Centipede Swarm & Giant Centipede

Ants conjure up picnics.  Spiders are cliché.  But centipedes are creepy.

Bridge construction over Hapless Gorge has ceased; the engineers refuse to return due to attacks from a giant centipede colony.

A ghostly tower appears in the market square.  Ectoplasmic bugs erupt from it, passing through onlookers harmlessly for the first 20 yards before resolving into very real ravenous centipede swarms.

Even top predators have their predators.  Giant forest centipedes seem to prefer owlbears.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 43

Centaur

There’s no hiding a centaur’s lower half, and that’s exactly what’s excellent about them for world-building.  It can be too easy to forget that the nonhumans in the party are just that—nonhuman.  But centaurs scream fantasy.  They move in the PCs’ world—they might even be PCs—but they are always a bit different, a bit other, a bit more.

Half-elves and centaurs get along well: both are elvish but not truly elven; both love nature but often find themselves living uncomfortably amid humanity; both tend to get by serving in itinerant and mercenary capacities.  Maximilian (NG male centaur fighter 4) and Jacquith (CN male half-elf rogue 5) are fast friends in Irriden, walking the cobbles arm in arm and frequenting the taverns with outdoor seating for Maximilian.  But Jacquith is beginning to acquire debts and obligations to shadier and shadier folk, and as his situation grows direr, he might drag his centaur friend with him.

Most plains centaurs loathe wildfires.  But the spotted Fire Runners actually set small ones so that their young males may race them in coming-of-age ceremonies, and to manage the grasslands so that summer lightning strikes do not turn into wild conflagrations.  These traditions are watched over by the tribe’s druids and fire shamans, surprising outsiders who expect the latter to be lunatics.

Centaurs do not take well to space travel; there are few ships that can house them in a way that doesn’t feel like livestock.  But they are valued for their size and strength in port.  Immaculate, tightly planked boardwalks are a sign of a harbormaster who wants to keep his scimitar- and bolas-wielding centaur watchmen happy.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 42

Cave Fisher

At first, the cave fisher seems like just another ambush predator, pretty much interchangeable with other low-level dungeon dangers.  But it’s also a primer in how to create a classic monster: a simple but evocative name, a unique attack, and a place in the dungeon ecology that makes sense.  Which is why it keeps creeping back into role-playing, edition after edition.

A river route used by smugglers is said to be haunted by a ghost who pulls men from their boats.  Actually a cave fisher has taken up residence in the catacombs.

Pechs are too clever and too powerful in earth magic to fear cave fishers, but they sometimes encourage one to settle near their lairs to serve as a line of defense.  Svirfneblin, on the other hand, exterminate them.  Mongrelmen often need the help of adventurers, whom they reward with carefully collected secrets.

In the tropics, cave fishers don’t always remain in caves.  Palms and mangroves can hide a subspecies of cave fisher whose mottled hide provides excellent camouflage (Stealth +6).

—Pathfinder Bestiary 41

Cauchemar & Nightmare

These horrible deathly horses are dangerous in and of themselves, but even more so for their ability to plant shift (and in the cause of cauchemars, ethereal jaunt) with riders who could otherwise not make the journey.  Nightmares are most favored by night hags, but daemons, devils, powerful spellcasters, and even rare creatures like unseelie fey and divs might partner with these fell steeds.

A man with a lantern on a lonely country road offers a horserace, preferably one with a small wager attached.  Then he offers a second race for larger stakes, with the participants switching horses.  The man is a devil shrouded in illusions, the horse a nightmare, and anyone taking them on their offer might find herself finishing the race on a different plane.

A centaur sorcerer discovers the source of his accursed bloodline: a cauchemar with strong ties to powerful night hag twins.

A tower made of dreamstuff on the Ethereal Plane drifts aimlessly in the gray and cannot be approached by people of goodwill.  The easiest way to reach it is to secure the services of a cauchemar. Breaking and bridling one by force will be difficult, and securing one’s cooperation requires guarantees of destructive sprees in the mortal world.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 216

Catoblepas

An episode of The Dungeons &Dragons Podcast referred to the catoblepas as “the death cow.”  Mystarans and the D&D Cyclopedia referred to it as the nekrozon (for no discernable reason other than the nekro- prefix.) But a mythological animal that dates back to Pliny the Elder (and one of the few we have from non-Egyptian Africa) deserves some respect.

