Havero Tentacle

This massive mound of tentacles rises and falls, hinting at the breathing of a great slumbering beast below. Every so often, the tip of one of the glistening filaments twitches to life, spontaneously growing a razor-like feeler, horrible eye, or other alien appendage. The creature’s body is a looming clot of these appendages, a twitching knot of wriggling matter.

Havero Tentacle CR 6

XP 2,400
NE Huge aberration
Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +5

DEFENSE

AC 19, touch 9, flat-footed 18 (+1 Dex, +10 natural, -2 size)
hp 66 (7d8+35)
Fort +7, Ref +3, Will +10
DR 5/slashing; Immune cold, inhaled effects, mind-affecting effects, poison; Resist acid 10, fire 10

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft.
Melee tentacle +12 (2d6+13 plus grab)
Space 5 ft. (see sidebar); Reach 20 ft. (see sidebar)
Special Attacks constrict (2d6+13)

TACTICS

During Combat The havero’s tentacles attack the closest visible target, switching to attack other targets only to defend themselves as necessary.

Morale Once a havero tentacle is reduced to 0 hit points, it stops attacking and withdraws.

STATISTICS

Str 28, Dex 12, Con 20, Int —, Wis 20, Cha 10
Base Atk +5; CMB +16; CMD 27
SQ mindless, no breath

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Mindless (Ex)

Although the havero itself is fantastically intelligent, its is currently slumbering, leaving its tentacles little more than instinct to operate on. The tentacles are effectively mindless, and thus immune to mind-affecting attacks.

ECOLOGY

Environment any (usually Outer Space)
Organization solitary
Treasure none

The word “havero” roughly translates into “smothering arms”. The creature itself was first described in notes and theories postulated by ancient students of the stars and delvers into dark lore. Horrifically, haveros are not the mere imaginings of those sages who chronicle the heavens. They are entities of deepest blackness, and on terrible occasions a lone havero has been drawn to the world, putting all the races of the world into reach of its endless, ruinous arms.

Although their thought processes are too alien to permit interpretation, haveros are decidedly malevolent. They have no need for sustenance of any kind, yet they consume living creatures with mouths buried beneath their mounds of tentacles. Haveros do not age, nor do they die of any known natural cause. Beyond these apparent facts, though, exceedingly little rational knowledge has been gleaned about these unearthly horrors.

A havero’s telpathy is theoretically limitless in range, although when sending its mind across galaxies, even its thoughts require considerable time to travel.

These tentacles are appendages of a much larger creature, called the Havero.

Tentacle Combat

Treat each tentacle as its own, unique creature. The tentacles present a unique situation on a battlemat, since they don’t really conform to standard rules for creature space. Although each of the havero’s tentacles are long enough to reach anywhere on the battlemat, they never get much thicker than about a foot or two in diameter, no matter how long they stretch.

The easiest way to represent the havero’s tentacles on a battlemat is with a large number of pennies and dimes (or similarly-sized tokens). When a tentacle emerges, it may do so at any pool square. Use a dime to note the current position of the tentacle’s tip—this is the part of the tentacle that “moves” when the havero explores. Whenever you move this dime out of a square, leave a penny in the square it vacates; this indicates the length of the tentacle itself as it trails from the tip back to the pool.

The tentacle itself can attack any target within 20 feet of its tip, and threatens any creature in this range. Any creature that wishes to move through a square marked by a penny can do so, but treats that square as difficult terrain as he is forced to clamber or jump over the writhing tentacle length.

A character can attack a tentacle at any point along its length. Attacking a tentacle while out of reach of the tip is a relatively safe way to combat a havero tentacle, but it is certain to call the tip back to the current location. Once multiple tentacles emerge, it might be easiest to use additional markers as well, if you wish to keep clear which trail of pennies is “attached” to which tip. You can also use different colored lengths of string or yarn to track the location of each tentacle if you wish, using pennies at points along its length to weight down the string so it doesn’t slide all over the battlemat.

The havero’s tentacles are treated as Huge creatures for the purposes of determining attack rolls, Hide checks, and grapple checks.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Pathfinder 10: A History of Ashes. Copyright 2008, Paizo Publishing LLC. Author: Michael Kortes

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