Yithian Elder

This creature’s conical body bears four rubbery appendages: two end in strong pincers, another ends in a cluster of four trumpetlike organs, and yet another is attached to a round head with three eyes that glow with ancient, forbidden power.

Yithian Elder CR 13

XP 25,600
LN Large aberration
Init +3; Senses all-around vision, blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +32

DEFENSE

AC 27, touch 12, flat-footed 24 (+3 Dex, +15 natural, –1 size)
hp 180 (19d8+95); fast healing 5
Fort +13, Ref +9, Will +19
DR 10/magic; Resist acid 10, cold 10, fire 10

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., climb 10 ft.
Melee 2 pincers +21 (2d8+12/×3)
Ranged lightning gun +16 touch (10d12 electricity)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks amnesia, deadly pincers
Psychic Magic (CL 19th; concentration +27)

22 PEhypercognition (2 PE), intellect fortress III (6 PE), major mind swap (9 PE, DC 29), mental barrier V (6 PE), mind probe (4 PE, DC 24), remote viewing (5 PE), thought shield V (6 PE)

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 19th; concentration +27)

At willastral projection (self only), detect thoughts (DC 18), hold monster (DC 21), modify memory (DC 21)

STATISTICS

Str 26, Dex 17, Con 21, Int 28, Wis 23, Cha 22
Base Atk +14; CMB +23; CMD 36
Feats Alertness, Combat Expertise, Great Fortitude, Improved Great Fortitude, Improved Iron Will, Iron Will, Spell Focus (abjuration, divination, enchantment), Vital Strike
Skills Climb +16, Craft (sculpture) +26, Diplomacy +25, Heal +25, Knowledge (arcana, dungeoneering, engineering, geography, history, planes) +31, Linguistics +28, Perception +32, Sense Motive +29, Use Magic Device +25
Languages Aklo, Common, Yithian, 26 other languages, telepathy 100 ft.
SQ mental projection

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Amnesia (Su)

Once per day as a standard action, a yithian elder can attempt to inflict amnesia on a target it can communicate with telepathically. The target can resist this attack with a successful DC 25 Will saving throw. On a failed save, the target takes a permanent –4 penalty on Will saving throws and skill checks, and loses all memories save for those the yithian chooses to leave intact. This effect can be cured by heal, greater restoration, or psychic surgery. This is a mind-affecting insanity effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Deadly Pincers (Ex)

A yithian elder always applies 1-1/2 times its Strength modifier to damage dealt by its pincer attacks and deals triple damage on a critical hit.

Mental Projection (Su)

A yithian elder can cast major mind swap on creatures in other times and places, even if the target creature is of a different race. Before using this ability, it must first spend a week building a special device—a collection of reflective surfaces held in position with a lattice of rods— and succeed at a DC 35 Craft (sculpture) check. A yithian elder can usually gather the necessary materials with ease. This device serves as a focus in place of the spell’s normal material component.

The yithian elder can focus on its device once per day, selecting a specific location and era before entering a trance and sending its mind through time. It can use detect thoughts to locate the minds of sentient creatures in this targeted time and place. Contacted creatures have a vague sense of an otherworldly presence in their minds, even if they succeed at the Will save, but don’t know its source. If the yithian elder successfully detects a sentient mind and finds it acceptable, it can target that creature with major mind swap. The target falls unconscious for 2d12 hours as both minds transition through space and time to their new bodies. A successful DC 29 Will saving throw prevents this unconsciousness and exchange.

Unless the yithian elder has swapped minds with another yithian, both creatures are initially unfamiliar with the bodies they inhabit. For the first 24 hours after regaining consciousness, both take a –4 penalty on attack rolls, damage rolls and all Strength– and Dexterity-based skill checks. The mental faculties of both creatures remain intact, but the yithian elder takes a –4 penalty on Charisma-based skill checks when interacting with members of its new body’s race.

