Baykok

This howling corpse swoops through the air with hideously elongated legs and a bow made of bone.

Defense

Offense

Statistics

Ecology

Description

Devour Soul (Su) A baykok can take a standard action to devour the soul of an adjacent dead or dying creature. A dying creature can resist this attack with a DC 19 Fortitude save. If it fails, the target is instantly slain. If the creature is already dead, it does not make a saving throw, although the body cannot be more than 1 hour dead. A creature subjected to this attack cannot be brought back to life via raise dead (resurrection and more powerful effects work normally). When a baykok devours a soul in this way, it heals 5d6+10 points of damage and becomes hasted for 4 rounds (as if affected by haste). This is a death effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Dread Howl (Su) Once per day, a baykok can unleash a blood-curdling howl. Any living creature within a 30-foot-radius burst becomes paralyzed with fear for 1 round unless it resists with a DC 19 Will save. Any creature that makes this saving throw is instead shaken for 1 round. This is a fear effect. The DC is Charisma-based.

Infused Arrows (Su) A baykok creates arrows of bone as it fires its bow—it need not carry arrows as ammunition. These bone arrows do normal damage for arrows fired from the bow, but gain a +1 enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls. In addition, each arrow deals an additional 1d6 points of negative energy on a hit. Further, the first creature struck in a round by a baykok’s arrow must make a DC 19 Fortitude save to avoid being paralyzed for 1d3 rounds. A baykok can fire normal arrows from its bow if it wishes—such arrows, however, do not gain the special negative energy damage or paralysis effects. The DC is Charisma-based.

When hunters become utterly obsessed with the chase and indulge excessively in the savagery of the kill, their souls become progressively tainted. When such remorseless hunters perish before they can capture and kill their quarry, they sometimes rise from death as baykoks— flying undead horrors that kill purely for the ecstasy that only murder can bring them.

Unlike many undead who feed on and hate all living things, a baykok seeks always to prove its mastery of the hunt. Though thoroughly wicked, baykoks often ignore all but the most powerful-looking foe in a group, only picking off lesser creatures if they dare to get between the baykok and its true prey. When it finally lays low its quarry, the baykok swoops down on the victim to devour the creature’s soul in an attempt to make sure the creature never returns to seek revenge.

Baregara–Baykok Behemoth Immense, ageless, and very nearly invincible, behemoths deliver divine retribution to the mortal realms. Shaped from the primal energies of creation and infused with elemental might, behemoths resemble living creatures, but lack the frailties of flesh. Marginally more intelligent than the smartest animal, behemoths can understand Aklo but cannot speak. Nothing less than a god or the most potent of legendary artifacts can command a behemoth, and even the gods feel some trepidation at unleashing one, lest the behemoth cast off its reins and turn its wrath against its maker.

For nearly as long as mortals have worshiped the gods, mortals have known hubris and the gods’ righteous anger. When a mortal’s offense grows too great for divine patience to suffer, the gods lash out through plagues and floods, and through their terrible servants. Of these vengeful minions, the behemoths are among the most feared. A god or coalition of gods creates a behemoth from the wellsprings of primal chaos, binds it into a semblance of flesh, and fills its mind with righteousness and the thirst to destroy all in its path. The beast is then turned loose upon its victims—those deemed most deserving of bearing the brunt of the wrath of the gods. Some deities stay close at hand as their beasts savage the lands, the better to turn the creatures aside once their divine anger is appeased, while others turn their backs on mortal plights, leaving behemoths to expend their anger until naught but lifeless cinders remain. Entire worlds have been destroyed by these living retributions. Such shattered lands might have nothing left alive save for the conquering behemoths themselves, immortal, living monuments to murdered worlds.

While behemoths are created by the gods, their forms and countenances are the result of which of three domains they have been created to rule—air, earth, or sea. Each of these realms is in turn associated with one of three common types of behemoths—if the application of a word like “common” is even appropriate for such an uncommon creature.

Behemoths cast upon a world’s landmasses are known as thunder behemoths. These are the least of their kind, yet they are formidable, nigh unstoppable engines of armageddon nevertheless. They are the behemoths of choice when it comes to destroying a single nation or empire, for while devastating, they are bound to the land itself, and their advances across a globe are thus more limited than those of the two greater behemoths.

When several nations or regions evoke the gods’ wrath, a thalassic behemoth is sent into that world’s oceans to wreak havoc. By disrupting oceanic trade, destroying port cities, and rendering well-populated shores all but uninhabitable, thalassic behemoths excel at destroying civilizations where they are most vulnerable. A vengeful god may inflict several thunder behemoths upon a realm that has wronged it, placing a thalassic behemoth in the ocean to finalize the devastation.

The most devastating of the three common behemoths is the tempest behemoth, a tremendous birdlike monster capable of devastating numerous lands in a short amount of time. Because it rules the skies above those lands the gods wish to smite, the tempest behemoth has greater mobility than its other kin. When the gods are truly vexed, they might set upon a world numerous behemoths, but the conditions that might call for the deployment of more than a solitary tempest behemoth boggle the mind nearly as much as the sheer size of any of these monsters does—few worlds are capable of the level of blasphemy and hubris that would necessitate multiple tempest behemoths as divine punishment.

Other behemoths exist, such as sirocco behemoths that flay with air and fire, behemoths of the lightless depths of the oceans, and dread holocaust behemoths forged of lightning and fire. Some deities take particular delight in spawning truly unique and powerful behemoths—many scholars place the legendary tarrasque in this category, even though its powers are quite different than those shared by most other behemoths. Regardless of their nature, each behemoth suffers a single flaw by which it might be slain, a chink in its immortality. Some attribute this weakness, however small, to the imperfect process of binding chaos to order, others to divine caution, lest a behemoth one day prove a match for the gods themselves. A behemoth’s creation is not always the act of a cruel god seeking to inflict devastation on an innocent world— often, these monsters are created by good or neutral deities to serve as instruments of justice. Perhaps ironically, gods of a more lawful or civilized bent are the most apt to call up a behemoth, as gods of the natural world either aren’t inclined to punish mortals at all, or would instead make use of natural disasters like earthquakes and storms to teach lessons to their wayward followers. While a single behemoth usually suffices, multiple creatures of this kind are sometimes visited upon a world. While it may be small solace, behemoths are incapable of procreation— regardless of the total number of behemoths active on a world at any one time, that number does not increase without the direct, vengeful intervention of a deity. Even societies that refrain from insulting the gods are not immune to the behemoth’s wrath, for the gods rarely remove these beasts when their work is done. An ancient civilization destroyed by a behemoth may still harbor in its ruined heart a slumbering monster, waiting only for the right moment or a tragic accident to waken and ravage once again.

Behemoth, Tempest Three pairs of wings beat rhythmically, churning up hurricane-force winds around this vast, birdlike monstrosity.

Source: Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 3