Dhour

A dhour is a big, shapeless, amoeba-like mass of clear protoplasm in which odd organs drift and strange lights pulse, with a large three-lobed brain hanging at its center. It can spread into a disk 10 feet wide and a foot thick or pile into a cone about 6 feet high, the shape it favors for travel and battle.

Its very structure chains it to the Ethereal and Astral, so it can leave only through openings others create, and only by using probability travel. Elsewhere it lasts only as long as its PSPs; when they run out it must return. It watches constantly for a freshly used conduit or color pool, then hunts down whatever came through. It notices bodily travelers and astral projectors alike, likes to ambush beside color pools, and watches the misty color curtains of the Ethereal in the same way. It can even spot creatures speeding through astral conduits, so a traveler whisked across the Astral in an instant may be visited weeks later.

If the prey escapes it, the dhour follows, using its powers to reach any plane and strike over and over until it succeeds. The only escapes are killing it or staying in planar layers unreachable from the Astral. It prefers to avoid mental combat unless it blocks the way to its victim, using telepathy to find prey and set ambushes, often gaining surprise through invisibility or chameleon power. Dhours count as monsters for contact used against them, but not against their chosen victim.

Physically it lashes with a strong pseudopod for 4d4. On a natural 19 or 20 it flops over the target, who must save vs. paralyzation to break free or be engulfed. An engulfed victim begins to smother, dying once a span of rounds equal to a third of his Constitution has passed, and takes 2d6+6 acid damage every round. An engulfing dhour cannot move but can still lash others. Its shapeless body ignores bludgeoning (type B) weapons and takes half damage from slashing (type S) ones, and any hit on a dhour engulfing someone, or about to, deals the same damage to the victim.

Its psionic repertoire covers three disciplines. In telepathy it knows the sciences superior invisibility and mind link plus the devotions phobia amplification, life detection, invisibility, false sensory input, ESP and contact. In psychoportation it has the sciences teleport and probability travel and the devotions time/space anchor, teleport trigger and astral projection. In psychometabolism it has no sciences, only the devotions ectoplasmic form, displacement and chameleon power.

Dhours hunt alone and are not territorial. Instead each marks its chosen victim's psychic aura, a sign visible to aura sight and removable by psychic surgery, and no other dhour will touch marked prey while the one who claimed it lives.

Sometimes they stop hunting and gather in circles of 2-8, drifting aimlessly through the Astral while communing telepathically; a quarter of encounters (25%) occur in this peaceful phase. This is their only social habit, and a dhour will talk with outsiders only on its way to or from such a gathering. Circles ignore everything short of an attack, but any watchers they notice are likely to be marked for later.

Dhours seem to be newcomers; a faction of would-be gods says they arrived on the Astral only in roughly the past ten years. Those who have reached them through telepathy describe alien, unreadable minds that can nonetheless make their thoughts plain. Dhours are curious about other planes and will trade knowledge, but only when not hungry.

They belong to no known universe and probably came from some faraway alien prime world. Why they hunt so single-mindedly is unknown; some suspect they eat more than flesh, and rumor holds that their victims cannot be raised, though that is unconfirmed. After gathering in circles they apparently reproduce by splitting like amoebas, dividing their hit points between two halves, and both halves are fully grown and as strong as the parent after 6 months.