Dizantar

A dizantar is never seen outside its armor: tall, silvery plate with seamless, close-fitting joints, bristling everywhere with spikes and razor edges. Not a scrap of the wearer shows, and the eye slits reveal only blackness as deep as the void between worlds. The suit is heavy, yet the creature moves fast, nimbly and without a sound. It speaks Common in a soft whisper, and most also know a tongue of their own. Open the armor and you find nothing but smoking black ash. Their great height and three-fingered gauntlets convince most sages they are not human.

Every dizantar ever seen has carried the same weapon: a ten-foot halberd with a metal haft and a richly worked head. It wields it with 18/00 Strength for +3 to hit and +6 damage, and the halberd can hurt creatures that require +1 or better weapons. Both armor and halberd radiate magic.

In close quarters the armor itself is a weapon. A punch deals 1d6 points of damage from spikes and blades, anyone trying to grapple or wrestle it takes 1d6, and any rope or binding is sliced apart within a round. The suit also gives 20% magic resistance.

With a fly-fisher's flick, a dizantar can cast a shining magical line from its halberd. If the attack hits, the line fixes to the target and only a wish can remove it. It does no harm, but lets the hunter follow its prey anywhere inside the same crystal shell. Crossing the shell's wall or any kind of planar travel cuts it.

Three times a day, and only in the void, it can use dimension door. It always detects invisibility and sees through illusions. It can use miscellaneous magic items that are not class-restricted, but only when its hunt calls for one, and it drops the item without a second thought once it is useless.

Dizantar may appear on any world or out in space; their home shell is unknown. Their armor seems to let them survive open space for short periods. They never build ships, preferring to seize a starship to pursue a target.

They always travel alone. Cold, fearless and without morals, they bargain with weaker beings only when it helps, and more often just take what they want, whatever the cost in lives. They may cooperate with stronger creatures toward a shared goal but would rather not. Two things drive them: vengeance, and killing the void merchants, tall blue-skinned beings who sell the starhelms. A dizantar slays one on sight and spends most of its existence hunting them. Thankfully there are far fewer dizantar than merchants. Now and then one is found pursuing a vendetta against some other creature.

If dizantar eat, they never let a "lesser" being see it. The void merchants dread them and will say little about them; any whisper that a dizantar is near sends a merchant into hiding or hiring a squad of bodyguards on the spot.