Zelekhut

Ladies and gentlemen, we have done it.  Welcome to the letter Z.  We have reached the end of the alphabet.

When I started this blog, there were only two Pathfinder Bestiaries (plus the 16-page Bonus Bestiary) and zero readers.  I was just writing for myself to see if I could do it.  (I don't think I told another soul about it until the letter D.)  Almost three years and three books later—the Bestiary 3, 4, and the Inner Sea Bestiary—somewhere between 800 and 1200 of you read every day, and many of you regularly offer great comments and encouragement as well.  Thanks to all of you for the awesome support, vocal or otherwise.

Today we also close the book (literally) on the Bestiary 2.  The Daily Bestiary now has an entry for every single monster on its pages—from the accuser devil and the achaierai (which are listed out of order in my Bestiary 2’s Table of Contents) to the zelekhut (including the silvanshee, whose nine-month-delayed entry I just put up this morning).  And pretty soon we’ll be done the Bestiary as well. But don't worry, we’ve still got decent chunks of the newer Bestiaries to cover as we finish up Z and swing back around to A.

Thanks again for reading!  And please tell your friends, gaming buddies, and fellow Pathfinder/D&D/fantasy RPG fans that if they like monsters and adventure seeds, this is the place to be every weekday.

Okay, onward!

Zelekhuts are probably the most distinctive-looking inevitables—I mean, come on, who doesn’t love a clockwork pegataur with barbed chains for arms?.  They are also among the most commonly encountered, being the bounty hunters of the inevitable race. 

I once wrote that kolyaruts were more likely to be faced by adventurers (since almost every adventuring company I’ve ever played in has had problems sticking to the letter of a contract), but I’m thinking now that in my haste to snark I misspoke.  People flee the long arm of the law all the time, and PCs might run across one of these otherworldly bounty hunters/executioners almost anywhere. And as with all inevitables, their dogmatism can make them the PC’s enemy one moment and their ally the next.  The zelekhut that tries to chain the leaders of an underground railroad one week might be defending them from wanted killers the next.  All a zelekhut cares about is seeing criminals brought to justice—questions of whose justice and how just the system really is are of no concern to it.

Adventurers are being chased by an indefatigable zelekhut.  Ironically, they have the means to call off the inevitable—a writ of amnesty—right in their satchels.  But the writ is worthless until it is registered in the Hall of Records, and that means a cross-country race against a creature that never sleeps.

Summoned to court as witnesses to a riot, adventurers are shocked to be arrested as “inciters of violence” instead.  It quickly becomes clear that the system is rigged against them—particularly when the prosecution and the judge are revealed to have ties to the infernal planes.  If the party attempts to escape, they find their way blocked by a zelekhut who will not be swayed from his duties to the law of the land, however corrupt.

Having fled the hangman in Eire, Matthias Dylan crossed Atlantis and reinvented himself as a gunslinger in the United Colonial Territories.  Now a respected lawman himself, Dylan realizes he can't outrun his past when a zelekhut arrives intent on returning him to the king’s justice.  Though he is too proud to ask, Dylan needs adventurers to either prove his innocence, cover his caseload, or take the zelekhut out of the picture for good.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 167

Yes, I snuck a Gunsmoke reference in there.  Because blog writing is a chancy job, and it makes a man watchful…and a little lonely.

Still more yrthak mail—uwtartarus wrote:

For once, an issue of Dragon that I have read and cherish! That issue [Dragon #325] alone drove me down the dark path of New Weird, "Bugs and Drugs" fantasy.  Plus the Ythrak Kaiju was pretty solid too!

Yep, I can confirm that that issue of Dragon was directly responsible for me buying Perdido Street Station.

And as I mentioned above, the Silvanshee entry is now up.  Go read!