Pakubrazi

In its true form a pakubrazi looks like a giant tick crossed with a giant fly. It can reshape any part of its body, or all of it, into the form of a humanoid race of its choice, though it cannot choose individual features, so its disguise for any given race never varies and may be recognized if met again. Head, eyes, feeders, arms, carapace, winged torso, main legs and the extra insect legs can each be changed separately, allowing endless hybrid shapes.

In insect form it attacks with two small but brutally strong claws and a bite. With humanoid hands it wields weapons with Strength 19. The bite is really a feeding tube thrust from the mouth; once it hits, the creature automatically siphons 1-2 Constitution points each round, and a victim reduced to zero dies. Drained Constitution returns at 1 point per day. A pakubrazi needs 20 points per week to sustain itself.

A human torso leaves it at AC 9, while the insect shell provides AC 6, and it can keep a mostly human shape while retaining that shell. The extra insect legs make no attacks but let it climb walls and hang from ceilings, provided there are cracks or bumps to cling to.

Each point of Constitution drained from a humanoid carries a 5% chance of tainting the victim as alien blood fights the body's defenses. In any moment of stress or excitement, a tainted person has a 10% chance of changing 1d6 body parts into insect form and becoming a frenzied beast that hunts the nearest source of blood. The fit lasts 1d4x10 rounds or until it has drained 10 points of blood. Halflings are rumored to know a cure; otherwise only a wish removes the taint.

Pakubrazi are parasites on civilized races, superb actors who keep up a show of ordinary life among their prey. Usually solitary, they can cooperate in small groups. Each individual or group claims a hunting territory and defends it to the death.

They are thought to be a survival from a long-lost verdant age of the desert world. Pakubrazi blood has occasionally been slipped into an enemy's food to taint him deliberately, a horrific form of revenge.