Contact Entity

School evocation; Level cleric 2, medium 1, occultist 2, psychic 2, shaman 2, sorcerer/wizard 2, summoner 2, witch 2

CASTING

Casting Time 1 minute
Components V, S, M (see text)

EFFECT

Range 100 miles
Target up to 20 entities of 6 HD or fewer; see text
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

DESCRIPTION

You send out a magical message to any eldritch entities of a particular kind within a 100-mile radius, which can be delivered to up to 20 such creatures, starting with the nearest creatures until the limit has been met. This spell can’t contact creatures with more than 6 Hit Dice. You can’t send a specific message, but this spell (and all similar contact entity spells) can be characterized as an open invitation to make contact and establish communication.

If there is an appropriate entity within range, the spell succeeds automatically. You don’t know whether the message was received, nor any specific details about what creatures received it or how many. Creatures that receive the message know the location and distance from where the spell was cast. Because this spell doesn’t call or summon the target, the target must have its own way to reach the place where the spell was cast.

How creatures respond to a contact spell is circumstantial and it is possible the creatures will simply ignore the spell. Creatures that come and investigate do so in their own time. They usually arrive cautiously, aware of the potential for ambush. Targets of the spell might inform their organization or community if they have one. There are no restrictions on how the creatures react to being contacted, and they might respond with hostility, parley, entertain an alliance, or subjugate the caster and their related community.

Using this spell counts as mentally contacting the creature for the purpose of any of its special abilities (such as the star-spawn’s overwhelming mind). For the purpose of spells like scrying, the creature has firsthand knowledge of you and a connection similar to if it possessed a likeness of you.

Each type of creature requires a different material component that must be included when casting the spell, as shown on Table: Contact Entity. Some of these components are expensive or might require quests to acquire. Contacting certain types of creatures makes the spell chaotic, evil, or both, as indicated on the table.

Sidebar: Contact Spells

There are a few nuances to contact entity spells that bear attention. First, not all eldritch creatures have a correlating contact spell. Contact spells do not replace or supplant planar ally or planar binding, so each contact spell targets an eldritch creature that is not an outsider. Contact entity spells might be useful for contacting other specific types of creatures that aren’t listed, at the GM’s discretion, and could be adapted for contacting certain outsiders.

It’s recommended that contact entity spells should be discovered in actual play rather than granted to PCs through level advancement. They represent ancient knowledge lost to most spellcasting traditions. Usually found in the form of scrolls or spell trigger items, an individual contact entity spell comes predetermined to work with a single kind of entity, with the appropriate material component already expended. Copying a spell to a spellbook from such a scroll doesn’t let the caster know how to contact other creatures with the spell. Though the class lists for these spells includes spontaneous casters, this is primarily to let them use the spell if found on a scroll, not to have unfettered access to contact entity as a spell known.

Some contact spells are evil, but many lower level contact spells are not. This is because certain Elder Mythos creatures are distinctly alien but not necessarily morally evil. There is also a rich tradition of spellcasters who traffic with dangerous creatures with the best of intentions; while actively summoning them onto the Material Plane is evil, merely speaking with them is not necessarily so.

Contact Entity I	Material Component
Cerebric fungus	Scholarly tome
Deep one	Engraved stone tablet
Grioth	An eye struck blind during an eclipse [evil]
Nightgaunt	Sculpture of an animal with the face filed smooth [chaotic]
Ratling	Spell scroll of 1st (level or higher [chaotic, evil]
Voonith	Bundle of cattail plants [chaotic]
Contact Entity II	Material Component
Colour out of space	Shard of a meteorite
Denizen of Leng	Painting of a memory from a dream worth 1,000 gp
Elder thing	Magic item or piece of technology worth 2,000 gp
Hound of Tindalos	Exotic, trance-inducing elixir worth 500 gp
Leng ghoul	Skull of a dead scholar
Mi-go	Fresh brains of an intelligent creature [evil]
Neh-thalggu	Vial of cerebrospinal fluid from a creature that still lives [chaotic, evil]
Rhu-chalik	Brain of a creature that had 16 Int or higher [evil]
Shantak	A shard of rock harvested from another world [chaotic]
Yangethe	Scroll of an emotion spell of 4th level or higher
Contact Entity III	Material Component
Aatheriexa	A swatch of flesh recently damaged by magic [evil]
Deep one elder	Engraved stone tablet
Flying polyp	Eerie music played upon a wind instrument carved from the bone of a living creature [chaotic, evil]
Gug	Fresh flesh of a creature of 5 HD or more [chaotic, evil]
Leng spider	Head of a denizen of Leng [evil]
Moon-beast	Intelligent humanoid sacrificed while dreaming [chaotic, evil]
Spawn of Yog-Sothoth	All blood drained from a sacrificed intelligent humanoid [chaotic, evil]
Wendigo	Must devour the flesh of sentient creatures with 8 HD total [chaotic, evil]
Yithian	Quartz geode
Contact Entity IV	Material Component
Bhole	Jar of slime created by a bhole’s breath weapon
Bodythief	Chunks of brain from a lobotomy subject [evil]
Neothelid	Ruby worth 3,000 gp [chaotic, evil]
Shoggoth	Art object worth 3,000 gp recovered from the bottom of a sea [chaotic]
Star-spawn of Cthulhu	Sacrificed humanoid of 10 HD or more [chaotic, evil]