeed a DC 20 Acrobatics check during a charge attack (and with a +14 to such checks, they're very likely to succeed), but succeeding means they hop into the air and slam into their foes, making four claw attacks for 1d4+2 damage each for an opener that often shreds smaller prey to pieces. If more than one Fungal Crawler is in the battle, expect this to happen over and over again as each one charges one after another.

Once landed, Crawlers can only strike out with two of their claws at once as part of a Full-Attack for 1d4+2 damage each, but they also put their bite to work for an extra 1d6+2 damage. Crawlers have trouble digesting solid meals so they inject a caustic poison into their meals to reduce it to an easily-slurped slurry; this poison has its uses against prey that's still alive, dealing 1d2 Str and Con damage a round for up to 4 rounds to anything that fails a DC 14 Fortitude save. The venom of a single Crawler isn't likely to have a big impact on a party--especially since it's purged from the system after a single successful save--but, again, they hunt in packs, potentially melting through even the tankiest Fighters in short order.

Thankfully, though Crawlers have numerous defenses against magical muckery, they're still vulnerable to being smashed to a paste. They're just as vulnerable as any bug to being critically hit, flanked, or pulled apart by precision damage, and their formidable offense drops off quite suddenly after the first round when they can no longer make use of their dangerous Leap to deal 4d6+8 damage (and potentially more via critical hits). Their poison is more of an annoyance than a danger, even at this low of a level, and only elevates to an actual threat if there's more than one in the fight. Even then, killing just one or two Crawlers in a swarm of them will likely cause the rest to scatter; they're scavengers, after all, and are perfectly happy fleeing a party that overwhelms them and returning later to eat the bodies of their fallen kin rather than risking the colony.

Hell, they may actually follow in the wake of the party, entire packs feasting merrily on the trail of corpses and becoming a danger if the players have to turn back around for any reason! If the party shows any weakness or indication that they may be easy prey--and depending on why they're turning and running back the way they came, this is probably true!--they may find themselves suddenly charged at and shredded by the claws of these gigantic, hungry crickets.

You can read more about them here.

[monstersdownthepath]

Treerazer is also a wonderful anomaly in that he's one of very few demons that was never a mortal soul to begin with. He is the offspring of Cyth-V'sug, himself one of many qlippoth-turned-demons, and was born possessing the strength of a Demon Lord with the ideals of something primeval. His motivations and behaviors can come across as strange and alien because he is strange and alien, having began life as a shard cleft from an entity representing consumptive fungal blight.

[monstersdownthepath]

Well good news, @particularly-stupid-angel! The latest PF2e Adventure Path, Spore War, delves into the threat Treerazer poses to the world, his motivations, and his overall plan. Specifically book 2, Secret of Deathstalker Tower, contains a deep dive into him, and it paints a fairly complete picture:

Treerazer is the incarnate form of natural corruption, deleterious mutation, and floral diseases. He is to plantlife as Ghlaunder is to humanity, a living blight that is an enemy of health and peace, spreading sickness with his presence alone. He despises the sight of healthy plantlife, and healthy trees especially stand as an affront to his aesthetic preferences, so much so that he crafted Blackaxe to fell them in a single swing.

There is another, much pettier reason he hates trees, though: Elves love living in them, and he has a 2,000 year long grudge against elves ever since they kicked his tail out of Kyonin and made him retreat into the Tanglebriar. The less trees his hated enemies have to hide in, the better.

Bonus Spotlight: Treerazer

CR 25

Chaotic Evil Huge Outsider

The Inner Sea World Guide, pg. 314~315

Happy Arbor Day! Lets talk about someone who really, really HATES trees.

The Nascent Demon Lord Treerazer is one of many offspring of Cyth-V’sug, Demon Lord of Fungus and Parasites, and is one of many who have tried and failed to oust the fungal demon from his throne. Banished to the Material Plane for his failure, Treerazer is actually a Native Outsider, meaning that unlike most Demon Lords, killing him means he’s dead permanently. This danger to his life has had him take extra steps to preserve himself, not the least of which is his devastating combat prowess.

Treerazer’s gnashing teeth and buffeting wings deal 2d6+6 and 1d8+6 damage, respectively, which is absolutely atrocious for such a high-leveled creature! But then you may notice the strange-looking weapon he’s got clutched in his little hands up there; that’s his favorite weapon, the black axe known as Blackaxe (he probably took the same naming lessons as Geb), a lethal +5 Plant Bane Greataxe. Treerazer can swing Blackaxe up to four times a round, each strike dealing a considerably more dangerous 4d6+24 plus 1d6 Acid damage, all of which is multiplied by x3 if he manages to score a critical hit. And remember what I said about how much Treerazer hates trees? Because he REALLY hates trees! So great is his hatred for trees that he can strike one with Blackaxe once per minute to instantly turn it to ash and gain the benefits of a Heal spell, restoring 150HP and clearing off a huge number of conditions. While this psychotic lumberjack ability is tied to Blackaxe, I prefer to think that it’s actually Treerazer extracting immense catharsis from clearing a bit more pure vegetation from the world.

