Barasthaga

CR: 20 XP: 307,200

NE Large undead (extraplanar)

Init: +9 Senses: darkvision 60 ft. Perception: +34

AC: 36, touch 15, flat-footed 30 (+8 armor, +5 Dex, +1 dodge,, +13 natural, –1 size)

HP: 420 (28d8+294)

Fort: +17 Ref: +15 Will: +21

Defensive Abilities: spell deflection

DR: 5/piercing

Immune: undead traits

SR: 22

Speed: 30 ft., fly 20 ft. (perfect)

Melee: 2 claws +32 (1d8+13/19–20 plus energy drain)

Space: 10 ft. Reach: 10 ft.

Special Attacks: devour soul, energy drain (1 level, DC 26) At will—animate dead, contagion (DC 23), crushing despair (DC 23), death knell (DC 21), desecrate, destruction (DC 26), doom (DC 20), fear (DC 23), harm (DC 25), inflict serious wounds (DC 22), phantasmal killer (DC 23), spectral hand, vampiric touch

Spells Known: (CL 14th; concentration +23) 7th (4/day)—destruction (DC 26), mass inflict serious wounds (DC 26), reverse gravity, vortex* (DC 26) 6th (6/day)—antilife shell, fluid form*, harm (DC 25), mass inflict moderate wounds (DC 25) 5th (8/day)—dispel good, geyser* (DC 24), mass inflict light wounds (DC 24), plane shift (DC 24), slay living (DC 24), telekinesis (DC 24) 4th (8/day)—control water, dismissal (DC 23), freedom of movement, inflict critical wounds (DC 23), unholy blight (DC 23), wall of ice (DC 23) 3rd (8/day)—bestow curse (DC 22), contagion (DC 22), dispel magic, inflict serious wounds (DC 22), protection from Devourer energy, water breathing 2nd (8/day)—desecrate, hold person (DC 21), inflict moderate wounds (DC 21), levitate, minor image (DC 21), shatter (DC 21), silence (DC 21), slipstream*, spiritual weapon 1st (9/day)—command (DC 20), divine favor, inflict light wounds (DC 20), obscuring mist, sanctuary (DC 20), shield of faith, touch of the sea 0 (at will)—bleed (DC 19), create water, detect magic, ghost sound (DC 19), guidance, light, mage hand, mending, read magic, resistance, virtue Mystery waves

Str: 28 Dex: 20 Con: — Int: 16 Wis: 16 Cha: 28

Base Atk: +20 CMB: +30 CMD: 46

Feats: Dodge, Greater Vital Strike, Improved Critical (claws), Improved Initiative, Improved Lightning Reflexes, Improved Vital Strike, Lightning Reflexes, Maximize Spell, Mobility, Power Attack, Quicken Spell, Spring Attack, Step Up, Toughness, Vital Strike

Skills: Fly +42, Knowledge (arcana) +34, Knowledge (planes) +34, Knowledge (religion) +34, Perception +34, Stealth +32, Swim +40

SQ: oracle’s curse (haunted), revelations (fluid nature, fluid travel, ice armor, water sight)

Languages: Abyssal, Celestial, Common, Infernal, telepathy 100 ft.