When a black dragon is slain far from its swamp, speculation is rife as to where its treasure might lie.  Would-be salvagers must contend with the catoblepas which has stumbled upon the dragon’s lair, as well as the will-o’-wisps who follow the beast, reveling in the terror it causes.

Some truly daring (or foolhardy) gourmands believe the mildly poisonous cheese of the female catoblepas to be a delicacy—mostly for its reputation, not its flavor.  Since the cows are impossible to domesticate, they seek equally daring (or foolhardy) volunteers to milk the beasts in the wild.

Though a magical beast, not an aberration, even nature recoils from the catoblepas.  A forest springs up in the middle of a village as grove of treants begins animating and replanting trees out of the path of a marauding catoblepas.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 52

Cassisian

Cassisians may be the weakest angels, but their faith is strong and their perfect memory ability can make them precious eyewitnesses.

When donned, a helm in a treasure hoard unfurls its wings and reveals itself to be a cassisian.  Its memory and protective aura are useful, but its constant sermonizing about the need to fight hobgoblins may alienate reluctant wearers…or drive eager disciples to rash acts of bravado.

A newly manifested cassisian’s form is that of a helmet of a recently fallen general.  Assuming the angel and the general are one and the same, the cassisian’s spirit might know the battle plans that could save a nation—if it can be induced to remember its former life (if any).

The stereotype of the agnostic, deity-defying wizard is often overdone.  Good-aligned wizards in Corym are quite mindful in their devotions, and summon cassisians to serve as their familiars, advisors, and confessors.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 26

Caryatid Column

Other golems are brutes; caryatid columns are sculptures.  They are also more likely to be found in large groups (called colonnades).  Though weaker than most true golems, their presence indicates that what they guard is not just valued; it is loved.

Eight caryatid columns line the cliffside tombs of a forgotten kingdom.  Studying the columns carefully may reveal how to keep them from animating, as well as which of the eight doors they guard are safe to open.

Not all caryatid columns are created by commission.  The columns of the House of Winged Wisdom were unremarkable at the time of their carving, but when a division of horsemen would have sacked the temple, the swordmaidens animated to protect the House’s human and oriole charges.

The bankers of Ulm are known for their distinctive blue cloaks.  What is not widely known is the reason: they wear blue so that the caryatid columns that line the vault do not animate and attack them.  The building that houses the state bank was once a palace, and the rich blue color was a sign of rank to the gynarchy which ruled there.

—Pathfinder Bonus Bestiary 8

Carrion Golem

Flesh golems are art—mad, twisted, deranged art dressed as wizardry or science, but art nonetheless.  A certain craftsmanship is required.  Carrion golems are the slapdash creations of those reprobates who cannot even be bothered to pay the resurrectionist for quality corpses—or the constructs of evil nations who have found the golems useful for germ warfare at a comparatively low price.  Either way, the sight of a carrion golem is a sign of moral bankruptcy.

The Grand Duchy of Vash is said to be unconquerable.  The nation’s liberal use of battlefield dead, including its own citizens, for creating carrion golem shock troops is a major factor.

Blight druids worship nature’s processes of decay and death.  While aiding in the creation of artificial life is abhorrent to most, some find a certain poetry in sending civilization’s diseased waste back to the source, in the form of carrion golems that rampaging through the stews.

Baltifor Ames tried to pass off a carrion golem as a flesh golem to his peers in the Academy.  Found out and expelled, he nurses a grudge against the institution, sending his carrion golem to kill or infect students in the dark of night—especially on holidays, when they are most vulnerable.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 136

Carnivorous Blob

Depending on your campaign, carnivorous blobs can be apex of the ooze phylum…or you can advance your campaign timeline to 1958.

When the dwarfhold of Hammer’s Reach shut its doors and fell silent, an oncoming glacier was blamed.  Now, after a record-cold half-century, a party of explorers seeks to reopen the gelid halls.  They face not only furry albino bugbears and chardas by the score, but the true doom of the Reach: a carnivorous blob that was frozen by the dwarf priests begins to stir as temperatures rise.