Treerazer may hate trees, but he’s got a special spot in his rotten heart for fungus and plants twisted by demonic energy. Once every 1d4 rounds as a standard action, he can blast a 30ft radius around himself with concentrated negative energy that kills foliage from leaf to root. This Defoliate power hews out any plant Treerazer doesn’t like while leaving the ones he enjoys safely in place. While this ability instantly kills mundane plants, Plant creatures can be instantly killed by it as well as they take an immense 20d10 damage PLUS 1d8 Strength drain, with a DC 39 Fortitude save only dividing the damage by half.

Razer’s got some serious hate for more or less all plant life that he doesn’t create, really. A few of his spell-like abilities are geared towards twisting or inconveniencing plants, such as his at-will Antiplant Shell, his 3/day Control Plants, and his 1/day Horrid Wilting, to say nothing of Blackaxe’s hunger for Plant creatures. While this may make him a force to be reckoned with if assaulting a grove of Plant monsters, it does make him less effective against normal folk, like most parties… Unless they fail to save against his Aura of Corruption.

In a 120ft radius around the demon, twisted fungal life blooms with alarming fecundity. Everything within this aura becomes tangled by the growth as it transforms into difficult terrain, though Treerazer himself (as well as any creature with Woodland Stride or Freedom of Movement) is unaffected. Furthermore and more importantly, however, is that these growths rapidly colonize living tissues; any living creature within the aura must make a DC 39 Fortitude save every single round or have the fungus take root within their body, a condition that cannot be removed until the victim spends 1 minute outside the Aura of Corruption. While unsightly and probably very itchy, the main danger of this fungal colonization is that the victim is treated as a Plant, but ONLY when it would be inconvenient for them, such as if they’re trying to resist Antiplant Shell, or getting creamed by Horrid Wilting, or getting hit by Blackaxe (which deals 2d6+2 extra damage to Plants)… Or suffering from Treerazer’s Defoliate. Ouch.

Turns out chopping down trees is really good practice for chopping down people. No wonder Treerazer does it so much! Well, that and expanding his horrible fungal realm.

You can read more about him here. And here is Blackaxe’s page, since it makes up a portion of his kit.

[monstersdownthepath]

[rapid pencil-scratching noises] demon... lord... of.... chickens...

[monstersdownthepath]

Monster Spotlight: Nochlean

CR 3

Chaotic Evil Medium Fey

Adventure Path: Return of the Runelords: Secrets of Roderic's Cove, pg. 84-85

Creeping through the shadows, slipping past cracked doors, creeping in through windows, and slithering under beds, these cruel and malicious Fey live for the thrill of being the boogeyman that terrorize sleepy little towns at night. Nochleans are rotten through and through, existing only to cause pain, misery, death, and despair with no purpose or reason, compelled by their very nature to vandalize homes, slay pets and livestock, and steal away children in the dead of night. Notably, that last one is explicitly a hobby; nothing is more entertaining for them than watching a family have a breakdown over one of their young ones going missing, and Nochlean gain nothing from the activity--they don't even eat the stolen child, magically convert them into more fey, or demand a ransom! They just do it for the love of the game.

To this end, Nochlean possess the eerie Child Scent ability, able to sniff out humanoid children no matter where they may hide, navigating perfectly through the darkness of any house. Their long nails and dexterous fingers can be used like a set of lockpicks, letting them use their +9 to Disable Device without any actual tools, and their wiry frames and light bodies grant them +12 to Stealth. With the ability to use Spider Climb at 3/day, even hiding one's children on second floors is little defense, and a 3/day Sleep available assures that their stolen cargo remains knocked out... and any parents who barged in to see the fiend are quickly rendered non-issues.

This isn't the only magic available to these fiendish Fey, as they can use Open/Close and Mage Hand at will to mimic hauntings, misdirect anyone looking for them, and pilfer small items with little fanfare. Ventriloquism also allows them to make their words sound like they're coming from everywhere, such as from outside a window, from inside a wardrobe, from under a bed, or from directly behind you when you least expect it. The highest-power spell Nochlean have available to them is usable only once a day, but it's a doozy: Dimension Door. Thankfully, while it's frustratingly useful when the Fey needs to escape the scene of its other crimes, the rules of consenting to magic in Pathfinder are pretty strict: even if a target is knocked out by Sleep, the Nochlean cannot then grab them and D-Door out. The targets of D-Door MUST be willing, even if unconscious, so the kidnappers have to get creative if they want to teleport away with their prizes. Normally this is through their +10 to Bluff, enough to fool most children that aren't immediately frightened by their appearance (or aren't frightened enough into compliance), but if that doesn't work they have little other choice but to do things the hard way.

Like most "bully" Fey, Nochleans are built to be frightening and tricky, but if an enemy isn't intimidated by their bluster or their magical antics, they're more likely to flee than fight. UNLIKE most bully Fey, Nochlean are actually able to fight, they just prefer not to. Their sole offensive action is a pair of claw attacks... but, as mentioned, their lengthy claws are sturdy and sharp enough to be used as tools, and thus deal MORE damage than the average claw attack at 2d6 per strike. Each claw also Grabs whatever is hit, and their lack of Strength is a smokescreen to cover for the fact their Agile Maneuvers feat grants them +10 to grapple checks, letting them hold fast to creatures that would normally be able to escape without issue.

