Marut

A marut looks like a giant hewn from one flawless block of polished black stone, without a single visible seam or joint. Its eyes burn red, and it wears golden armor with broad shoulder plates and heavy armbands. It understands every language but speaks only when questioned directly or when delivering a message it was given.

Few beings can stand up to a marut. A single punch deals 8d10 points of damage. Its magical arsenal is just as deep. At will it can use blink, deafness, shades, continual light, hold person, animate object, a lightning bolt of 8d6, and cause disease against any single creature up to 60 feet away. It may also control minds three times per day and call an earthquake once per day.

Weapons need at least +3 enchantment to harm a marut, and it regenerates 5 hit points every round. Acid does nothing to it, cold and fire spells inflict only half damage, and it is immune to death spells. Soul-trapping magic of any kind, trap the soul included, simply fails against it.

Maruts travel out from the plane of perfect order to enforce the will of whichever power owns them, whether that deity rules over disease, love or magic. A marut ignores everything that does not touch its current task or block it from that task. This seeming indifference is misleading, since a marut is brilliant and notices nearly everything around it.

Their grim errands make them look evil, but they are simply obedient to the letter. A master may even lend one to a power of a different alignment, and the instant the marut's actions stop serving its master's purpose, it leaves. A well-known legend tells of a prince who warded his palace against a plague, then mocked an old marut statue in his ballroom; it had waited since his grandfather's day, and its silvery breath killed him and all his guests.

Every marut is an enchanted construct of pure onyx, granted intelligence and awareness by the god of disease who first made them all. The stone in a single body would sell for several hundred thousand gold pieces. Since that god's nature is pestilence, the maruts he made spread sickness wherever they go, blighting plants, animals and thinking creatures alike, even while busy with some unrelated assignment.

Over the ages the disease god has handed many maruts to other powers as payment for favors, so they have changed owners many times. When it suits his own ends to hinder his enemies, some of his maruts even end up serving a good deity.