Bodak

A bodak is a hairless, muscular humanoid with pale gray skin that shines like pearl and no visible sex. Its long face is twisted out of true, with deep sockets holding blank, milk-white eyes. The resemblance to a person is loose at best, yet many keep some trace of who they were: a twitch, a favorite fighting stance, some old habit. They have no tongue of their own but speak the language of the tanar'ri and their minions, and most still remember a handful of words in the common speech.

The death gaze is what makes a bodak feared. Anyone meeting its eyes within 30 feet must save vs. petrification; a failure is instant death, and anyone slain this way in the Abyss rises as a new bodak one day later. It can be harmed only by cold iron or weapons of +1 or better enchantment. It is immune to poison and to sleep, slow, hold and charm spells, and has 180-foot infravision. Sunlight is alien and hateful to it, burning for 1 point of damage each round of direct exposure.

A bodak may swing a sword or mace once per round, but it rarely carries one or cares to. Faint memories of mortal life sometimes catch it off guard. Once per encounter there is a 5% base chance it glimpses something familiar in an enemy; it then stands idle for one round, and afterward suffers -2 on every attack against that particular person.

Bodaks roam the Abyss, loathing their own unnatural endurance and lashing out at everything they meet, even beings plainly far mightier than they are. A tale told in the great planar city, likely invented, gives hope to the outmatched. A sorcerer-king, Morvast, stole the wife of the swordsman Teodric and mockingly offered her back for a fistful of Abyssal soil, then sent him there to die. Years later, after the captive wife had wasted away, a hooded merchant arrived with a gift and spilled earth from a black silk bag across the throne room floor. It turned to blood, then to snakes, and the king knew its source too late. The visitor lowered his hood, and his stare killed everyone in the hall. Teodric walked out to tell the people they were free, and as the sun ate away his corrupted flesh he is said to have smiled.

Many mortals go to the Abyss to battle its horrors, but certain hidden, foul reaches there are simply barred to the living. Those who blunder in and perish are agonizingly remade as bodaks.

Benign bodak: now and then, for no known reason, a good-aligned mortal's mind endures the change intact. Such a bodak has every power of its kind along with the memories and personality of its former self, but it can never cast spells, even if it once did. These rare beings seldom last long in the Abyss.