Nochleans are further protected by DR 5/Cold iron, preventing most peasant weapons from dealing meaningful damage to them... but they have a very notable and very pronounced weakness that means even the average 1 Hit Dice citizen has a chance to escape or repel the foul Fey: Music Susceptibility. The exaggerated ears of a Nochlean grant it numerous benefits, such as wrapping around their heads and necks to help disguise their true nature when wandering among mortals, and a +4 to Perception checks, but their heightened hearing also saddles them with a Vulnerability to Sonic and an unpredictable reaction to hearing any music. The book notes that Nochleans cannot stand the sound of music and often try and flee it as swiftly as possible, with even simple whistling acting as a deterrent for one, but their Music Susceptibility tells something of a different story.

It gives anyone near the Nochlean the ability to make a Perform check using (Keyboard, Percussion, Sing, String, or Wind), with the Nochlean then having to make a Will save equal to the Perform result. So long as the music continues to play, the foul Fey suffers a different debuff based on the Perform: Keyboard inflicts sickened, percussion inflicts shaken, string inflicts stagger, wind inflicts confusion... but singing inflicts Rage. While this renders them unable to use any tactics more complicated than running up and clawing at someone and lowers its AC from 15 to 13, it does mean the boogeyman's base damage rises to 2d6+1 AND it gains +5 hitpoints, making it harder to take out and slightly more likely to take someone else with it. All of these debuffs (and one buff) last until the music stops, and given how common lutes (stagger) and flutes (confusion) are among adventuring parties, this frequently allows the players to swiftly pile on and dispatch the fey... provided it doesn't D-Door away.

Of course, perhaps the real problem isn't killing the Nochlean, but finding out where it's been taking people. The book grimly notes that Nochlean steal children just for fun, so many pragmatic ones will actually sell their talents to other vile and unrepentant souls, exchanging their stolen victims for wealth and finery without asking questions. Nochlean serve as good introductory antagonists for a campaign at lower levels and can be run as solo threats (they detest sharing territory with others of their kind), but even more than this, the presence of one can easily expose greater plots and much deeper corruptions going on in the background! We love a good multi-use monster!

You can read more about them here.

[monstersdownthepath]

Skimmed through Thirst for Blood, the first book in the Shades of Blood AP and have mixed feelings on a lot of it that may clear on a more thorough read, but the main draw was the dive into the worship of Camazotz. I think the inclusion of Camazotz, Ah Pook (still really wish they used Ah Puch instead), and numerous Coatl deities kind of makes the justifications for cutting out the Osirion pantheon even stranger, but that's not what we're here for.

As lore goes, Camazotz's article simply re-states a lot of info we already knew about him from other sources, just a little longer. He's a savage deity (in both the sense of "a god that is savage" and "a god of what could be considered savages") with little room for nuance, as direct as a god can be with what he wants from the world and from the faith that has formed around him. He wants to drink blood, he wants to hunt, he wants people to be afraid of him, and he wants his followers to aspire to the same ideals. He abhors civilization and how "soft" it makes people in every sense of the word, going so far as to be sickened by the idea of easy prey and growing bored if his meals don't fight back.

Fittingly enough, his cultists are the player's first introduction to blood-drinking threats in the AP, and make for "starter villains" to set up more powerful foes. However, even a straightforward deity like Camazotz has a surprising number of mysteries and eyebrow-raising events, such as:

His origin legend claims that he was once a vampire bat that was so evil that he grew a complex soul (as humans have) just to hold it all.

He is said to have served as a messenger for various Demon Lords for millennia, carrying messages across the planes to their followers and gorging on blood offerings from both. Eventually, he finally ascending after eating an Empyreal Lord that was given to him as payment for his services.

Because of his frequent traveling between the planes, he has three divine lairs as a result: the House of Bats in Xibalba, Agrahoz in the Abyss, and the Land of Eleven Deaths in... the Material Plane???

Agrahoz stretches all the way down to Yad Iagnoth, aka the top of the world for the qlippoth... with whom he shares a cordial, peaceful relationship. Anyone who knows anything about qlippoth should realize how weird this is, but perhaps the parasitic and predatory denizens of the deepest Rifts see kinship in what is, essentially, an evolved predator? Camazotz did not become a god through worship, but through his own sadistic and ceaseless violence, something the primordial qlippoth likely both understand and respect.

His lair in the Material is even MORE curious. Camazotz freely flits between the planes even now, which is already highly unusual for a divine figure, but to my knowledge, the fact he can exist in the universe as a physical entity makes him one of three gods to do so, the others being Gozreh and Kitumu. That he is a divine figure one can just... encounter, potentially even randomly, is bizarre in Pathfinder's universe, where gods tend to stick to their Outer Sphere planes, because leaving those planes can raise enemy alarms.

