Immoth

Folk say the Paraelemental Plane of Ice is so cold that speech freezes in midair. Planewalkers treat that as a figure of speech, but the immoth knows better. It is a towering, roughly humanoid giant of glittering, half-transparent ice crystal, with a long tail that sweeps the frozen ground and wicked talons on its hands. Thousands of gemlike lumps of ice crust its body, and each holds a single frozen word. A beard of frost grows longer as it ages, and that beard is the only way outsiders can tell one immoth from another.

Immoths have their own tongue, and a few also speak planar common.

Its icy talons deal 1d8+1 each, and its whiplike tail deals 2d4+2. The tail looks blunt, but it is smeared with a contact venom like half-frozen brown syrup, and a victim who fails his saving throw suffers a slow, staged ordeal. First he collapses, taking -2 on all actions and 1d3 damage every hour. After 1d100 rounds the second stage begins: he babbles uncontrollably, and every word he speaks is erased from his memory for good, until all his language is gone. If he still lives after 24 hours, the poison kills him.

The words in its crust are a spell arsenal. By shattering a crystal it releases a spell-like effect, casting as a 12th-level wizard in both power and number of spells. It has the equivalent of a spell key, so the plane's usual limits on magic do not bind it. It never uses heat, fire or summoning. It favors effects that harm or hinder, like fumble, hold person and magic missile; utility magic such as fly, haste, passwall and teleport; and icy spells like ice storm, cone of cold and wall of ice. With the DM's approval it can also adapt spells to its frozen home, using ice shape in place of stone shape or transmute ice to slush in place of transmute stone to mud.

Cold cannot harm an immoth, and edged weapons deal only half damage to its hard crystal body, though no magic is needed to hit it.

Immoths are loners, and their numbers seem small. One rumored immoth keeps charmed frost salamanders, but most tolerate no company. When they do gather, it is at a hidden site near the legendary Peak of Endless Frost, where thoughts, feelings and words are said to freeze for eternity. Every word spoken anywhere on the plane ends up there. The cold is even worse than elsewhere: each round, a non-native must save vs. spell or freeze solid in 1d4 rounds. The giants comb the mountain for useful words.

To feed, they leave for months-long hunts across the plane, treating every living thing, native or visitor, as food. Attempts at peaceful talk get nowhere.

Nobody but an immoth has worked out how to use the word-crystals, but plenty of schemers keep trying, and one can fetch up to 100 gold pieces from the right buyer. Getting a crystal off the plane before it melts is the hard part.

Being solid ice, immoths likely share some kinship with ice paraelementals. One tale claims they were once intelligent ice elementals who defied a powerful mortal witch who came to the plane seeking servants. In revenge she cursed them to hunt forever for the words she had spoken to them on the frozen mountain, and the task reshaped their bodies. When they have recovered all her words, the curse will end; until then, the other words they find serve them well.

They will eat any living creature, consuming its flesh but feeding mainly on its life force. Most scholars who have studied them think immoths do not breed at all.