Devete

Devetes are blue-skinned humanoids with long, restless tails and large, eerie eyes. They drift through the Astral Plane as if on some arcane errand. A few sages say they seek their race's lost homeland; most think they abandoned the search long ago and now have no motives, emotions or goals, which is exactly what makes them dangerous.

A devete is an emotional blank that unconsciously copies whoever approaches it. Arrive spoiling for a fight and you get one; arrive pleading for aid and it will want aid as well. The mirroring cannot be fooled: false friendliness masking treachery is answered with treachery. Facing a mixed group it copies one member at random, or the majority if there is one. It speaks telepathically to any intelligent being, and no one has ever lied to one or hidden a thought from it.

It attacks with two claws and a bite, and its motive sets the damage. From fear: 1d4+1 per claw, 1d3+1 bite. In self-defense: 1d6 per claw, 1d4+1 bite. From malice or hatred: 1d8 per claw and 1d6+1 bite, with venomous fangs forcing a save vs. poison or death in 1d4 rounds. Otherwise it deals 1d4/1d4/1d3. Devetes are immune to poison, paralyzation and petrification, and fire, cold, electricity and other elemental attacks deal them half damage.

Most devetes travel alone and aimlessly, and because each mirrors the people it meets, every encounter is different and often bewildering. Attempts to exploit the mimicry backfire, as the creature mirrors the scheme too. Someone who understands it can try to truly change his own feelings with a Wisdom check at -6; bluffing does nothing.

Occasionally several journey together, and then they turn murderously xenophobic, attacking every creature they meet out of pure spite. Such bands are neutral evil and always deal hate damage (1d8/1d8/1d6+1), venom included.

Rumor speaks of a vanished trading race that once lived in the neutral planes, where a chaotic gate-town now stands, and roamed the multiverse as merchants and explorers. Disaster came when one of their master smiths tried to build a palace of chaos-matter, an unstable, ever-changing stuff from the plane of raw chaos. The palace became something unknown and disappeared, and the race caught a chaos-plague that reached even kin on distant planes, slowly twisting each victim into a new creature until the whole people vanished. Many sages think most of them became the devetes of the Astral; some say others reached the Ethereal Plane as a mysterious race of their own.