Parai

A parai wears a floor-length gown of black leather that clings tightly from the waist up. Only its hands and head show, and both are smooth and chalk-white. The face is a hollow porcelain mask with most of the back of the skull missing; peer into the gap and you see nothing but darkness, as if the whole figure were empty. Its hair is steel.

Inside the hollow head floats a ball of white or pale yellow light, glowing out through the eyes and mouth and lighting the space behind the creature. Sages suspect this orb is the parai itself, the seat of its mind. The suspicion seems sound: kill a parai and the dress turns out to hold only air, while the white face and hands crumble to dust once the life has gone.

A parai fights with its fists and with a life-draining gaze. As long as the light sits in its mask, its fists are hard as steel, and any object used to block one must save vs. crushing blow or be destroyed. The gaze looks far less alarming but drains life as surely as a punch, and the parai regains half the damage it inflicts this way.

Its true horror is the meld, the only known way the race reproduces. A parai chooses someone of exceptional beauty, strength or intellect, judging those traits a worthy addition to its kind, and hunts that person relentlessly. Once the quarry is cornered, the light lifts out of the mask and steers the empty body forward. Without the light inside, the porcelain face and hands go soft and fiercely sticky. A victim struck by the husk's fists must save vs. spells or be glued to it, then is held as if by a web spell. Anyone who cannot break loose within one turn is wrapped completely in dress and mask and begins turning into a parai.

If companions destroy the parai before it catches its target, it dies. If they arrive only after the capture, they have three days to save their friend; the only known cures are wish, limited wish, and, strangely, the priest spell free action. Even when a snared victim escapes, the parai keeps a sliver of them. Whatever happens to the husk, the light grows a new body after one day, and faint echoes of the victim's looks often linger in it.

Parai patrol in groups of five, though a lone one may be out investigating something. They have no society to speak of: all are equals, and together they move as if guided by one mind. Whether some central intelligence directs them, or they share a diffuse hive consciousness, nobody knows, and no one has found a way to sever or exploit the link.

Found only on the plane of perfect order, a parai wants to make everything lawful and organized like itself so the multiverse will run perfectly, and it pursues that goal by converting promising individuals. It cannot be argued with. It almost never speaks, refusing to fill the air with disorderly noise; usually the only sounds are the creak of leather and the whistle of its fists.

The clockwork drones of that plane are its natural rivals, since they pursue a vision of perfection of their own and resent the intrusion. Parai drain their life force too. Any drone above the fourth base rank destroys parai on sight and orders lesser drones to attack, while the parai kidnap drones and convert them whenever they can, one of the few ways the drones' numbers ever shrink.

Travelers should watch for patrols constantly. The only sure escape is to leave the plane, since parai have never ventured beyond it, at least until they finish perfecting it, or until some especially appealing visitor tempts them to follow.