The metal canister is almost certainly an ancient, very sophisticated lighthouse, or so the sages say, for the top has glowed by night generations.  But why a lighthouse was needed in the badlands is a quandary.  And on the night the glow fades to nothing, a strange burbling, glooping sound begins within the tower-sized metal tube.

Some truly deranged cultists see in oozes power to wield or hunger to emulate, feeding carefully contained pet slimes elaborate meals and even sacrifices.  The fiendish lords who govern such creatures even sometimes answer—rarely with boons, but more often by morphing the cultist’s oozes into colossal carnivorous blobs that devour their would-be worshippers…and any surrounding city blocks.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 51

Camel & Ram

Most herd animals live in temperate or tropical climes.  Those that live in the extremes—dromedary camels in the deserts, rams at high altitudes, and Bactrian camels in both—are hardier beasts.

Betting on camel racing with minted coins is forbidden in Ilpesh, due to the local clerics’ interpretation of their scriptures.  Instead, bettors buy ceramic pieces, make their wagers, and then cash in their winnings.  This workaround threatens to collapse when the gold held in reserve is stolen.

A quixotic evangelist calls for an extermination of all horned rams in his canton, as their skulls are favored for demonic rituals.  Those few townspeople who follow him up the mountain risk being Bull Rushed off the slopes by the aggressive rams or being picked off by the wyverns who are growing tired of mutton.

A merchant has a proposal: take his camels to market without a loss of more than twenty percent of his herd.  He neglects to mention that the route takes one through not one, but two blue dragons’ territories—a young drake who wants to feast and an older, investment-minded wyrm eager to start a merchant train of her own.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 154

Cacodaemon

Cacodaemons are the lickspittles, toadies, pets, and soul batteries of daemonkind.  Their ability to trap the spirits of the recently departed in soul gems makes them a threat even when they are not a party’s primary antagonist.  And they are never not hungry…

A battle near a planar rift draws the attention of a swarm of cacodaemons.  They come boiling through the thin barrier between the planes, adding further confusion (and confusion spell effects) to the struggle.  The cacodaemons eagerly devour and digest the souls of the dead.  If they are not stopped, the sheer number of souls consumed will act as a beacon to larger daemons, night hags, and other terrors.

Just before he stumbled through a teleportation circle, the young rogue Wil Minchum was bitten by a cacodaemon in a dungeon halfway across the world.  Now suffering through cacodaeomonia, he has not had the Fortitude to free himself of the disease.  Worse yet, the cacodaemon’s monotonous telepathic conversation—“killyou eatyoursouls gobbleitup eateateat inthebellyyougo gobbleeatdie”—is driving him mad.

On the strand of a sun-baked colonial city, a piscodaemon runs a bizarre and deadly gladiatorial arena that sits open to the sea.  The many lizards and snakes that lurk in the sand—and even the octopi in the tide pools along the shore—are actually cacodaemons eager to snap up the souls of the fallen.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 64

Bythos

When players try to break the universe—and they always do—it’s nice to have an in-game reason to convince them why they shouldn’t…or punish them in a game-appropriate way for going ahead.  Bythos aeons will quickly teach any time-traveling parties why mucking in the fourth dimension is a no-no.  And parties trying to take advantage of a planar rift may have to delay a bythos who wants it closed—if it’s even possible to delay a master of time. (GMs might want to be careful about how they run bythos combat, though; the confusion of a few Temporal Strikes should be fun, but a heavy succession of time-related effects may frustrate players in a bad way, rather than in a constructive one.)

An artifact allows users to go back in time 12 hours.  If they overstay their deadline, they attract the attention of a bythos tribunal.

A prophecy fulfilled returns a king from his watery grave on a boat pulled by swans.  But a bythos determines someone must replace him outside the time stream—likely a cavalier or aristocrat of equal level—and is implacable in its search for candidates.

