Darklore

A darklore is a squirming pool of blue-gray flesh threaded with pulsing dark green veins. It has no eyes or other visible features. From its body it can push out one to six tentacle-like pseudopods up to eight feet long, and its semi-liquid form can ooze through any gap 1 inch wide or larger.

Each pseudopod hit deals 1d6 points of damage. An evil victim must also save vs. spell or lose 1 point of Intelligence. A neutral victim has only a 50% chance of needing that save, and a good one only 25%. Beings too pure to hold any dark secrets, most likely natives of the Upper Planes, are immune to the drain but still take the damage. A creature drained to 0 Intelligence falls into a coma. Lost Intelligence comes back at 1 point per week, but the recovery stops 1d4-1 points short, so 0-3 points are gone for good.

Against good or neutral foes the darklore can reverse the flow and force a secret into a mind instead. A non-evil target struck by a pseudopod must save vs. spell or suddenly know some dark truth, gaining no Intelligence. A good creature that fails is so revolted it can do nothing for 1d2 rounds; a neutral one suffers this stun half the time. A paladin who receives such knowledge has a 1% chance of losing paladinhood, which an atonement spell restores.

The DM can use a darklore to plant a secret in a character's head or erase one he should not have. Typical secrets include a fiend's true name, where a gate to the Lower Planes lies or what opens it, a crime someone committed or is plotting, or the details of an evil item or place. A character who loses such a secret has no memory of it until he learns it again.

Its spell-like powers, each usable once per round, are clairvoyance, clairaudience, infravision, detect invisibility, detect good/evil, darkness 15' radius and teleport without error. The creature leans on these mostly to locate prey. Only weapons of +1 or better harm it, and even those deal half damage if they pierce or slash (types P and S).

Darklores first appeared on the top layer of the gray wasteland of despair and have since spread throughout the Lower Planes. They still prefer the banks of the river of the underworld, though nothing binds them there.

Since they eat knowledge, dull-witted creatures have little to fear from them, and most lesser fiends are too slight a meal to bother with. Greater fiends fear them and covet them both. A charmed or controlled darklore makes a superb spy, draining others of evil knowledge and passing it to its master. Its teleport can also carry any creature it can name, so a fiend can let one swallow its name and then teleport without error at will. The name must count as an evil secret, and giving it up permanently costs the fiend 1 point of Intelligence and its own name, which it must relearn, perhaps by writing it down beforehand or having a servant recite it. The mercenary fiends have orders to kill or seize darklores on sight.

Even the Lower Planes regard the darklore as an aberration. When an immense behemoth built long ago by the mercenary fiends plunged into the river of the underworld, its bulk hurled great sheets of water onto the banks, water that had soaked up all of the behemoth's forbidden lore. The behemoth's odd essence, the poisoned river and the nature of the wasteland combined, and the puddles thickened and woke. Not even the shrewdest scholar fiend saw it coming. How many were born from that splash, and whether they can breed, is unknown. Anyone aware of them prays for 'few' and 'no'.