Ceroptor

This creature’s hideous head, with a vaguely humanoid face surrounded by a bulbous, multicolored mass of horns, scales, and bony plates, sits atop a glistening welter of stinger-tipped tentacle strands.

Ceroptor CR 8

XP 4,800
CE Medium aberration (extraplanar)
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., lifesense; Perception +16

DEFENSE

AC 20, touch 12, flat-footed 18 (+2 Dex, +8 natural)
hp 91 (14d8+28)
Fort +6, Ref +8, Will +10

OFFENSE

Speed 10 ft., fly 60 ft. (perfect)
Melee 6 stingers +11 (1d4 plus paralysis)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (10 ft. with stinger)
Special Attacks ganglion probe, paralysis (1d4 rounds, DC 19)
Psi-Like Abilities (CL 8th; concentration +11; save DCs are Int-based)

At will-cloud mind
3/day–ego whip, id insinuation
1/day–psychic crush

STATISTICS

Str 10, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 17, Wis 13, Cha 10
Base Atk +10; CMB +12 (+16 grapple); CMD 22
Feats Agile Maneuvers, Combat Casting, Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Weapon Focus (stinger)
Skills Bluff +8, Diplomacy +8, Disguise +10, Fly +25, Intimidate +11, Knowledge (planes) +12, Perception +16, Spellcraft +18, Stealth +17, Survival +14
Languages Ashtuul, Belligren, Common
SQ steal body

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Ganglion Probe (Ex)

As a standard action, a can forcefully insert one of its ganglia into a helpless creature’s nervous system.

Inserting the ganglion deals 1d4 points Dexterity damage. For each round thereafter, for as long as the ganglion remains inserted, the ceroptor continues drawing fluids dealing an additional 1d4 points of Dexterity damage.

If this ability damage exceeds the target’s Dexterity score, any additional Dexterity damage becomes Dexterity drain. A ganglion probe can be torn out by hand with a successful grapple check (it gains a +4 bonus to its CMD against attempts to escape from its grapple) or a DC 25 Strength check; in either case, a successful check deals 3d6 points of damage to the creature being probed.

Steal Body (Ex)

A ceroptor can take control of a headless corpse of that died within the past 12 hours by affixing itself to the creature’s nervous system and absorbing the residual memories of the creature. A ceroptor cannot affix itself to the body of a mindless creature or a creature lacking a central nervous system, such as elementals, oozes, plants, undead, and many aberrations. Mounting itself onto a corpse is a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity. Once mounted, the ceroptor’s ganglia connect to its host, allowing it to control the body and to make use of the dead creature’s Hit Dice, skills, feats, class levels and related class features (including spellcasting and spell-like or supernatural abilities), and racial traits and abilities. It uses the physical ability scores the dead creature had in life, but retains its own mental ability scores, skills, feats, spell-like abilities, and any other effects or abilities related to its own mental ability scores.

To determine the CR of a ‘bodied’ ceroptor occupying another creature, use its own base CR, adjusted for any class levels it gains while implanted in the stolen body, treating them as key or non-key class levels as described in the appendices of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary. A ceroptor cannot inhabit a body with more than 10 HD (including HD gained from class levels); however, once a ceroptor bonds to a body, it can use the body to gain experience points and even additional levels in classes in which the host had body formerly acquired.

The ceroptor physically bonds with its host body and may inhabit the body for as long as it chooses or until forced out. A ceroptor is forced from its host body if the body’s hit points drop below zero. If the host body is successfully polymorphed, petrified, or otherwise incapacitated by a non-mind-affecting effect, the ceroptor may abandon that host body as an immediate action.

A ceroptor also can be forced out of a body by targeting the body with reincarnate, raise dead, resurrection, or similarly powerful magic, dealing 1d6 points of damage per caster level of the spell to the ceroptor and shunting it out of the host body. A successful Will save against the spell’s save DC (or the DC for a spell of its level, if the spell normally allows no save) halves damage and prevents the ceroptor from being ejected from the body, while also preventing the host from returning to life.

ABOUT

Environment any
Organization solitary, pair, or mass (3-8)
Treasure standard

Ceroptors hail originally from a near-lifeless moon. Created by the dark and alien manipulations of the jagladine, they were designed to manipulate weaker species of the neighboring moons in order to break them into revealing the secrets of the Ancient gates. Of genius and entirely alien intellect, a typical ceroptor appears almost as an oversized, hideous head trailing long ganglion-like structures of thick cartilage. Parasitic predators, they capture, enslave and breed the various humanoid races as if they were cattle. They eat humans when they so desire, but also use their bodies by removing a host’s head, inserting their ganglion into their necks and taking over their central nervous systems so they gain full control over the body. This mounting process kills the humanoid host, although the body can remain ‘alive’ and in the possession and control of its host for as long as the host desires or until it is killed. They also reproduce by laying eggs inside a host body. When the eggs hatch, a brood of tiny ceroptor larvae eats its way out of the corpse. Upon escaping the host, the larvae go into deep caves where they sleep for several months as they mature into fully developed ceroptors. Ceroptors believe themselves to be a paragon species, far superior to all others. Currently ceroptors travel from moon to moon by mentally projecting themselves form their existing head-like bodies, through inner space and into recently hatched ceroptor larvae on other moons. The original form dies, but the same personality lives on in the new form. In this way, they are somewhat immortal.

How ceroptors originally traveled between the moons is unknown, though it is speculated that an earlier humanoid race possessed the ability to moon jump and became infested with ceroptor eggs after an encounter with the hostile creatures.