Nightskitter

Defense

Offense

Statistics

Description

Nightshade Traits All nightshades radiate a 30-foot desecrate aura (as per the spell), can channel energy, possess true seeing and deathwatch in areas of dim light or darkness, and are effectively sickened in areas of bright light (double penalty in sunlight). Full details on nightshade traits can be found on page 308 of the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2.

Poison (Su) Bite—injury; save Fort DC 23; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect 1d4 Charisma damage and 2d6 cold damage; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Umbral Web (Su) A nightskitter can weave semisolid webs out of shadowstuff. These webs are not strong enough to bear any but the lightest weight. A nightskitter can use these umbral webs in two different ways, as detailed below.

Attacking: Up to eight times per day, a nightskitter can hurl a mass of umbral webs at a target. This is similar to an attack with a net but has a maximum range of 100 feet, with a range increment of 10 feet, and is effective against targets up to one size category larger than the nightskitter. An entangled creature gains 1d4 temporary negative levels while entangled, and can attempt to escape with a successful DC 28 Escape Artist check, or may try to burst the web with a DC 28 Strength check. The negative levels granted by an umbral web vanish as soon as the entangled character escapes from the web.

Multiple umbral webs can entangle a single foe—the DCs to escape do not increase, but the temporary negative levels they cause stack. A creature that gains a total number of negative levels equal to its Hit Dice is immediately slain.

Warding: By encasing all surfaces of an enclosed area, such as a cavern or a room, with thick layers of umbral webs, a nightskitter can infuse that area with necromantic energy. A chamber warded by umbral webs is treated as if under the effects of an unhallow spell with a deeper darkness spell fixed to the effect. A single nightskitter can maintain one such infused area at a time, to a maximum size of one 20-foot cube per Hit Die possessed by the nightskitter. Maintaining an umbral web ward does not limit its use of these webs to attack. Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Undead Revisited Ravener Not flesh but bone and searing mane the ancient one will come again to drink the soul, consume the pain that waits beyond the clearing’s end.

The souls of heroes form his shield the ancients’ cries, the whips he’ll wield and with creation’s truth revealed the Ravener shall know the end.

—Song of the Ravener Ravener O f all the creatures of the world, few inspire fear or awe like dragons. Possessed of physical might and prodigious magical talent, and growing more powerful with each passing century, dragons seem far above the concerns of those petty humanoids who war and die at their feat. Yet in truth, even dragons age, moving steadily toward their final rest. As even the good-aligned dragons tend to be arrogant and prideful (if not necessarily wrong in their high esteem for their own abilities), few are truly comfortable with the idea of their own inevitable end. Some especially proud dragons go so far as to attempt to break the bonds of mortality, seeking by forbidden lore and vile pacts to transcend the weakness inherent even in draconic flesh. Of the few who attempt this dark transformation, a handful rise from the ashes of their own mortality as the dread undead dragons known as raveners. This immortality is not without a terrible price. The arcane void within a ravener’s heart leaves her consumed by a maddening craving, a hunger that can only be sated by the life-essence of other beings. Each soul devoured temporarily restores a precious sliver of the draconic magic sacrificed to overcome the ravener’s mortality. But all too soon, the need to feast returns.

All raveners are skeletal, though the precise appearance of a ravener’s skeleton depends on the type of dragon she was in life. Some raveners use magic to alter their appearances, either to disguise themselves or simply to make themselves that much more threatening, while others simply modify their skeletons physically, such as a white dragon ravener who encases her bones in flesh-shaped ice or a black dragon ravener who covers her form in clinging acid. Others are visibly wreathed in their auras, such as the red dragon ravener whose very bones exude heat and flame. Yet each possesses a soul ward, a field of stolen soul energy that wreathes the ravener’s bones and protects her from harm.

As undead creatures, raveners’ ability to experience sensations is irrevocably dulled. Their hearing and vision may be matchless, but becoming a ravener demands the sacrifice of the nuances of taste, scent, and even touch, along with countless other pleasures of life. As a result, the ravener thrives on horrific excesses of emotion, for only in the heat of battle and wanton destruction or the gluttonous consumption of souls does the ravener again come close to the glorious sensations of being a living dragon.

The circumstances that give rise to a ravener are as unique as their appearances. Some barter their very sanity to the madness beyond the Dark Tapestry, others forge bargains with demon lords or the Horsemen of Abaddon, and still others beseech malevolent gods.

(Strangely, even lawful dragons make pacts with the lords of Hell only rarely—perhaps raveners find the strings attached to diabolical contracts too convoluted and numerous for comfort.) Yet not all raveners seek aid from more powerful creatures—in fact, doing so often conflicts with the same arrogance that leads dragons to become raveners in the first place. This second group instead finds immortality in much the same way liches do, researching rare and forbidden necromantic spells to create rituals of transformation unique to each dragon. As for why raveners don’t become true liches and create phylacteries, the answer remains unclear, save perhaps that hiding their souls would seem an admission of cowardice and inevitable defeat to the proud raveners.

Source: Undead Revisited, p. 39