Combat Gear: rod of quicken metamagic

Other Gear: amulet of mighty fists +4 * See the Advanced Player’s Guide. In the Drowning Court of Abaddon, Thanatessim the Ash-Tongued misjudged his power, both personal and political, and challenged a more powerful rival for position among the ranks of greater thanadaemons. He failed, and rather than face obliteration at the hands of his enemy or the Horseman of Death, he fled, knowing even as he did so that no plane or world would be distant enough. And so he gathered all of his strength, everything he’d learned from an eternity of service to the Boatman, and fled somewhere beyond either. The thanadaemon that fled never returned. Yet after a time, something else did. Calling itself Barasthaga the Blessed Minion—though never specifying precisely who or what it was a minion of—the devourer that contained some portion of the Ash-Tongued’s essence came to its former home on Abaddon, only to be driven away by the combined effort of its former compatriots. Seemingly unperturbed, Barasthaga left them and began its long, rambling walk through the planes, beginning by following the banks of the River Styx. In the millennia that it has wandered, feeding as chance allows and seemingly communing with unheard voices, the devourer has touched Golarion several times, each time disappearing into the safety of the planes when confronted by more powerful adversaries. Although its daemonic heritage has afforded it the variant spell-like abilities such legacies sometimes grant, Barasthaga has become even more unusual over the eons, slowly growing in power as an oracle of waves. Though no sane creatures can be said to have ever allied with Barasthaga, on several seemingly random occasions it has chosen to merely whisper incomprehensible secrets to a potential victim and then release the creature to walk free—a practice that it explains only as “walking the path that’s yet to come.” Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Undead Revisited Graveknight “The dead thing was bored. An entire village drowned in wells, nailed to doorways, burnt inside the church. As the days went on and the peasants still refused to turn over the rebels, he got creative. Mothers fought each other with hammers to see whose child would live. The tortured priest broke and picked who would take his place on the rack. And still the townsfolk would not give in. “I understood obedience. I understood that the rebels threatened the stability represented by our lord. Yet that dead thing in the armor cared nothing for the war we were preventing. It simply watched, trying to remember the taste of life by stealing it from others.” —From the confession of Talisan Breys Graveknight T he lust for battle and sheer will to win allow some truly evil and vile warriors to shrug off their final defeat. Through methods that remain poorly understood, the vengeful spirit of such a fearsome combatant sometimes forms a bond with its armor that permits it to simply refuse death, its spirit lingering long past when it should have gone on to its eternal punishment in the afterlife. Similar in many ways to a lich’s phylactery, this armor rebuilds the undead knight’s body whenever it is beaten in combat. Only by utterly destroying the armor, by annihilating it rather than just breaking it into pieces, can an opponent truly end the existence of the despicable creatures known as graveknights. Unlike liches, graveknights almost never plan this return from their last battle. It happens, seemingly spontaneously and at random, to people totally unprepared for an undead existence. Wedded to the physical world but deprived of all sensual pleasure by their deathless state, graveknights deal with their transformation in a variety of ways. Some take up or resume the service of dark gods or more powerful evil creatures in the hope that their patrons will eventually deign to lift their curse, while others simply resume where they left off, seeking dominion over mortals and the exhilaration of crushing their enemies. Still others spend their days careening between futile attempts to recapture the heady exhilaration of battle and wrestling with the tedium of their actual existence. Acting in part out of habit, these latter warriors recreate the horrors and atrocities that once excited them, but taste nothing but ash for their trouble. Unable to accept that they will never again feel a surge of adrenaline or the heady thrill of triumph, they wade ever deeper into the carnage, blood, and misery that defined their mortal lives. Graveknights do not feed on pain or death, nor do they need to kill in order to continue their existence. Though some slaughter mortals out of anger, for revenge, or simply to continue proving their battle prowess in much the same way they did in life, others do so merely out of reflex, with no more thought to the lives they cut short than someone swatting a fly. In some ways, this behavior makes them even worse than those undead who must prey upon the living in order to survive. The manner and attitude with which a graveknight approaches violence depends entirely on the mortal warrior it once was, yet ultimately, all are incarnate killers, and as the centuries of slaughter wind on, many lose what little shreds of humanity still cling to them, defining themselves solely through battle and conquest. The circumstances of their lives, and especially their deaths, define many physical aspects of graveknights as well. All of them have the ability to channel one particular sort of energy. This energy is typically determined by the moments when they crossed the threshold between life and death and began their new existence. A general burned at the stake for his war crimes, for instance, might return as a graveknight with an affinity for fire energy, while one who finally succumbed to her wounds in a bloodstained snowfield might have an affinity for cold. Warriors and leaders of troops in life, graveknights ape this practice in death. Though unable to create undead themselves, they have the power to compel those they encounter to march under their banner. Though some continue to lead living soldiers as well, especially if serving as the commander for some dark god’s or patron’s mortal forces, this ability to control undead makes them that much more cavalier about the people they kill or the rebukes they dispense to their own soldiers, as every death bolsters the army’s strength once one of their clerical lieutenants animates the fallen. People near a graveknight feel a soul-rending sensation of isolation and loss which many describe as feeling as if the gods themselves had suddenly turned away from them. Indeed, this impression is more than simply a feeling, as prayers and uses of positive energy regularly fizzle and fail near a graveknight. Graveknights capitalize on the sense of abandonment caused by their sacrilegious aura. Though in truth it does more to bolster them and other undead, they also like to play on the fear and uncertainty it invokes. By claiming that anyone slain by their hand dies out of sight of the gods, they sometimes cause opponents to hesitate and falter. Of course, only those who worship the gods of the light sense this in their souls. Servants of darker powers instead experience a bleak confidence. Though they often appear to despise their existence, graveknights seem incapable of suicide. While perfectly willing to fight right up to the destruction of their bodies, they never slacken their attacks in the hope of defeat. Whether this is a part of their curse or simply a natural result of the sorts of ragingly egomaniacal personalities that become graveknights is unclear, but when possible, graveknights look for ways to cause their armor to teleport to a safe location if they get beaten. No graveknight would ever willingly reveal its secret weakness—that a foe must destroy its armor to truly end it. For complete information on the graveknight template, see pages 84 and 85 of Pathfinder Adventure Path #26: “The Sixfold Trial” or the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3.