Pelagastr

(Illustration by Roberto Pitturru comes from the PathfinderWiki and is © Paizo Publishing.)

The serpentine proteans are chaos incarnate—so much so that they can change their shape, their vital organs shift around constantly, they can just regrow new sensory organs, they are in constant flight, they are always under the effects of a freedom of movement spell, and many of them cause warpwaves that ripple through and twist reality itself.  But at least they’re bound by some basic laws of corporeal existenoh God there’s an incorporeal version isn’t there?

So, welcome to the pelagastr!  And it gets worse, because these creatures, while not being part of material existence, delight in it—the Material Plane in particular—dipping their limbs into reality to smack adventurers around or magic jar-ing themselves into humanoids to wear their skins for a while, just for kicks.  They are natural spies and investigators, and unlike other proteans seem to originate directly from the Maelstrom itself, rather than promotion/evolution through the protean caste structure.  So even for creatures of chaos, pelagastrs are…chaotic.

If you’re looking for more on pelagastrs, definitely check out Pathfinder Adventure Path #99: Dance of the Damned, which has room for far more lore (as well as teasing a possible pelagastr master) than the Bestiary 6 write-up.  But in the meantime, here are some adventure hooks to get you started:

Efreet loathe pelagastrs for the disorder the cause—and the plans they ruin with their incessant spying and possession.  Five maliks known as the Fist organize a pelagastr hunt every year.  The prize, a unique statue carved of ruby, is worth a fortune in and of itself, or it may be exchanged for a favor from one of the five fearsome lords.

The Anchored Isles are a chain (literally, thanks to adamantine fetters of extreme size and age) of floating earthbergs hovering where the Planes of Earth and Chaos intersect the Plane of Air. Here the artists and aesthetes from the Circum Sensoria allow pelagastrs to ride their bodies, unlocking the doors of perception for both parties.  But when a clique of pelagastrs begins a new fad of riding mortals into the experience of death, adventures must step in to separate the sense-mad participants.

The Snallygaster & The Pelagastr isn’t a sign you’d see above most public houses—but then again, Cardumond, with its cosmopolitan society and no less than three magic colleges, is no ordinary city.  And things are about to get even more unusual for the tavern.   Earlier this week, a pelagastr (a recent escapee from the university’s Hall of Conjuring) chanced upon the pub. Delighted by the sign outside, the pelagastr has decided that, now that he’s arrived, all that’s lacking is a snallygaster or two…and he his currently herding two giant specimens toward the tavern at this very moment.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #99 88–89 & Pathfinder Bestiary 6 214

My notes for the first draft of this post references a Snail Mail video where Lindsey name-checks my radio station—the link to which has long since vanished.  Oh, and it references me not doing my show the night before…because of snow.

Also the saved file dates from January 30. 

I…yeah, I should really post more often, huh?

Ourdivar

In the entry on ourdivars, Bestiary 6 states:

Ourdivars are spontaneously formed when called forth via spells like lesser planar ally.  They toil at the behest of their conjurer creators, acting as tools of chaos across the planes.

This is suuuuuper interesting to me.  The creature-spontaneously-created-in-the-act-of-conjuration is a common trope of fantasy fiction.  But in fantasy gaming, we tend to assume all outsiders come from a specific somewhere—after all, our characters can visit those planes.  Even summoners, who call into being conjured creatures the way most people conjure up chili fries, supposedly get the spirits they call from…someplace.  That makes an outsider brought into existence purely in the moment of conjuration an interesting beast indeed.

Now give it the body of a crystal lamia, with a weapon hand that can morph from spear to saber to morning star with just an effort of will (as if they were Junkions in Act 2 of The Transformers: The Movie!)…well, that’s a monster worth conjuring/creating. 

But once they're created, how do they react?  As living embodiments of chaos, following orders to the letter isn't going to be a strong suit, even in the service of a chaotic caster.  Are they thrilled at their sudden coming-into-being, or do they seek to return to the Maelstrom, à la Mr. Meeseeks (“Existence is pain!”)?  That leaves a lot of room to play for an inventive GM and a chaos-loving conjurer.

