Mercurial

In its usual form a mercurial passes for an ordinary human of average height and build, with skin and hair in perfectly natural shades. Only the eyes give it away: they are pools of liquid metal, burning gold, glittering silver or rippling bronze.

What truly sets a mercurial apart is that it can shed its skin and skeleton and walk around as a separate mass of inner flesh and organs. Mercurials speak any language, plucking new ones straight from other minds, though they would rather trade thoughts silently.

Most mercurials are committed pacifists who will not fight even in self-defense; when threatened, one usually just wishes itself somewhere safe. Its every thought can become real in hyper-reality, which lets it use wish once per turn. Pushed into a fight, it punches twice per round.

Its signature trick is borrowing a form. Having shed skin and bones, it can merge its inner flesh with another creature, always with permission and never long enough to do real harm. The host may resist with a save vs. petrification. A merged host loses 1d4 Constitution per turn and must save vs. petrification again when the mercurial leaves: success means the lost points return at one per day, failure means the loss is permanent unless magic restores it. A host reduced to 0 Constitution dies.

If it must, a mercurial can hurl a blast of pure thought for 1d12+2 damage (save vs. rod for half). In hyper-reality only +1 or better weapons can hurt it. Its inner flesh regenerates 3 hp per round, and while whole the entire creature heals at that rate. Once separated, the inner flesh and the outer shell of skin and bone each have the creature's full hit points. The inner flesh keeps regenerating until the shell is destroyed; reducing the shell (or the merged mercurial) to 0 hp kills it.

Reality has levels, some thinner than the familiar multiverse and some far more intense. Mercurials belong to the fourth level, hyper-reality, where everything is heightened: colors, smells, sounds and feelings. There all damage rolls and movement rates double; the range, duration, effect and area of every spell double; and experience is earned at twice the normal rate. A mercurial wearing manacles of lesser reality is worth 22,000 XP in hyper-reality.

Their home is the Lucent Grove, a vast forest in a corner of the heavenly mountain, so bright that it blinds lesser beings. An unnamed power of pure thought made it as a quiet refuge for contemplation, and the mercurials serve that power. Each meditates alone, often resting by a river or under a tree, and they gather in families only when they climb back into their skin and bones. Shedding the body is both literal and symbolic: a way to leave the flesh behind and draw closer to their god.

A mercurial can eat most meats and vegetables, but it usually feeds by shedding its body and communing with the mind of its god.