The plane-hopping corsairs of The Mendicant come screeching into town through a rift in a burst of gatefire, two bythos hot on their tails.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 10

Bunyip

As already mentioned, the Paizo folks love folklore.  And one of the things they’re great at is looking beyond Europe for inspiration.  Thus the bunyip, Australia’s preëminent bogeyman (or bogeybeast, rather), which they interpret as a shark/seal combo. Don’t be fooled by its name or appearance, though—the bunyip is scary (and not just because of its Roar ability).  No two legends quite agree on what one looked like, but all agree that bunyips devoured people without a trace, or merely horribly mauled the lucky.  So play them as ambush predators—bursting through rotted piers, then disappearing before a party can even get a spell off—and watch players squirm.  Maybe even deny them the chance to Spot for story effect.  Players expect to be scared during a gothic horror adventure or when facing demons.  But have them haggle for the price of fish by the water’s edge, only to suddenly find themselves haggling with the fisherman’s wobbling legs, and they will really panic.

Despite its prime location in the bustling heart of Bertram’s Harbor, Bunyip Pier sits abandoned.  Locals blame a bunyip that devours anyone who lingers on the pier, and numerous jagged holes in the wooden planks bear out their story.  Strangely, no attacks are reported anywhere else in the harbor.

Folk on Goldwater Mere tell of a lorelei, a kind of mermaid whose enchanted song leads men to their doom.  The merfolk woman may be innocent—she is oblivious to the fact that that her voice echoing over the waters attracts men who become meals for the resident bunyip.  Or she may in fact be a lorelei, and her loyal bunyip pet shares his bloody catches with her.

Hrolf the Sea Wolf has lost three longboats to a mated pair of bunyips.  Now he cannot go viking and his remaining ships are pulled far up the shore.  The hero who can save him will earn his undying fealty—but also the enmity of the monks and clerics whose monasteries he raids.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 50

Bulette

The notion of a landshark either doesn’t work for you at all, or it really, really works for you.  If you’re in the latter camp, the bulette is likely already your favorite monster.

The dwarves of Amberhold will not crown their new thane until his family crest is carved on a shield made from a bulette.  Since Hemmut Oakenheart is a wizard with a lame foot, he needs surrogates to help him slay one of the beasts—and survive the journey back through goblin and behir-infested lands.

The peasants of Velustan act more like sailors on a grassy sea than farmers, penning their animals on small stony hummocks of land and tending their crops from sail-driven wheeled skiffs.  The analogy is an apt one, as Velustan is infested with bulettes, who leap sharp-like upon any prey unwise enough to travel on foot.

Halfling farmsteads ransacked.  Burrows collapsed.  Whole families missing.  Despite the prayers of the priests, the rune-carved boundary wards of the druids, and the mountains that border the land on two sides, the worst has finally happened: Bulettes have discovered the Seven Shires.

—Dungeon Denizens Revisited 4–9 & Pathfinder Bestiary 39

Joshua J. Frost has plenty on bulettes in Dungeon Denizens Revisited, including some wicked variants.

Bugbear

Classic Monsters Revisited did for the rest of the humanoids what the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path had already done for goblins: making too familiar, almost passé monsters exciting and vital again.  Bugbears opened the book, and they were one of the most radical revisions in it.  By returning to the bugbear’s bugaboo roots, Paizo made them creatures that fed on fear—a far cry from the furry thugs they’d been in most incarnations of the world’s oldest role-playing game.  Their more mythical reincarnation may feel alien to veteran players, but the revamp definitely turned an also-ran goblin subrace into a truly exciting threat.

A young noblewoman complains of being stalked in her new estate, which her parents have rented for the city’s fashionable season.  Investigation reveals not only that she has been a target of a bugbear, but also that the house is riddled with secret passages, including some to caverns below the city.

A superstitious ranger fears for his young charges and his sanity, as members of his scouting patrol begin vanishing one by one, and the culprit defies his attempts at tracking it.

A hobgoblin general’s bugbear strike team has gone rogue, looting at random and pursuing fear-addled prey (including other goblinoids) rather than military targets.  After surrounding and surprising an adventuring company that stumbled too close to his encampment, the general offers them a choice: whether to remove his bugbear problem or be dinner.

—Classic Monsters Revisited 4–9 & Pathfinder Bestiary 38

I’ve stuck to the core bugbears for this post, but check out Classic Monsters Revisited for a host of bugbear subraces displaying a variety of intriguing powers and habits.  It’s a must-read if you like new monster variants.