Camazotz in general gets a bizarre amount of leeway compared to most gods, freely blessing or cursing his followers as he sees fit, including just giving away darkvision to people who prove they can hunt without it first. Thirst for Blood highlights an especially overt flex of his power: he can, entirely on a whim, grant his followers the ability to become true werebats or bat beastkin if he likes them enough, when otherwise such a dramatic transformation would require some form of ritual or higher-level magic. While it's true many of them DO perform some kind of lengthy, ritualistic rite for the privilege, the ritual isn't to gain the power, it's to prove their devotion, with Camazotz having the final say on if it works. Even if they do everything perfectly, he can still say no, and if they screw up the ritual entirely, he can still say yes, which is not how these things are usually DONE!

Camazotz is a straightforward deity, but for whatever reason, he can flaunt the rules that normally bind other gods and prevent them from acting, and maintains allies along demons, qlippoth, and sahkil. There are a few possible reasons he gets away with such audacious acts, with the most plausible being that... well, strictly speaking, the reason most gods don't do what Camazotz is doing is that it invites retaliation from their enemies, and up until recently, he didn't have enemies that regarded him as an immediate threat that needed to be destroyed, because in the grand scheme of things, he was a single predator devouring prey and spends the vast majority of his time waiting for prey to stumble into his lairs (or be sent to him by others) instead of seeking it out. He wasn't enacting any grand, worlds-shaping plans, and actually kept his own cults disorganized and disjointed by encouraging infighting and direct, bloody violence. Still, his actions make him an anomaly among the divine!

[monstersdownthepath]

Homebrew Horror: Gremlin, Firgor

(Art by Wayworncrow!)

There are only a handful of items more useful to an adventuring party than Bags of Holding, items so valuable that few adventurers--even ones which tend to travel on their own--would live without for more than a few weeks into their careers for fear of traveling unprepared, or for fear of being forced to leave loot behind. Whenever the opportunity to obtain one arises, most would jump at the chance! And who wouldn't? You never have to worry about encumbrance again with one! The money you'd save hiring carts is astronomical! Unfortunately, nothing so convenient could exist without the whims of some fiend or Fey attempting to make a mockery of it, and these creatures are proof of it.

Without a need for air and having the ability to turn invisible on a whim, Firgor spend the entirety of their lives nesting within Bags of Holding and other extradimensional storage spaces like them, sustained partially by whatever morsels they can rake into their lairs with their long, rubbery arms, and mostly by "sacrifices" delivered right to them by unwitting explorers, adventurers, and merchants. Hidden by ramshackle suits of camouflage built from whatever knickknacks the bag's owner hoards, an unwitting victim may 'host' a Firgor for months or even years without realizing it's even there, and all the while the gremlin wreaks small but meaningful amounts of havoc on their lives.

No one is entirely sure when the first of these strange, alien-looking gremlins began to manifest across the world, and it's entirely by their own design. Firgor possess a small but potent number of psychic abilities granted to them by their unusual nature, chief among them the ability to simply force others to forget their presence. Any creature not looking directly at a Firgor tends to swiftly forget they ever saw it, and any item rendered invisible by the gremlin's spellwork is similarly forgotten until the gremlin decides to give its new 'toy' back for one reason or another. As Firgor age, they gradually leech magical power from the countless items introduced to their homes and gain magical powers of their own, culminating in the awakening of more powerful psychic abilities, such as the ability to temporarily seal away a victim's knowledge and skills. This intangible theft is the ultimate goal of all Firgor, who draw immense joy (and perhaps even psychic sustenance) from the chaos which erupts when someone cannot remember crucial information or access skills they once possessed.

How many times has it happened across the world, that otherwise competent and well-trained adventurers simply forget the true extent of their apocalyptic armory, misplace otherwise impossible-to-forget trophies, or lament the loss of a useful tool they should still have? Why do highly-skilled Fighters and raging Barbarians simply lose the ability to use the techniques they've been honing for years? How is it that Wizards and Witches smarter than entire rooms of people put together, alongside Clerics and Paladins who are guided by higher forces, cannot remember what spells they've prepared for the day? How many times has an adventuring party said, with panic tinged by exasperation, "You could DO THAT/You HAD THAT this whole time?!" in response to one of their members producing a heretofore unseen (or forgotten) item or skill?

In many of these cases the next two words out of the victim's mouth are tinged with surprise, then frustrated realization: "I... Firgor."

FIRGOR GREMLIN CR 2

Neutral Evil Tiny Fey Init: +2; Senses: Darkvision 120ft, low-light vision; Perception +6

------ Defense ------

AC 16, touch 14, flat-footed 14 (+2 Dex, +2 natural, +2 size) HP 18 (3d6+6) Fort +3 Ref +5 Will +3 Defensive abilities Bag Lair; DR 5/Cold iron; SR 13

------ Offense ------

Speed 10ft, climb 10ft Melee 2 claws +5 (1d2-2), OR improvised weapon +1 (1d4-2), claw +0 (1d2-2) Ranged Improvised weapon -1 (1d4-2) Space 2 1/2ft; Reach 10ft (with claws) Special Attacks Out of Sight, Out of Mind Spell-like Abilities (CL 3; Concentration +5)

