Mind Reaver

A mind reaver stands about 6 feet tall, with slick mauve skin and a head like an octopus. Pupil-less white eyes stare above four tentacles that surround a round, lamprey-like mouth full of teeth. Its hands end in a thumb and three red-tinged fingers. They favor flowing robes, often with tall, stiff collars, embroidered with images of death and despair.

They see by infravision and never speak aloud; instead they talk mind to mind with any creature, often punctuating their thoughts with hissing and an eager writhing of the tentacles.

Its weapon of choice is the mind blast, a 60-foot cone that widens from 5 feet at its source to 20 feet at its end. Anyone caught in it who fails a save vs. wands is left stunned and helpless for 3d4 rounds. The reaver then seizes one or two of the stunned and makes off with them; if others interfere, it must make ordinary attack rolls.

Some captives become slaves; the rest are eaten. Feeding on a stunned victim takes one round: the tentacles bore into the skull and draw out the brain, and the victim dies. It uses tentacles in a fight only when surprised or facing a single unarmed foe. A tentacle that hits deals 2 hp and clings, causing no more harm while attached; a bend bars/lift gates roll pries one loose. When all four have taken hold, the reaver has found its way in, and the victim dies the next round. The DM may instead just roll 1d4 for the rounds needed to kill a struggling victim.

It also commands magical powers, usable one at a time each round at 7th level of mage ability: charm person and charm monster, ESP, suggestion, levitate, plane shift and astral projection. Its mental strength imposes -4 on all saves against them. When a fight turns against it, a mind reaver flees at once, abandoning its treasure and its companions.

Mind reavers loathe sunlight. Their subterranean cities hold anywhere from 200 to 2,000 reavers, plus no fewer than two slaves apiece, every slave magically charmed into unquestioning obedience. Their enemies include powerful races such as drow and brinekin.

Each city centers on a reaver hivemind: a briny pool in which the brains of dead reavers float, still conscious, ruling as one telepathic chorus. Older and larger hiveminds reach farther, anywhere from 2 to 5 miles. It never attacks, but it warns the reavers of any thinking intruder, so within its range they can be surprised only by mindless creatures. Its reach marks the territory the city claims and defends, though raiders range well beyond it.

Mind reavers have no families. They pass the time eating, communing with the hivemind, debating how best to conquer the deep underworld, torturing captives and staging gladiatorial fights between slaves. Arrogant to the core, they view every other race as cattle and prefer the brains of thinking creatures.

Mind reavers are warm-blooded amphibians living about 125 years. All are hermaphrodites, and each spawns a single tadpole on two occasions over its lifetime. Tadpoles spend their first 10 years swimming in the hivemind pool, leaving it unharmed and fed brains now and then by the adults; most die, and the survivors grow into adults. Mind reaver ichor makes a good ingredient for a potion of ESP.

Psionic mind reavers, whom some (themselves included) consider the only true ones, share the statistics of their kin but rely on psionics rather than magic to fight, dominate and travel. They have beaklike mouths and scorn stiff-collared robes. Their powers are: telepathic sciences domination and mind link, with the devotions contact, ESP, awe, id insinuation, ego whip and post-hypnotic suggestion; psychoportive sciences teleport and probability travel, plus the devotion astral projection; the psychometabolic science body equilibrium; and the psychokinetic devotions levitation and control body.