Brownie

It’s okay to have a “monster” the players never fight.  Helpful farmstead faeries, brownies aren’t martial like pixies or prone to turning evil like leprechauns (who morph into the grim redcaps when they spoil).  Use brownies as familiars, entrées into the faerie courts, or just as a vehicle for quiet domestic magic.  Let the PCs find saucers of milk set out by a stone wall, or catch a glimpse of a brownie as they reshoe their horses…then move on.  Small, simple details and folk customs evoking a world not centered on the characters make their experience more real.

Some familiars manifest magically; others are called.  When the Esmeralda Chase (N female human enchanter 5) gained her brownie familiar, she never expected the Gorse Queen to pay a visit, demanding her subject back.

Upon assuming his title, Lord Karsten Dent learned his bountiful fields were the result of a brownie gang’s kind labor—but he was not discreet about his discovery.  The fey departed in a huff, and soon Dent’s crops failed and fortune dwindled.  He seeks to win back their favor, but needs guides to help him find them.

In the wilds, some bands of brownies never took up with humans, keeping instead to the deep woods.  Their kindness to travelers is often just a strategy to keep strangers on the path and away from their burrows.  If not, brownie rangers, druids, and rogues employ snares, entangle spells, and loyal animals to harry interlopers until they flee.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 49

Bronze Dragon

Bronze dragons seem to be the forgotten metallic species.  The others have well-defined characters—gold dragons are kings and counselors, silvers are crusaders, coppers are pranksters and dilettantes, and brasses are incorrigible gossips—and tend to show up relatively commonly in published adventures.  Bronzes tend to appear only as companions to powerful wizards or paladins.  But maybe that’s how bronzes like it.  They are guardians, wardens, librarians, and lighthouse keepers.  They gladly fight for a good cause—especially if the pay is right—but don’t go seeking out such causes like silvers do, and their seaside lairs already get more visitors than they need.  They’re happy to tend their scrolls, hunt pirates, and keep evil from their beloved shores.

Quentark is a young bronze dragon trying to regain his home from a coven of sea hags and their merrow thralls.  He will consent to be a mount or companion in order to gain allies and experience.

The lighthouse at Breaker Point is run by an old man with bronze skin who rarely speaks.  A few local shipwrights claim he is an expert on the movement of pirates.  His knowledge can be purchased with expensive treatises on engineering, preferably wrapped in waterproof oilcloth.

Two naval powers battle over the Strait of Horns—a war that is equal parts territorial squabble and pure political wrangling.  A bronze dragon who lairs in the area will have none of it, sinking any ships she catches fighting in her realm.  Having failed to get the bronze to join a side, the two nations now seek emissaries to persuade her to allow them to fight unopposed—and possibly kill her if she refuses.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 104–105

Brine Dragon

Primal dragons are exciting because they’re new—true dragons that tradition hasn’t yet put its stamp on, with some planar flavor to boot.  Brine dragons appear to be the Machiavellis of the family, interested in power for its own sake.  In fact, the cutthroat characters of many peninsular city-states’ governments may be due to the influence of brine dragons (or to seaside princes seeking to emulate them).

Unbeknownst to surface-dwellers, the oceans are home to fiercely territorial empires.  The citizens of Floris were not aware that they verged upon a brine dragon’s domain until the morning they awoke to her sahuagin centurions occupying the ports.

The brine dragon Klettiraxis collects humanoids the way a rare-book collector hoards first editions.  He stores his prize possessions in air bubbles on the Plane of Water, where they remain trapped by his magic and their own sad lack of gills.

Grandfather Tide, as he is known, would claim to be a simple wyrm who wishes to be left alone.  But for more than a hundred miles in each direction, halfling boat people leave a portion of every catch for him, locathah seek him out for baptisms, and merfolk seers refuse to even speak of him.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 94–95

Brijidine

At CR 17 and with the powers of a volcano, brijidines are practically forces of nature.  The volcanic goddess to whom natives sacrifice gifts of fruit and jewelry might be a brijidine, and it was likely a brijidine that taught the first elves to smith (and compose ribald poems).  They will most likely be on good PCs’ sides, though they have fiery tempers and may be more concerned with fighting devils than with whatever the PCs’ priorities might be.

A brijidine loved a mortal viking lad and swore to protect him.  When she discovered his corpse slain by unknown means, she covered his body in molten stone and surrounded his bier with a ring of fire.  Now she hunts those rumored to have killed him.

