Balhiir

A balhiir looks like a softly glowing, man-sized cloud flecked with diamond-shaped glints. It glides through the air and slips through very small gaps. Wind, water and weapons neither push nor hurt it, but solid matter blocks it, so it can be sealed inside an object.

It senses life and magic within 100 feet, even through stone, and always moves toward the richest source of magic. On contact with an item, weapon or spellcaster it absorbs the magic exactly as a spellflame wielder would, counting its Constitution as 18. It cannot release that power, though; each spell level simply sustains it for a day. Holding over five times its Constitution in levels does it no harm, and it sheds the excess as light and heat at the usual spellflame rates. It drains actively once per round, while any spell cast or magical item brought within 10 feet is drained passively.

Two methods defeat it. Several high-level mages casting into it at once can overload it, as with a spellflame wielder, or an ancient ritual (details up to the DM) can bind it into an object or creature.

Breaking the vessel frees a bound balhiir, and only its liberator can rebind it. That person may instead try to pull its energy into himself by will, risking death on a failed save vs. death magic. Divide its stored spell levels by his Constitution, rounding up, for a spellflame-style danger figure, and apply -1 to the save per point over 5. If he survives, he wields spellflame as a 1st-level wielder under the normal rules until the levels run out. That ends the balhiir for good, and he must then pass a system shock roll or die.

Balhiirs dwell on the Negative Energy Plane, where they can devour any energy, life force and experience levels included. That plane is too lethal for observers to learn more.

Extremely efficient, a full balhiir stays active for months. Starved, it does not die but goes dormant indefinitely, waking over one full turn once energy enters its sensing range.

One tale tells of a young woman, held prisoner by a dragon-worshiping cult, who freed a balhiir by hitting one of the cult's wizards with the crystal sphere that held it. It drank that mage, her companion and several members of a famed adventuring company. An ancient sage-wizard told her that as its liberator she alone could end it, and she did, through terrible pain. The ordeal awoke the raw-magic gift she had inherited from her mother.