To reverse the process, the yithian elder must use its new body to create another mirror-and-rod device and return its mind to its own body. The other mind receives a new saving throw to resist the process. If either the yithian elder’s body or that of its host is slain while the minds are swapped, the surviving mind remains trapped in its current body.

Scholar (Ex)

Yithian elders treat all knowledge skills as class skills.

ECOLOGY

Environment any
Organization solitary or pair
Treasure standard (lightning gun, other treasure)

Yithians are beings from a galaxy far across space and time. Their unusual biology is disturbing to behold. Their bodies are conical, roughly 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide at the base, and covered with a layer of rubbery flesh. Four thick appendages extend from a yithian elder’s body, stretching to a length of almost 10 feet or retracting until they nearly disappear.

Two of these limbs end in pincers that serve both as hands and as a means of communication via a complex system of gestures, clicks, and scraping sounds. Another appendage ends in a grouping of four tapered organs, through which yithians consume liquefied vegetable and synthetic nourishment—yithians eat no meat in this form. The fourth appendage, atop the cone, bears the creature’s round head, which holds three large eyes spaced evenly around it. In addition to the eight tentacles that dangle from the bottom of all yithians’ heads, a yithian elder has a “crown” of five antennae sprouting from the top of its head.

In the distant past of their civilizations, yithians made such great advances in science and metaphysics that they learned to fling their minds across the vastness of the multiverse and inhabit the bodies of other beings, even those of creatures living millions of years in the past or future. While the yithian uses the displaced creature’s body to experience alien worlds and times, the displaced mind is held in the yithian’s body. Cooperative subjects who share what they know of their own worlds can move with a certain amount of freedom about the yithians’ cyclopean cities. Even those who are forced to exchange their minds with yithians can, if well-behaved, learn a great deal about their hosts’ culture, which is strictly organized, largely free of crime, and almost entirely focused on the exploration of science and art, though yithians possess a bizarre aesthetic in keeping with their alien natures and nearly unlimited knowledge.

In displaced creatures’ bodies, yithian elders gather information about other cultures and look for clues about what will become of their own race. Before the end of a yithian elder’s time in a distant body, another elder uses its amnesia ability on the captive mind, relegating knowledge of the time spent among the great race to half-memories and strikingly realistic but vaguely terrifying dreams.

Yithian metropolises rest atop sealed tunnels—closely guarded with powerful weapons—that contain dreaded enemies of which the yithians never speak.

Yithians already know their enemies will one day burst forth from their sealed tunnels and destroy them. Before that happens, the yithians plan to send their minds forward and inhabit a new race of beings—avoiding their own destruction, even as they doom the race whose minds they displace.

A yithian elder weighs about 4,000 pounds and can live up to 5,000 years.

Magic Item

In addition to their strange mind-swapping mechanisms, yithian elders also construct their signature lightning guns.

Lightning Gun

Price 95,000 gp; Slot none; CL 17th; Weight 15 lbs.; Aura strong evocation

DESCRIPTION

This device appears to be a box and frame made of a strange metallic alloy. A bellows or tapered accordion structure protrudes from the box, with handles and controls at the wide end and a bright metal disk or lens at the other. The controls are seemingly designed to be operated by large creatures with only two fingers, though humanoid hands can manipulate them after some practice.

As a standard action, the operator can hold the device in front of herself with two hands and use the controls to unleash a blast that deals 10d12 points of electricity damage on a successful ranged touch attack against a single target within 120 feet. The lightning blast sets fire to combustibles and damages objects that it strikes. It can melt metals that have a low melting point, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, or bronze.

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS

Cost 47,500 gp; Feats Craft Wondrous Item; Spells chain lightning

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Occult Bestiary © 2015, Paizo Inc.; Authors: Josh Colon, John Compton, Paris Crenshaw, Adam Daigle, Eleanor Ferron, James Jacobs, Joe Homes, Mikko Kallio, Mike Kimmel, Ron Lundeen, Kate Marshall, Kalervo Oikarinen, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and F. Wesley Schneider.

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