3/day--Detect Magic, Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Read Magic 1/day--Memory Lapse (DC 13)

------ Statistics ------

Str 7 Dex 15 Con 14 Int 12 Wis 11 Cha 15 Base Atk: +1; CMB -3; CMD 9 Feats Deft Hands, Weapon Finesse Skills Bluff +8, Disable Device +5, Escape Artist +8, Perception +6, Knowledge (Arcana) +3, Sleight of Hand +12, Stealth +16 (+18 while inside lair), Use Magic Device +8 Racial Modifiers: +2 to Sleight of Hand, +2 to Stealth while inside its lair Languages Aklo, Common SQ Compression, Longarm, No Breath

------ Ecology ------

Environment: Any Organization: Solitary Treasure: Incidental (and usually yours already)

------

Combat: Firgor are lazy and cowardly, and do not to engage in combat if it can be avoided, preferring to quietly slink into their lairs if danger passes. Their first response to danger is withdrawing into their lair and attempting to become invisible to make everyone forget they saw it. When inside their lairs, they usually forego using their claws and instead will use whatever items they can to attack their enemies, whether it be used as an improvised weapon or a dangerous magic item.

Morale: Firgor always try and retreat into their lairs when possible, but if their enemies follow them into their lairs, they will threaten valuables and heirlooms with destruction if they are not left alone. If this does not work, they have little recourse but to fight to the death.

------ Special Abilities ------

Bag Lair (Ex): Firgor nest inside of Bags of Holding and other small, portable extradimensional spaces, holding onto the insides with their tiny legs while they use their arms to move and attack. Whenever a Firgor moves, it can drag its bag lair with it. While in its lair, a Firgor has cover from everything outside its lair. As a move action, a Firgor can fully withdraw into its lair, making itself impossible to target or affect with anything outside of the lair, often requiring combatants to enter the lair to chase after it. It cannot target or interact with anything outside of its lair until it uses another move action to relocate to the lair's entry.

Longarm (Ex): The long, rubbery arms of a Firgor give it exceptional reach for a Tiny creature. In addition, it possesses an eye in one of its palms, allowing it to perform feats such as making skill checks or attack rolls from cover without penalty and without exposing its body.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Sp/Su): As a full-round action that provokes an attack of opportunity, a Firgor can become invisible, as the spell. While invisible in this way, any creature that saw it within the last minute must succeed a DC 13 Will save or forget what they've seen, retaining only a vague recollection. 1d2 rounds after failing the save, the victim completely forgets about the gremlin's existence. Any item the Firgor carries that is also affected by its invisibility is affected by this memory leakage; any creature searching for such an item forgets they were doing so if they fail the Will save, and forgets the item even existed 1d2 rounds later. If the item was especially important to the creature, or if its existence is reinforced by another creature who succeeded the save (or was just unaffected), an affected creature will rationalize the lost item as simply misplaced. Similarly, a creature that was attacked by the gremlin but was forced to forget about it will believe the wounds were sustained in an unrelated incident. Any creature damaged by the gremlin in the last minute has a +5 to the save against this ability. This is a mind-affecting effect, and its saving throw is Charisma-based.

-------

Firgor Malefactors

Over time, a Firgor gains even greater power due to absorbing latent magic from its surroundings and establishing a deeper connection to the Astral Plane, gaining psychic abilities. A Firgor Malefactor gains 2 to 4 additional racial Hit Dice and the Psychic Magic ability alongside a handful of spells which differ from gremlin to gremlin, typically keeping in line with the theme of its most precious stolen treasures. Some, even rarer specimens instead gain 2 to 4 levels in an occult class, typically Mesmerist or Occultist, and advance from there.

In addition to whatever powers they gain from their advancement, all Malefactors gain the following abilities:

A deflection bonus to their AC equal to their Charisma modifier, minimum 1.

An additional eye in their other palm, granting them All-Around vision.

Both the Catch Off-Guard and Throw Anything feats as bonus feats.

Brain Fog (Su): Once per hour as a standard action, a Firgor Malefactor can force a mental block into a creature's psyche, cutting it off from its own experiences. The target must be within 60ft. The target must succeed a Will saving throw with a DC of 10 + 1/2 the Malefactor's HD + the Malefactor's Charisma modifier or lose access to one of the following: all of the ranks in X of its skills, X of its prepared spells, X of its feats, X of its spell-like abilities, OR one Extraordinary or Supernatural ability it possesses, all chosen by the gremlin. "X" is the Malefactor's Charisma modifier. A creature can only be affected by one instance of Brain Fog at a time (the Malefactor blocking a new ability releases the old one), and its abilities remain locked away for 24 hours or until it receives the benefits of any spell which would cure mental ability score damage or restore memories (such as Modify Memory, Psychic Surgery, or Restoration). Creatures affected by this ability often simply forget they had access to the blocked abilities at all. A creature unaware of the Firgor, such as if it's asleep, takes a -5 penalty to the saving throw against this ability.

[monstersdownthepath]

Yes, the Firgor is an in-universe explanation for players forgetting what's on their sheet. Use them wisely.