Brijidines often frequent the Plane of Fire (one of the few good creatures to do so) or the Plane of Earth, reveling in their command of flame, rock, and magma.  One brijidine haunts the far reaches of the Plane of Air seeking lightning and powerful acid weapons with which to fight devilkind.

Worshipers of fire as purity, brijidines love phoenixes.  One brijidine guards a nest of something more rare than adamantine: an obsidian nest of phoenix eggs.  Until the bird inside hatches, each egg is an item of artifact-level power, and there is no shortage of curious scholars and evil magic-users who want the eggs for their own ends.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 37

Brass Dragon

Sociable, chatty, and more than a little rumormongering, brass dragons are excellent contacts and information gatherers for PCs.  Though a party will likely never need to fight one (brasses rarely tarnish), if they are in a desert setting there is always profit to be had in conversing with one.

Once a fixture in the market of Akwat, the brass dragon Cyrillisense was recently scarred in battle against undead and has turned morose and antisocial.  His best friend, a caravan master and local raconteur, fears for his sanity.  Meanwhile, travelers have been disappearing out past the oases, and the few tracks that have been found point to a great clawed beast.  Are the undead to blame or has the brass tarnished?

After a thrilling encounter defeating some relic smugglers, the brass dragon Paramus became enamored of a pale-skinned detective from the North.  Using a magic ring to adopt human form, Paramus now travels as the inquisitor’s turban-bedecked manservant and bodyguard.  The pair solves mysteries in the rainy capital of Londinium, and while Paramus bitterly complains about the weather, he loves his work and has become quite good with a falchion—though he is not above returning to draconic form when the needs of a case dictate.

In the Land of the Crescent Moon, brass dragons are the only species of true dragon.  These chaotic neutral brasses are spoken of in whispers, since they are as likely to eat a man as they are to speak with him.  They are regarded as lords of the desert, able to control the sands as ably as any genie—and in fact, they often treat with genies and divs alike in their lairs, depending on their natures.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 102–103

We’ve mentioned Mike McArtor’s Dragons Revisited before, but let’s give the book another nod for explaining how to deftly role-play a brass dragon.

Bralani

Bralani azatas are the most rough-and-tumble of an already rough-and-tumble lot. Though good, they’re not afraid to go looking for a fight—or even just a sporting match or a good hurricane—so there are plenty of reasons why PCs might encounter one, whether on the Material Plane, the goodly planes, or even the Plane of Air.

A formerly hapless crew of bandits who claim to rob from the rich to give to the poor suddenly improve markedly in effectiveness, particularly during heavy windstorms.  They turn out to be receiving instruction and advice from a bralani.  For the azata to have involved herself so indicates larger forces are at work.

Even the most free-spirited azatas have their limits.  When a newly substantiated bralani manifests wielding eldritch firearms rather than a composite longbow, all Elysium is in an uproar, and his archer kin eye him with open suspicion.

A bralani archer is…well, not exactly in exile…but he has been removed from his kin for a long time.  After missing him at one too many azata tent festivals, his lord sends mortal planewalkers to seek for him.  It turns out he is in the palace of a djinni and has no intention of returning.  Disturbingly, a pair of succubi and a vrock also frequent the cosmopolitan vizier’s chaotic-friendly accommodations.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 24

I try not to use Pathfinder-specific locations here, but I think Elysium is a general-enough term I can get away with it.

Bone Devil

Hell’s inquisitors, scorpion-tailed osyluths know two things: torture, and the information they glean from it.

A particularly impudent and imprudent imp begs to be saved from the attentions of a bone devil.  Any interaction with the tiny creature is lose-lose, however.  The imp is perhaps the most annoying devil alive, and cannot resist attempting to trick, torment, and corrupt its would-be saviors.  Meanwhile, merely conversing with the imp is enough to attract the ire of the osyluth, who has already ripped through a magician’s college looking for it.

A city judge condemns nearly every plaintiff who comes before him, producing evidence that shocks even the prosecuting barristers.  Investigation reveals the judge has subcontracted the court’s evidence-gathering to an inquisition of bone devils.

An artifact can determine truth from falsehood.  Currently dormant, it requires the sting of a bone devil’s tail to operate.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 74