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!

Marut

With a name that recalls both stern angels and Hindu storm deities, you know maruts mean business. And since their business is the slaying of those who have lived too long, PCs have a better-than-average chance of running into them.

Of course, the question is: What makes a marut take action?  Are all the ancient wizards and liches out there just at the back of a very long list, and the maruts just haven’t gotten around to them yet?  Or are maruts saved for particularly egregious cases—say, 10 lifetimes lived or the sacrifice of an entire town to power the magic?  Or do you have to cross some threshold—perhaps enter or leave the Outer Planes—to tweak the maruts’ alarms?  And does killing a marut earn you a pardon, or will another activate to take its place?

For the GM, what’s fun about maruts are the spell-like abilities and the cinematics: plenty of spells to help the marut find its quarry (true seeing, locate creature), make a grand entrance (air walk, dimension door, plane shift), prevent escape (wall of force), and then fists of thunder and lightning and spells that deal a lot of collateral damage (mass inflict light wounds, earthquake).  Maruts are your chance to play the avenging angel (or rather, inevitable) to the hilt.

Two displaced nations divided by faith and race have squabbled over the same holy ground for centuries.  Now a peace treaty that could end the violence is about to be signed.  Neither side fully trusts the other, of course, but both sides trust the saintly half-elven prelate overseeing the accords.  Unfortunately, the prelate has cheated death for generations in his pursuit of this very settlement  A marut has arrived to slay him, and if it succeeds the treaty will never be signed.

The rise of the samsaran race has caused a dispute over jurisdiction in the Court of Gold and Bone.  A splinter group of maruts has decided that the blue-skinned reincarnating people are in violation, and their members begin to execute samsarans one by one.  The Court’s remaining axiomite and inevitable officers need mortal agents to subdue and reprogram or kill the faulty maruts.

Fleg is a legendary arcane trickster who once even managed to snatch and depower the phylactery of a lich—but in doing so, tainted her own soul with the lich’s essence.  Now a marut with orders to slay the lich has both the undead and her in its sights, considering her a vessel for the bone wizard’s evil.  Fleg needs bodyguards to shield her from both the vengeful lich and the implacable inevitable while she pulls off one last score: rather than fight her sentence, she’s going to solve her marut problem by stealing a little divine immortality—after all, goddesses don’t come with an expiration date.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 166

Lhaksharut

If you’ve ever wondered why reliable gates are always in the most ridiculously inaccessible places (besides giving PCs something to do), or why hordes of the Abyss haven’t just swept across the land, the orrery-bodied lhaksharuts are the reason.  These CR 20 inevitables are physical (note those six arms, perfect prediction, cunning reflexes, and wounding weapons) and magical (dictum and imprisonment for the win) powerhouses.

It’s worth noting that lhaksharuts top even maruts in terms of power.  So in a fantasy universe, preserving the sanctity of the planes is apparently even more important than maintaining the balance of life and death itself…

An axiomite evangelist wishes to bring the war against chaos directly to the proteans.  To do this, he will need to find a way to distract his own people’s lhaksharuts, perhaps even go so far as to sabotage the inevitable factories.  Mortal pawns from the Prime will do nicely for either task.

Through complicated legal channels—and in the Outer Planes, that’s saying something—a pit fiend has received a dispensation from the inevitables to allow a gate to open during a solar eclipse—long enough for his hellish armies to march.  Should adventurers try to stop the incursion, they must defeat not only the immolation devil general in charge of the rearguard, but also the lhaksharut monitoring the gate’s function.  While it loathes the arrangement, a lawful contract is a binding one…or is it?

Lhaksharuts maintain a wide network of informants.  A party that has spent its career combating incursions from the Elemental Planes discovers its benefactor was an inevitable all along.  The adventurers are so marked by their experiences—one bearing fiery wings, another with water magic tattoos, a third with a collection of ioun stones and bottled lightning elemental—that their employer now considers them tainted.  When the lhaksharut arrives to seal away a demiplane they found that is all that keeps an impoverished desert nation alive, it coldly thanks them for their service and tries to trap them on the opposite side of the shutting gate.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 164–165

Kolyarut

The stealthy kolyaruts aren’t the strongest inevitables—but they are among the most interesting, and (to my mind) the most likely to be encountered by PCs.  Zelekhuts chase those on the lam…but they have the aid of a multiverse of watchmen, bounty hunters, and inquisitors.  Maruts and lhaksharuts are more likely to go after PCs’ long-lived and planar-breaching enemies.  (A PC who cheats death enough to rouse a marut’s ire will likely have roused her pantheon’s anger already…and likely suffered level or Con loss as well.)  But bargains get made—and broken—ever day.  Oaths get sworn and forsworn.  Adventurers are particularly bad about saying what they need to say to get out of a jam, trusting their swords to free them from the consequences later.  Kolyaruts are those consequences…and with their powers of invisibility and disguise self, PCs may not even see them coming before it’s too late.

Seven winters ago, a disguised kolyarut arrived at the court of King Aelfred II, announcing that it was searching for an oathbreaker who would soon be arriving.  But the man never showed.  In the years since, the kolyarut has acted as an informal protocol adviser to the somewhat rough-and-ready borderland king, using its knowledge of the continent’s customs to polish the airs and graces of the king and his courtiers.  Now King Aelfred’s castle is a shining example of the Rule of Law and a social hub for nobility of all kinds…but the kolyarut still inspects every visitor, and has offered hints that its hunt may soon be over.

Carstomides of the Fiery Writ is a contract devil who specializes in buying up broken contracts of all kinds.  Through axiomite agents, he sends hired kolyaruts to find and subdue the offending parties.  He then offers the vulnerable mortals a choice—pay up, receive retribution from the kolyarut, or get three wishes…for the price of their souls.  His success rate is staggering.

Adventurers who free a noble djinni are unknowingly bound to his lamp due to an ill-considered promise.  Soon they find themselves whisked to the Outer Planes by a single rub from the lamp’s new bearer.  As mortals they are not compelled to follow the orders of the bearer, but if they don’t an inquisition of kolyaruts appears to attempt to put geasa on them.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 163

If it’s not clear by now (you all: Duh, dude, it’s totally clear), I dig lawful adversaries.  It’s so much fun to throw the same inevitable who helped the group vs. a demon after their azata (eladrin, for you 3.5 folk) ally in the next heartbeat.  And I also like adversaries who can be defeated by a good argument or legal loophole as well as by sword.  (My old GM—hey Graham!—will proudly note this is my Vampire heritage showing through.)

Arbiter

The weakest of the inevitables so far described, arbiters are Tiny factotums for the forces of Law.

A Lawful holy site has called a manticore to be its guardian, augmenting it with permanent fox’s cunning and owl’s wisdom effects.  The formerly rapacious (and, it must be said, happily so) Razormane is now tormented by his newly boosted consciousness…and by his would-be consciences: two bickering arbiters manifested to aid and educate him.

Appalled at watching his baron descend into abject (but strictly legal) cruelty, a Lawful Neutral court wizard finally throws in with the budding rebellion.  His arbiter familiar, Nul-Quorum-One, is doing everything it can to cajole its master into returning to their rightful liege lord’s service—including hiring adventurers to bring him back by force.

An extraordinarily large flock of arbiters has overrun the town of Brighton, inscribing it with strange symbols and commanding obedience.  Despite their truespeech ability, they insist on communicating primarily in Celestial, and have even employed their electric bursts on a councilman whose questioning of them turned violent.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 162