The enemies of Mortis Minelus have all wound up dead.  But each time, the method has been different—beaten to death, bludgeoned, pierced, slashed, even warped by some form of raw magic.  Minelus himself wears the purple and blue robes of the pacifist Morning Glory sect, having sworn “to raise no weapon, nor fire a spell in anger”—and spells testing his veracity have returned nothing incriminating.  The truth is that Mortis Minelus is an accomplished conjurer, using called ourdivars to do his wicked work.

Debtors know they can always find refuge in the Abbey of Alms.  First, the land the abbey sits upon is properly part of the March of Lady Weatherall, and thus not within the jurisdiction of the Lord-Mayor or his Dunners.  Second and more importantly, the constantly shifting stained glass window in the ramshackle abbey calls ourdivars to fend off any scion of law—be they archons, devils, paladins, or even humble local watchmen trying to fulfill a writ of collection.

Lamias and spirit nagas sometimes summon ourdivars for coitus, not combat.  The resulting entropic creatures are inventively deadly and hate the trappings of humanoid civilization even more than their serpentine mothers.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 213

Do I get to say I’m the authority on nagas?  Yeah, I’m gonna say it.

Oshageros

As proteans go, the oshageros is pretty simple.  No meditating on the beauty of ceaseless change or the nature of the Maelstrom, no trying to get mortals to broaden their perspectives, no games of transmutation or mental manipulation.  OSHAGEROS SMASH.

Of course, it’s not that simple—with Int 21, an oshageros would still wipe the floor intellectually with nearly every mortal wizard, and could out-consider (with Wis 18) even most mortal priests.  It’s just that all that piercing intellect leads them* to rather Gordian† solutions: too much order must be torn down.

That crystalline wall of Law separating Order from Chaos?  Oshageroses are gnawing at the foundations of that.  That presumptuous tower of justice on some Heavenly plane?  They’ll pop in and out in a smash-and-grab judge abduction.  That newly minted inevitable prototype?  Oshageros saboteurs will see it never reaches the production line.  And when the forces of Law strike at the heart of Chaos, oshageroses will stand ready (slither ready? side-wind ready?) with dispel law, chaos hammer, draining tentacles and warpwave bursts to turn aside the blow.

Adventurers attempt to replace the keystone of a magical arch.  To accomplish this feat, a rift must be opened, then the threads of reality anchored to the arch as a ritual is performed…all while fending off assaults from oshageroses drawn to the magnet pull of invasive law.

In theory, one shouldn't be able to walk along the Crystal Horizon separating the Universe That Is from the Void—it’s supposed to be a theoretical construct, and a sphere to boot.  But in the impossible way of the Planes, the Crystal Horizon manifests as a mountain range of otherworldly quartz and granite.  Half-celestial halfling ridge runners man watchtowers here, lighting beacon fires and racing along knife-edge precipices to warn of oshageros assaults from the misty Void.

The School of Thoughts sprawls along Avedon Square and the Aspirateum in the Sixth Sacred Ward.  Anyone who assumes the academy’s moniker is a wry joke would be mistaken—the school literally collects, catalogs, dissects, and displays important concepts from across the multiverse.  An oshageros named Uragolo, Invar, and/or Shezyx (depending on the day) joins in the School of Thoughts’s regular philosophical debates.  It is understood among the planar students that physical might is a valid means of supporting one’s metaphysical arguments, but mortals on the receiving end of the protean’s tentacle lash are often caught by surprise.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 212

*If any monster was going to use the singular “they” pronoun, you know it would be a protean. 

†As in the Knot.

In addition to the crocodilian jaws, artist Rayph Beisner gives the oshageros a tail…club?…that is also suggestive of a rattlesnake’s rattle.  Whatever it is, I love it.

Enjoy another radio show, with new Remember Sports and Calexico! Also, 15 years of the Postal Service! Stream/download it now until Monday, 02/26/18, at midnight.

