Chraal

When a truly vile, hate-filled being perishes amid the frozen paraelemental realm of Ice, the powers of that plane sometimes seize its life force and condense it into a chraal (the plural is the same). Nothing of its old memories survives. What remains is a glowing cloud of frigid energy locked inside a brutish shell of hard, blue-black ice, 8 feet tall, with a head set low between massive shoulders and thick arms ending in claws that can crush stone. The cold light inside shows through its eyes, its mouth and the cracks at its joints.

Mute and incapable of any communication, a chraal still has enough wit to follow commands, and it is cruel and greedy, delighting in any chance to hurt the living.

The chraal rakes with two claws for 2-12 damage each. Once per turn it can exhale freezing air in a cone that stretches 60 feet and spreads to a 10-foot width, dealing 8d4+8 damage, halved by a save vs. breath weapon. Cold of any sort, magical or not, cannot harm it, but magical fire does double damage. When destroyed it bursts in a wave of nonmagical cold, inflicting 3-18 damage on everything within 20 feet; a save vs. spell halves this. It is formed from a slain being's essence but is not undead, so it cannot be turned.

Magic on the order of monster summoning VII can call one chraal to the Prime Material Plane, and some arrive through magical gates, though the makers of such portals have no hold over them and are promptly attacked. Keeping a chraal in line requires a charm monster spell, and that charm must not be dispelled: if it is, there is a 75% chance the creature turns on its master. A summoned chraal that is not allowed to hunt and kill will always eventually turn on its summoner.

Warm places slowly destroy them. A chraal loses 1 hit point per round in temperate lands and 2d4 each round in deserts or the tropics, so few last long outside arctic regions.

Chraal neither mingle nor breed. They rarely fight each other and sometimes join forces against a shared enemy before drifting apart again. On their home plane they wait in icy cysts until they sense a living creature, then break out and stalk it until either it or the chraal is dead. On the Prime they serve as guardians and hunters.

Chraal add nothing to the world but slaughter. They hunt without rest and kill without pity, and a slain chraal is utterly annihilated, leaving behind nothing its killers could salvage or use.