Beast of Chaos

When a primordial queen of chaos turns her gaze on a world, she sends waves of entropy rolling across it that twist ordinary creatures into beasts of chaos. Most end up roughly man-sized: tiny or small animals grow one size category, while large, huge or gargantuan ones shrink by one.

A beast of chaos is a grotesque mockery of what it once was. Its hide turns mangy or scabbed, its flesh sags and stinks, and its coloring becomes a revolting purple veined with brown and dotted with traces of its original hue. Its limbs are misshapen, it grows a drooping snout or trunk and a mouth crowded with teeth, and it sprouts horns or tentacles.

These creatures fight with claws or hooves, teeth and horns or tentacles, roughly following their former habits but without any coordination. They are immune to sleep, hold, haste, fear and every kind of magical confusion, chaos included.

Their hearing and sense of smell are sharp, but they are nearsighted and colorblind, and bright light stings their small eyes and drives them into a fury worth +2 to initiative and attack rolls. Sunlight, which is rare in chaos-blighted lands, counts, as do continual light and flashes like sunburst or dazzle. A lasting light keeps them enraged while they stay in it; a single burst does so for 1d4+2 rounds.

A powerful artifact, the Sevenfold Rod, can undo the change. Its bearer needs a 1d20 roll of 5 or less, adjusted by his Wisdom magical defense bonus and raised by 1 for each segment joined to the rod; a Wisdom 18 wielder succeeds on 9 or less, or 15 or less with all seven segments assembled. Success restores every beast within 5 yards per segment, 35 yards in that example. A restored creature pauses for a round, then runs at top speed until it can no longer see the bearer. The cure is permanent.

Beasts of chaos hold onto whatever social structure they had before, and packs stay together more from habit than purpose. They have no territories and wander, seeking land like their old homes; since the terrain changes along with them, the search can take a long while.

Any creature of animal to semi-intelligence (Intelligence 1 to 4) can be transformed, but not one of 14 or more Hit Dice. Each gets a save vs. spell to resist.

They are sterile and care mostly about eating. Typically they last four or five years, longer if sheltered from accident and predators, which is just long enough to wipe out the area's large game and wreck the food chain; a region overrun by them turns barren as they die off.

Nothing useful comes from their bodies. Hides rot quickly and fall apart if tanned, and teeth, bone and horn turn soft and crumbly as unfired clay. The meat is poisonous: every mouthful forces a save vs. poison. Success means 1d10 damage after 1d4 rounds; failure means 2d10 per round for 2d6 rounds. Neutralize poison cast before onset prevents the damage, but each new bite needs a new save. Poison-immune creatures can eat it safely, and spider-fiends consider it a treat.