Voidworm

Baby protean familiars!  (Of course, the established protean castes dispute this…which goes to show that even beings of misrule personified can have their scales ruffled.  Apparently even at the heart of Chaos there is a tiny smidgeon of order, or at least pride of place…)

By the time most characters get to Limbo, even a school of these creatures will likely be no more than a nuisance.  So they have the most potential—and potential for trouble—as familiars.  Sure, they offer leaps of intuition in the lab and can distract foes during battle.  But in other situations…well, imagine having a ferret with the smarts (and impulse control) of 6th grader that can change shape, cast prestidigitation and ghost sound, and even commune once a month.  If you’re lucky, it will be an affectionate, spontaneously morphing creature in the vein of The Golden Compass’s Pantalaimon.  If you’re unlucky (I did say “ferret” and “impulse control of a 6th grader,” didn’t I?)…well, that barbarian in the corner who just found a talking newt in his beer would like a word with you.  (And seriously, commune?  Would you really want to communicate to a Power from the Beyond by playing 20 Questions via your housecat?  Yikes.)

Speaking of which, there is no way in Hell that a voidworm familiar should be in the hands of the player 100% of the time.  Like all intelligent familiars, it’s half an NPC and should be treated as such.  A) That means more opportunities for role-playing and plot complications.  And B)…

Well, let’s be honest: Most players who pick chaotic neutral characters want to cause at least a smidgen of trouble.  Which isn’t a bad thing—in fact, it’s totally acceptable in a career path that involves a fair amount of slaying, looting, and disdain for 9-to-5 employment.  But every once in a while, it’s nice to saddle a chaotic neutral character with some trouble of his or her own.  Maybe this is the paladin in me talking, but I think a GM-controlled, hyperactive planar ferret familiar might be just the thing…

Arriving in Limbo, adventurers are enchanted by the sight of a school of voidworms skimming through the chaos—until a naunet barrels past, trying to consume the voidworms (and the adventurers for good measure).  If the adventurers drive the larger protean off, the voidworms will “adopt” the mortals as long as they remain “interesting,” defending them fearlessly until the adventurers stop to rest or pray longer than an hour.

Talimiditeron is the voidworm familiar of the sorcerer Pax Tinalt, a hired wand operating out of Basin.  The gender-shifting Tali—usually a she, sometimes sexless, sometimes hermaphroditic, never male (“They’re icky”) unless the moon is full (or very pretty)—is obsessed with finding Pax a mate.  Pax, despite his alignment, has never let go of the dwarven ideal of marrying for life…which makes Tali’s efforts at matchmaking (which usually involve ill-considered pinches via prestidigitation) rather difficult…and his own penchant for catfolk and half-orc prostitutes rather problematic.  Still, he is an excellent dungeon delver skilled at using evocation spells in close quarters, so long as female dwarves in the party can put up with his and Tali’s advances.

The party sorcerer’s voidworm familiar is especially adept with its commune ability, allowing one extra question every session.  If this question is taken advantage of, however, the protean then speaks a single sentence in a multitude of voices.  This is the semi-harmonious exhortation of a chorus of proteans that has big plans in store for the hapless adventuring company, whether they are willing or no…

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 217

As ever, more on the proteans can be found in Todd Stewart’s “Keepers of Chaos” from Pathfinder #22: The End of Eternity.

Also, for my Tumblr readers, I can imagine there are those who would take exception to my use of “gender” and “sex” as synonyms in the second adventure seed.  Rest assured I am well versed in the difference between sex and gender, as well as capable of teasing out notions of the gender one presents, the gender one performs, biological gender, heteronormative expectations thereof, and the tyranny of binary gender identity.  Just sayin’.

Naunet

The other proteans we’ve discussed so far have been schemers, philosophers, and scholars.  Naunets are a bit more straightforward in how they combat Order—they intend to dismantle it one acre at a time, and woe to any mortal that gets in their way.