[monstersdownthepath]

Wheel of Monsters

Image © @bowelfly

[April Fools! Like previous April Fools' monsters I've done, this is intended to be fully usable at table, just... weird. Most of my previous April Fools monsters have been pop culture references, and this one is, just a little slantwise. The expression "wheel of monsters" has been rattling around my head for years, inspired by game shows and game show parodies like Wheel of the Worst. The monsters its summons pulls from by default are mostly ones on the Codex, but I've included guidelines on how to customize it if you don't want to look up a whole bunch of bespoke stat blocks (assuming, of course, anyone actually uses this abomination at table).]

Wheel of Monsters CR 15 CE Aberration This thing is a quadruped with a long tail and clawed limbs, but its semblance to sane life ends there. Instead of a head, it has a vertically oriented dial with twelve facets, each with a different combination of eyes, teeth and strange glyphs. A single eye sits in the center of the wheel atop the axle. Spikes protrude forward from the edge of the wheel, plucked by a stinger at the end of a long tail. Said tail also has a strange flap on it that has the appearance of a sign, or possibly scoreboard.

The wheel of monsters is a strange tool in the service of the Dominion of the Black. They were invented by the daelkyr Harsanash, whose interests lie in the role that chance events play in increasing entropy and the downfall of complex systems. The wheels of monsters exploit chance by generating random spells and summoning random monsters, drawn from distant worlds under Dominion control or the depths of the Dimension of Dream. These far-flung summons have already had disastrous effects, as now both the quori and beholders know about Golarion and its corner of space, and gaze upon it with envious eyes.

Despite their grotesque appearances, wheels of monsters are quite intelligent���geniuses by the standards of humanoids. They tend to have something of a split personality; obsequious and loyal to higher ranking Dominion creatures, even less powerful ones, but snide and condescending to most other lifeforms. Most wheels of monsters have a fondness for cracking jokes and giving color commentary during combat. All of its many mouths are capable of speech, and it can alter the pattern and coloration on its tail flap with incredible precision in order to spell out words in any language it knows. A common behavior is to speak primarily through one mouth, with an unctuous tone, while making sounds like crowd noises and cheers with its other maws.

A wheel of monsters is usually on the move in combat, stalking from place to place in order to better make use of their spells. They are excellent climbers and have at least the possibility of flight through their random spellcasting, and so prefer to have a birds-eye view of the action in order to better place monsters or effects. A wheel of monsters keeps its tactics flexible, but almost always summons a monstrous minion as soon as it can to engage foes. In melee, they can sting with their plectrum tails, inducing confusion in foes, and grab with their claws. They prefer to split those attacks up, stinging enemies to disrupt their tactics and then focusing the bulk of their violence on a single target. If a wheel of monsters has a foe grabbed, it lowers its spiked face on top of their victim and spin it, tearing with all of its spikes and teeth simultaneously. When fighting on their own terms, wheels of monsters will gladly flee a losing fight, but gladly sacrifice their lives in order to promote the objectives of their superiors.

Appropriately enough for a creature of weaponized chance, different wheels of monsters may be able to call forth different spells or summons by spinning their wheels. In order to adjust the wheel of monsters’ spellcasting spin, replace some or all of the spells with spells of the appropriate level. A wheel of monsters can call upon two spells of each level from 1st to 6th. In order to adjust the wheel of monsters’ summoning spin, replace some or all of the monsters with monsters of the appropriate challenge rating. A wheel of monsters can summon two monsters of each CR between 8 and 13.

Wheel of Monsters CR 15 XP 51,200 CE Large aberration Init +8; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, Perception +27

Defense AC 29, touch 17, flat-footed 24 (-1 size, +4 Dex, +1 dodge, +3 luck, +13 natural) hp 225 (18d8+144) Fort +17, Ref +16, Will +16 Immune curses, disease, poison Defensive Abilities fortune’s favor

Offense Speed 40 ft., climb 30 ft. Melee 2 claws +19 (1d8+7 plus grab), sting +19 (2d6+7 plus confusion) Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (10 ft. with sting) Special Attacks rake (bite, 4d8+7), spellcasting spin, summoning spin

Statistics Str 24, Dex 19, Con 27, Int 20, Wis 14, Cha 21 Base Atk +13; CMB +21 (+25 grapple); CMD 36 (40 vs. trip) Feats Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Mobility, Nimble Moves, Spring Attack, Whirlwind Attack Skills Acrobatics +25 (+29 jumping), Bluff +17, Climb +30, Fly +11, Intimidate +20, Knowledge (arcana, planes) +23, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +26, Perception +27, Spellcraft +20, Stealth +18; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception Languages Abyssal, Aklo, Common, Protean, Undercommon, telepathy 100 ft. SQ no breath

Ecology Environment any land or underground Organization solitary Treasure standard

