Isitoq

This familiar or servitor pretty much wins in the creepy department: It’s an eyeball that flies with wings made of bloody nerves.  Oh, and it cries salty tears of anguish and haunts victims with images from its own death.  Good times!

Named after an Inuit spirit that hunts those who have broken taboos, the isitoq is ironically created via just such a taboo (the mutilation of a corpse).  Isitoqs are likely tempting to young spellcasters because of the challenge it is to create one.  Evil priests and necromancers may even use the isitoq as a kind of a “gateway monster,” luring generalist wizards and white necromancers toward the blacker arts by loaning the young mages the scrolls of animate dead necessary to create the undead before they otherwise would be able to.

An isitoq serves the changeling Terrandala, but the undead is not her familiar.  Rather, it is a pet of her graeae grandmother.  Terrandala believes the flapping monstrosity is a sign of her relative’s esteem for her, but she is sadly mistaken.  The graeae has foreseen via a fate casting that whoever causes Terrandala’s death will one day perform a great service for the graeae, and the selfish hag wants a witness on hand for the event.

After Graham Farcry was killed in a hobgoblin raid, his sister used his corpse to create her isitoq familiar.  Graham was then returned to life when the Resurrection Wave struck Karthis.  Both Graham and his sister are now linked by the isitoq, seeing in their dreams garbled images of what the other has witnessed.  Graham is desperate to reunite with his sister and make sense of his strange visions; he does not yet know her part in his corpse’s mutilation.  She meanwhile flees from him in terror and shame.

The Crow Tree is a figure from folktales in the North Hills, a bogeyman (or bogeyplant, rather) that plucks out the eyes of liars and the unwary.  The tales are true…sort of.  On certain dark evenings travelers may come across a tree suffused with necromantic energy.  Isitoqs nesting in the branches fly out to attack, while the tree itself strikes as if it were an assassin vine.  Anyone slain by the tree surrenders an eyeball to the vile flock.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 159

Wow.  Lots of selfish family members in my post today.  I don't think there’s a reason for that, but if I had a therapist I’m sure she’d be having a field day right now.