The Bestiary 2 calls naunets “shock troops” patrolling the border of Limbo(/the Maelstrom/Chaos/Disorder/etc.).  But they could be found in other settings as well.  In a Darklands setting less ordered than Golarion’s (such as the Underdark of Torog as presented in 4e D&D), naunets might congregate in the ever-shifting caverns. And a spiky, tentacled, serpentine creature that destroys matter would also be perfect for a dreamscape encounters or psychedelic one-shots (Adventure Time Pathfinder, anyone?)…

To explore the Primal Storm, a wizard transfers his consciousness into the body of a golem.  He presumes the construct shell can stand up to the elemental chaos, but he did not count on the adaptive strikes of the cacophony of naunets that soon set upon him.  Now he lies crippled and in need of rescue, or his real body will starve while his trapped mind goes mad.

A rage of young chaotic dragons has an unlikely leader—a mad but quite charismatic purple-painted naunet who spurs their destructive flights.  His fog clouds provide perfect cover for them to strafe, burn, and despoil, and it is under his guidance they attack bridges, temples, courthouses, and other symbols of Law and civilization.

All of eight years old, the crown princess lies in a coma.  The court surgeon-seers summon and interrogate a psychopomp, who tells them that the princess in under no shadow from the Queens of the Dead.  The malady must then be deep in her mind.  The psychopomp leads a party of adventurers inside the princess’s psyche, where a naunet is unraveling her mental landscape for reasons unknown.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #22 86–87 & Pathfinder Bestiary 2 216

Once again, if you dig proteans, “The End of Eternity” in the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path is essential reading.

Got a really nice note from gentleman-nerd, who’s using one of the bulette adventure seeds (oh…the typos…they hurt) in his campaign.  Thanks, g-n!  Be sure to tell us how it works out.  That goes for the rest of you, too!  Leave a comment or email me via Gmail.

Keketar

Edit: There were so many typos in this entry I had no choice but to come in and edit them.  But that means this weird arrow now appears in the post.  There is no getting rid of it, without ruining the font size of the entire rest of the post.  To fix that, I would have to reënter all the text, as well as redo all the hyperlinks, etc.  Not to mention the weird spacing issues in yesterday's post.  Why?  Because Blogger sucks.  This is why I moved to Tumblr. I apologize to you all—you deserve a clean, easy-to-read blog.  Blogger won't ----ing let me deliver you that.  Every time you see the arrow above, that's me giving in to its stupidity.

When I worked on the imenetsh entry a few weeks ago, I remember feeling vaguely dissatisfied, like I remembered reading more about the proteans that I couldn’t find in The Great Beyond.  Turns out I was right: I had completely overlooked the imenteshes’ introduction in Pathfinder Adventure Path #22: The End of Eternity, as well as the massive “Keepers of Chaos” article by Todd Stewart in the same issue.  (Sorry, Todd!)

So if you want a proper Golarion take on the keketar proteans, go to any of the above.  (I also love the spread/vignette on pp. 138–139 of the GameMastery Guide for a sense of how an attacking protean might speak. And you should note that the stats for keketars are much meatier in The Great Beyond—any weapon they bond with becomes dancing!)  In particular “Keepers of Chaos” is pretty much mandatory if you want to explore the keketars’ strange cabals known as choruses.

If you can’t get your hands on the above, the next thing you should do is go to your local alternative magazine shop and pick up some graffiti magazines.  If you’ve never done this, you must—at least for me, it’s an entry into a world with an entirely different ethos and set of norms.  (I may be an indie rocker, but I’m also an Eagle Scout, so as artsy as I pretend to be, sentences like the previous one point me out as a square pronto.)  It’s a culture where the First Amendment is sacrosanct, notions of property are outdated at best and offensive at worst (especially if claimed by the government or faceless corporations), and—most importantly—the whole world is a canvas.

Read about those dudes, then imagine them armed not with spray cans, but with reality-bending magic and claws.  That’s your keketar chorus right there.

Also, there’s no reason you have to have keketars be emissaries of the Maelstrom/Limbo/Entropy/Chaos in your game.  Given their shapes and powers, in your campaign they might be fallen couatls, elevated serpent folk, or a unique branch of dragons.  With mysterious glyphs floating about their heads and the ability to remake reality, they will make your players take notice.