Special Abilities Confusion (Su) A creature stung by a wheel of monsters must succeed a DC 24 Will save or be confused, as per the spell, for 1 minute. If the confused creature gets the “act normally” result two turns in a row, the effect ends early. This is a mind-influencing compulsion effect, and the save DC is Charisma based. Fortune’s Favor (Su) A wheel of monsters has a +3 luck bonus to its AC and to its saving throws. Spellcasting Spin (Su) At will as a standard action, a wheel of monsters can spin its wheel to cast a random spell. These function as the spell cast at CL 15th, except that it does not provoke attacks of opportunity and the save DC for all of these abilities, if applicable, is DC 24. The save DC is Charisma based. The wheel of monsters can choose the target or area of the spell as normal for any legal target after determining the spell cast. Roll a d12 to determine the spell cast each time the wheel of monsters uses this ability 1. magic missile 2. mage armor 3. blur 4. scorching ray 5. fly 6. lightning bolt (Reflex half) 7. enervation 8. fire shield 9. cone of cold (Reflex half) 10. spell resistance 11. disintegrate (Fortitude partial) 12. globe of invulnerability Summoning Spin (Su) As a standard action, a wheel of monsters may spin its wheel to summon a random monster from the following table. Monsters summoned in this fashion appear within 60 feet of the wheel of monsters and remain for 15 minutes or until dismissed. A wheel of monsters can use this ability as many times per day as 3 + its Charisma modifier (8/day for an average specimen), but can have no more than one monster summoned at a time through this method. Roll a d12 to determine the monster summoned each time the wheel of monsters uses this ability: 1. animate dream 2. neh-thalggu 3. aros 4. quori, hashalaq 5. rukanyr 6. yad-pollom 7. p’nahki 8. quori, du’ulora 9. garsonite 10. gogiteth 11. beholder 12. ectodactyl

[monstersdownthepath]

Homebrew Horror: Gremlin, Firgor

(Art by Wayworncrow!)

There are only a handful of items more useful to an adventuring party than Bags of Holding, items so valuable that few adventurers--even ones which tend to travel on their own--would live without for more than a few weeks into their careers for fear of traveling unprepared, or for fear of being forced to leave loot behind. Whenever the opportunity to obtain one arises, most would jump at the chance! And who wouldn't? You never have to worry about encumbrance again with one! The money you'd save hiring carts is astronomical! Unfortunately, nothing so convenient could exist without the whims of some fiend or Fey attempting to make a mockery of it, and these creatures are proof of it.

Without a need for air and having the ability to turn invisible on a whim, Firgor spend the entirety of their lives nesting within Bags of Holding and other extradimensional storage spaces like them, sustained partially by whatever morsels they can rake into their lairs with their long, rubbery arms, and mostly by "sacrifices" delivered right to them by unwitting explorers, adventurers, and merchants. Hidden by ramshackle suits of camouflage built from whatever knickknacks the bag's owner hoards, an unwitting victim may 'host' a Firgor for months or even years without realizing it's even there, and all the while the gremlin wreaks small but meaningful amounts of havoc on their lives.

No one is entirely sure when the first of these strange, alien-looking gremlins began to manifest across the world, and it's entirely by their own design. Firgor possess a small but potent number of psychic abilities granted to them by their unusual nature, chief among them the ability to simply force others to forget their presence. Any creature not looking directly at a Firgor tends to swiftly forget they ever saw it, and any item rendered invisible by the gremlin's spellwork is similarly forgotten until the gremlin decides to give its new 'toy' back for one reason or another. As Firgor age, they gradually leech magical power from the countless items introduced to their homes and gain magical powers of their own, culminating in the awakening of more powerful psychic abilities, such as the ability to temporarily seal away a victim's knowledge and skills. This intangible theft is the ultimate goal of all Firgor, who draw immense joy (and perhaps even psychic sustenance) from the chaos which erupts when someone cannot remember crucial information or access skills they once possessed.

How many times has it happened across the world, that otherwise competent and well-trained adventurers simply forget the true extent of their apocalyptic armory, misplace otherwise impossible-to-forget trophies, or lament the loss of a useful tool they should still have? Why do highly-skilled Fighters and raging Barbarians simply lose the ability to use the techniques they've been honing for years? How is it that Wizards and Witches smarter than entire rooms of people put together, alongside Clerics and Paladins who are guided by higher forces, cannot remember what spells they've prepared for the day? How many times has an adventuring party said, with panic tinged by exasperation, "You could DO THAT/You HAD THAT this whole time?!" in response to one of their members producing a heretofore unseen (or forgotten) item or skill?

In many of these cases the next two words out of the victim's mouth are tinged with surprise, then frustrated realization: "I... Firgor."

