Gray Philosopher

A gray philosopher looks like a seated, robed figure of insubstantial smoke, forever lost in thought. Around it flit tiny glowing wisps called malices, with vaguely human faces, gaping mouths and spindly clawed hands. These are its wicked thoughts given form and will.

The philosopher itself cannot be turned, has no attack and does not defend itself. Both it and its malices ignore mind-affecting magic such as charm or phantasmal force, and nonmagical weapons cannot harm them.

Malices are tireless and spiteful, never straying beyond 100 feet of their maker but slipping through the smallest cracks. They swarm any victim they find and strike with the attack rolls of a 9 HD monster. Their bite deals 1d10 damage to good characters, whom they especially hate, 1d8 to neutral ones and 1d6 to evil ones. Clerics turn them as spectres; otherwise they fight until destroyed or turned, and all of them vanish the instant the philosopher is destroyed.

The philosopher stays absorbed even under attack. At the moment of its destruction it looks up with a look of wicked insight, then disappears with a drawn-out shriek of evil glee. Everyone who hears it must save vs. paralyzation or begin trembling with fear, losing 1 point of Dexterity until remove fear or remove curse is cast on them.

Once an evil cleric, it perished with some weighty philosophical puzzle still unsettled in its mind, and now does nothing but ponder it. It never reaches an answer. Instead, its evil thoughts gather into malices, 2d4 for each century it exists, and whether it even knows about them is unclear. It is found in remote places, especially ruined temples, libraries, monasteries and other centers of learning, and never moves from where it first sat down to think; only destruction will shift it.

Some clerics and scholars suspect that powerful evil clerics who become gray philosophers were trying to join the gods. They theorize that a few actually solve their riddle after at least 1,000 years and transcend mortality as immortal beings of profound evil. Because of this possibility, sages urge anyone who finds one to destroy it at once.