Climbing the Infinite Staircase between the planes, a party of adventurers discovers a keketar protean turning it into a glacier.  He appears to notice (and certainly speaks to) only the males in the group less than five feet tall.  Those are also the first ones he attacks.

The Chorus of a Thousand Insignificant Doors is dedicated to erasing the too-rigid boundaries between the planes.  These keketar proteans specialize in turning basilica doors, triumphal arches, and other portals into rifts to other demiplanes.  Most recently, they inverted a transmuter’s bottle laboratory into a lighthouse, filled the tulip- and windmill-lined streets of Elveers with necrotic sand from the Scarab’s Eye, and turned the Temple of the Marble Gavel into the intestinal tract of Phage, the Living Hungry Flesh.

On the world of Typhon, the deities and their servants all take reptilian forms.  Primal dragons speak for the elements, for instance, most of the gods count a race of true dragon or linnorms as their worshippers, and couatls are the Bringers of Law.  Proteans—the Unmakers, the servants of Entropy—are feared by all, and the arrival of a chorus of keketar proteans is regarded the way a visit from a lich archmage or a pit fiend might be seen on other worlds.

—The Great Beyond 60–61 & Pathfinder Bestiary 2 215

Apologies for the late entries all this week.  Work crazy.  I’ll try to be more on top next week.  It seems like the sweet spot for most of you is when I drop entries early in the afternoon Baltimore time, so I’ll try to get back to that.  And keep those random rolls coming!

Imentesh

Todd Stewart’s The Great Beyond introduced us to proteans—the serpentine creatures of chaos that have replaced the world’s oldest role-playing game’s slaadi.  Organized (though they would bristle at the term) into castes and choirs, these creatures work to spread disorder and entropy throughout the universe.  Surrounded by telepathic whispers, imentesh proteans are manipulators behind the scenes—treacherous Iagos equally determined to recreate the social and literal landscapes of the mortal world.

A mystic theurge is tricked by an imentesh masquerading as a divine herald and muse.  Under the protean’s sway, the theurge begins to make erratic but brilliant leaps forward in his studies.  In reality, the imentesh’s telepathic whispers are teaching theurge the rites to unleash an aeon upon his orderly, unsuspecting world.

The rise of a burgeoning middle class in Lochland has resulted in a new innovation: public museums.  A month of sell-out crowds draws the attention—and then ire—of an imentesh, who is appalled by the museum complexes’ aim of cataloging and ordering knowledge.  Employing its various spell-like abilities overnight with abandon (polymorphing, shrinking, and shattering some objects, while restoring and warping others with make whole and major creation), it seeks to turn the museum into a funhouse of chaos.

The imentesh Kemosh loves using honeyed words and wild warpwave strikes to undermine the resolve, intellects, and bodies of mortal religious leaders, philosophers, teachers, and sensei—sabotaging duelists and monks before a public bout, or sapping the will of a great debater just before an election.  Then again, if one of his warpwave ripples causes greater disruption—such as the elven pope he happened to baleful polymorph into a ferret—so much the better.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 214

Proteans are a vast improvement on slaadi.  Despite being Fiend Folio classics, slaadi just don’t have the philosophical heft required to be real representatives of disorder—their approach to chaos inevitably boils down to: “Shall I eat you now or later?”  (Plus, all they do is hang around the Spawning Stone like surly teenagers outside a Wawa.)  The tribal, inscrutable choirs of the keketars appeal to me far more.

That said, I remember there being a decent Alien-style adventure based around a red slaad in an old 2e Dungeon, and an article on the slaad lords in Dragon Magazine around the time Planescape came out.  If I run across them, I’ll post the issue numbers and details.

Edit: Reader-with-a-long-memory Landon writes:

The Dungeon Adventure you were wondering about with the Red Slaad chestburster is “Jacob's Well” from Dungeon 43. Definitely a classic.

It's actually the first adventure I ever ran, watching my giggling preteen classmates spiral slowly into paranoia. Good times, good times.

Cheers!