Phantom Stalker

In its native shape a phantom stalker looks like a thin, wavering column of flame, with only a hint of head and limbs, something like a starved fire elemental. Called to the Prime Material Plane, it usually settles into the body of a powerfully built, red-skinned humanoid at least 7 feet tall. Its face is long, with a sharp chin, tall brow and burning eyes. Anger makes it lose that solid body and flare into something like a blazing ghost.

The creature can polymorph self, and it favors guises that carry flame colors: reds, oranges and yellows. Whatever body it wears, it can still fly. It speaks the language of the Plane of Fire and, by magic, the Common tongue of whatever Prime world it visits.

A stalker fights with two sets of claws, 1d8 damage apiece. If both connect in the same round, it hauls the victim against its burning body for an extra 12 points of fire damage. It has Strength 18/50, and it can cool its body to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit when it needs to carry something without setting it alight.

Fire of any sort cannot hurt it. Magical fire, dragon breath included, actually mends it: 1 hit point restored per Hit Die of the attack. Cold is its weakness, giving it -2 on saving throws and adding 2 damage to each die rolled.

Brought to 10% of its starting hit points or fewer, a stalker may spend its own life as a final weapon, bursting into a 6 HD fireball centered on itself and then fading out of existence. It saves this for true desperation and will not do it if the blast would catch the mage who summoned it, unless that mage is the direct cause of its death. Summoners who hand out hopeless suicide missions should expect the worst.

At home on the Plane of Fire these beings have no structure at all and are pushed around by fire elementals, efreet and salamanders, so a stalker welcomes a summons and wants to serve well, while still nursing the grudge most elemental natives feel toward whoever yanked them across the planes.

The summoning is a version of the invisible stalker spell that works the same way but needs a lump of coal carved into a flame. Masters must word every order with great care: picking up the habit from the efreet, a stalker hunts for any literal reading of its instructions that lets it bend their meaning. Past that quirk it makes an excellent guard.

One command is built into every summoning. When the master is killed, the stalker slips into the Ethereal Plane and spends 1d4 hours following the trail of the killers, which it finds without fail unless they stay shielded by spells, items or abilities that block detection the whole time. It then returns to the Prime Material Plane bent on revenge. This tracking sense awakens only on the master's death and fades once the slayer has been found, but it returns one more time if the killer slips away, giving the stalker a last try.

Downtrodden on their own plane, phantom stalkers are valued elsewhere for the liquid fire that runs in their veins. Anyone who manages to collect that essence can use it in the making of flame tongue swords.