Nightripper

It’s our first Inner Sea Bestiary monster!  And already it presents us with a problem: Because the ISB is so Golarion-focused—to the point that many of the monsters come from the authors’ home campaigns—a number of the monsters are very specific to the setting or downright unique.

So the Nightripper is not just a monster—he’s an NPC (courtesy of author James Jacobs).  But that doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to repurpose his stats for use in your home campaign…

Dwelling in terrible charnel cities on the Plane of Shadow, kytons pursue a never-ending quest for self-perfection through pain, mutilation, and surgical improvements.  Most of their mortal victims are rendered down for useful body parts, but a few select examples are elevated to kyton status themselves.  One such candidate was a sadomasochistic murderer of such mental stamina that his mind (and his alignment) resisted the kyton metamorphosis even as his body transformed.  Reveling in his new power, he cut a swath through mortals and outsider victims alike until his power rivaled the kyton eremites.  Determined to end his insolence, several kyton overlords banded together to eliminate their rival once and for all.  But the murderer escaped and made his way to the Abyss, where the chaotic evil plane recognized him as a long-lost son and elevated him to nascent demon lord status.  Now christened the Nightripper, he is attracting a coterie of bloodthirsty demons (mostly babaus and mariliths) and his fellow nascent demon lords (and his still furious kyton former masters) ponder their next moves in response.

Worshipping a war god is a fraught endeavor, even—in fact, especially—when one is winning.  When adventurers help the cavaliers of the Falcon Crusade seize the magical armory at Don Loch, they put the army in a position to potentially end the Century War.  But the crusaders are not paladins—they worship Villam the Lightning, not Shem the True—and their god values strife over security.  When the warpriests attempt to summon angel allies for the final battle, Lord Villam instead sends a demonic beast known as the Nightripper against his own worshippers to even the odds and prevent the peace.  If the adventurers cannot save the knights, the Century War will devour another generation.

The drow city of Xensherise is in an uproar.  Having demolished an entire nation of troglodytes, their genocide is rewarded when the Scorpion Queen sends the demonic entity the Nightripper to aid them in their quest for the surface.  But the Nightripper’s clearly human origin appalls some of the more chauvinist matrons.  If adventurers can provoke these matrons into a schism—or rally the forces of one of the lesser drow deities, like the Sorcerer Eunuch Bal—they can thwart the drow invasion before it starts.

—Inner Sea Bestiary 34–35

Looking for the nightmare?  Try in the letter C, thanks to its more powerful cousin.

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