Contemplator

Usually a contemplator sits on a big stone outcrop in the classic pose of a thinker. He is a gray humanoid 12 feet tall, often wrapped in a gray toga, and careless explorers easily take him for a carved statue.

Hungry for all knowledge, a contemplator has concluded that the quickest way to collect it is straight from other minds, so he seizes any intelligent being that lands on or nears his asteroid. To do so he raises three arms from the rock itself. Each reaches 50 feet and has 25 hit points, and a destroyed arm can be regrown after 24 hours. If he must fight in person, he punches with his own two fists for 2d8 each in addition to the three stone limbs.

A captive seized by a stone arm is sealed in a shell of rock just 1/4 inch thick, and the contemplator drains 1 point of its Intelligence per day. This needs his unbroken focus; any interruption means the victim keeps that day's point, at least until tomorrow. Each day the prisoner may try a bend bars/lift gates roll to break out. Once Intelligence falls to 3, a stone arm hurls the emptied victim off into space.

Should a wish or similar magic restore a victim's Intelligence, that knowledge disappears from the contemplator. He cannot bear losing something he knew, and should that person stray inside 50 miles of him, he senses it at once and moves to intercept and attack.

Draining a wizard gives him all of that wizard's memorized spells. He casts each just once, never troubling to write them down, and he can use only wizard spells, not priestly ones. He still needs material components when a spell calls for them.

He spends every moment sifting what he has gathered for hints of how the universe began and how it will end, and some say that when one contemplator finds every answer, the universe will cease. Utterly without emotion, he will still usually bargain for a prisoner's life, most often demanding a quest to learn some fact or solve a riddle he names. He always imposes a deadline, and once agreed he never breaks or reopens the deal.

He can steer his asteroid by some mysterious means, generally drifting but able to move fast in any direction when needed. He feels every change on its surface as if it were his own skin, so only flying visitors can approach unnoticed.

His asteroid is littered with leftovers from past struggles. When he casts victims into the void between worlds, he keeps their belongings, mostly as a supply of components for testing his newly stolen spells.