FIRGOR GREMLIN CR 2

Neutral Evil Tiny Fey Init: +2; Senses: Darkvision 120ft, low-light vision; Perception +6

------ Defense ------

AC 16, touch 14, flat-footed 14 (+2 Dex, +2 natural, +2 size) HP 18 (3d6+6) Fort +3 Ref +5 Will +3 Defensive abilities Bag Lair; DR 5/Cold iron; SR 13

------ Offense ------

Speed 10ft, climb 10ft Melee 2 claws +5 (1d2-2), OR improvised weapon +1 (1d4-2), claw +0 (1d2-2) Ranged Improvised weapon -1 (1d4-2) Space 2 1/2ft; Reach 10ft (with claws) Special Attacks Out of Sight, Out of Mind Spell-like Abilities (CL 3; Concentration +5)

3/day--Detect Magic, Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Read Magic 1/day--Memory Lapse (DC 13)

------ Statistics ------

Str 7 Dex 15 Con 14 Int 12 Wis 11 Cha 15 Base Atk: +1; CMB -3; CMD 9 Feats Deft Hands, Weapon Finesse Skills Bluff +8, Disable Device +5, Escape Artist +8, Perception +6, Knowledge (Arcana) +3, Sleight of Hand +12, Stealth +16 (+18 while inside lair), Use Magic Device +8 Racial Modifiers: +2 to Sleight of Hand, +2 to Stealth while inside its lair Languages Aklo, Common SQ Compression, Longarm, No Breath

------ Ecology ------

Environment: Any Organization: Solitary Treasure: Incidental (and usually yours already)

------

Combat: Firgor are lazy and cowardly, and do not to engage in combat if it can be avoided, preferring to quietly slink into their lairs if danger passes. Their first response to danger is withdrawing into their lair and attempting to become invisible to make everyone forget they saw it. When inside their lairs, they usually forego using their claws and instead will use whatever items they can to attack their enemies, whether it be used as an improvised weapon or a dangerous magic item.

Morale: Firgor always try and retreat into their lairs when possible, but if their enemies follow them into their lairs, they will threaten valuables and heirlooms with destruction if they are not left alone. If this does not work, they have little recourse but to fight to the death.

------ Special Abilities ------

Bag Lair (Ex): Firgor nest inside of Bags of Holding and other small, portable extradimensional spaces, holding onto the insides with their tiny legs while they use their arms to move and attack. Whenever a Firgor moves, it can drag its bag lair with it. While in its lair, a Firgor has cover from everything outside its lair. As a move action, a Firgor can fully withdraw into its lair, making itself impossible to target or affect with anything outside of the lair, often requiring combatants to enter the lair to chase after it. It cannot target or interact with anything outside of its lair until it uses another move action to relocate to the lair's entry.

Longarm (Ex): The long, rubbery arms of a Firgor give it exceptional reach for a Tiny creature. In addition, it possesses an eye in one of its palms, allowing it to perform feats such as making skill checks or attack rolls from cover without penalty and without exposing its body.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Sp/Su): As a full-round action that provokes an attack of opportunity, a Firgor can become invisible, as the spell. While invisible in this way, any creature that saw it within the last minute must succeed a DC 13 Will save or forget what they've seen, retaining only a vague recollection. 1d2 rounds after failing the save, the victim completely forgets about the gremlin's existence. Any item the Firgor carries that is also affected by its invisibility is affected by this memory leakage; any creature searching for such an item forgets they were doing so if they fail the Will save, and forgets the item even existed 1d2 rounds later. If the item was especially important to the creature, or if its existence is reinforced by another creature who succeeded the save (or was just unaffected), an affected creature will rationalize the lost item as simply misplaced. Similarly, a creature that was attacked by the gremlin but was forced to forget about it will believe the wounds were sustained in an unrelated incident. Any creature damaged by the gremlin in the last minute has a +5 to the save against this ability. This is a mind-affecting effect, and its saving throw is Charisma-based.

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Firgor Malefactors

Over time, a Firgor gains even greater power due to absorbing latent magic from its surroundings and establishing a deeper connection to the Astral Plane, gaining psychic abilities. A Firgor Malefactor gains 2 to 4 additional racial Hit Dice and the Psychic Magic ability alongside a handful of spells which differ from gremlin to gremlin, typically keeping in line with the theme of its most precious stolen treasures. Some, even rarer specimens instead gain 2 to 4 levels in an occult class, typically Mesmerist or Occultist, and advance from there.

In addition to whatever powers they gain from their advancement, all Malefactors gain the following abilities:

A deflection bonus to their AC equal to their Charisma modifier, minimum 1.

An additional eye in their other palm, granting them All-Around vision.

Both the Catch Off-Guard and Throw Anything feats as bonus feats.

Brain Fog (Su): Once per hour as a standard action, a Firgor Malefactor can force a mental block into a creature's psyche, cutting it off from its own experiences. The target must be within 60ft. The target must succeed a Will saving throw with a DC of 10 + 1/2 the Malefactor's HD + the Malefactor's Charisma modifier or lose access to one of the following: all of the ranks in X of its skills, X of its prepared spells, X of its feats, X of its spell-like abilities, OR one Extraordinary or Supernatural ability it possesses, all chosen by the gremlin. "X" is the Malefactor's Charisma modifier. A creature can only be affected by one instance of Brain Fog at a time (the Malefactor blocking a new ability releases the old one), and its abilities remain locked away for 24 hours or until it receives the benefits of any spell which would cure mental ability score damage or restore memories (such as Modify Memory, Psychic Surgery, or Restoration). Creatures affected by this ability often simply forget they had access to the blocked abilities at all. A creature unaware of the Firgor, such as if it's asleep, takes a -5 penalty to the saving throw against this ability.