Primordial Undying Evils

These unique monsters arose in the first ages of the world and haunt the Outer Planes. Each can be permanently destroyed only under conditions like those needed to kill a demipower; otherwise it re-forms after a set time. All three are untouched by poison, by hold, charm and fear magic, and by illusions, psionics and death magic.

Vorumbra was born soon after the first sleeper had the first bad dream, and prophecy names her the herald of doom for the world, its gods and its whole crystal shell. Her slitted eyes are the yellow-black of spoiled eggs, her forked tongue never stops flickering, and her fangs glisten with the residue of lost dreams. Each midnight scale is a nightmare she has swallowed. Her mouth could take in a hill giant, a lash of her tongue floors an armored man, and beneath it lies a greasy bog of spittle and gnawed bones.

She can glide anywhere in the gray wasteland of despair or other lower planes but nearly always lies in a vast cave by the sluggish moat of a mad god's fortress, her sleeping hiss echoing through his city. Visitors find her awake and gleeful, already tasting their worst forgotten dreams. Northern peoples call her the gnawer at the world tree's roots, and jungle folk say she waits behind an iron door beneath a volcano to eat the sun when the end comes. Only one legendary titan-slaying sword has ever truly wounded her.

Her venomous bite ignores armor; only magical and Dexterity bonuses count toward the target's AC. A bitten victim must save vs. death magic or sink into endless, nightmare-haunted sleep, ended only by limited wish or wish followed by heal, lest the sleeper be left permanently feebleminded. On an unmodified 20 she swallows a huge or smaller foe whole; inside, it takes 1d6 acid per turn and can escape only by making her spew nightmares and riding out on the flood.

Each point of damage dealt to her bursts one scale into a nightmare, as the reverse of the dream spell, seeming endless though over in an instant. A failed save vs. spell costs the target 1d10 hp and leaves it worn out, unable to recover spells for seven days; a second failed save vs. spell inflicts lasting fear until remove fear is cast.

She can vomit as many as 10 nightmares each round at every attacker, but hates to, since each one she gives up delays the world's end. She can also unleash any spirit's single worst nightmare, which flies to its owner anywhere, even across planes. Someone who has already faced and laid that terror to rest (DM's call) is unharmed, and she can never again harm that person with night terrors. Anyone else must save vs. spell at -5 or go insane, a madness that only a deity's own wish can cure; if that victim is physically attacking her, a host of horrors drags it into her gullet, annihilating it beyond the reach of even a greater power.

Each round she may freely cast one of fear, nightmare or its reverse dream, demishadow monsters, demishadow magic, or dreamspeak (also called delirium), and she can project herself intangibly anywhere in the world to cast them. Weapons below +5 cannot touch her, and she heals 5 hp each round. Slain improperly, she re-forms in the gray wasteland a day later, and everyone in the world remembers that night's nightmares vividly for life.

She devours the world's unremembered nightmares, hoarding countless of them and relishing those of kings and gods; without her, every being would recall every bad dream in crippling detail. She is fattening herself for the day she escapes to swallow the sun. A former lord of the dead fed her faithful souls until she grew too swollen to leave her cave; his successor stopped, and she shrank back to merely gargantuan. Any faithful soul she eats is utterly destroyed, but she now takes one only as a rare treat.

Ghaskarr is a huge mastiff with baleful crimson eyes and a mangy, rat-like tail. Maggots crawl through his fur over half-bare sinew and bone, his flesh weeps like a festering wound, and each footfall leaves a scorched print that spreads into a pool of flaming ichor. His teeth gleam like jet daggers, his blood burns on contact, and an aura of decay hangs about him. His breath snuffs out nearby fires, his sweet stench of old death carries for miles, and he growls in any language.

Long ago the gods tricked him into a chain made by the god of invention, the god of justice offering his right hand in the hound's jaws as surety, and the goddess of magic sealed him behind a self-mending curtain of force deep in the plane of howling winds. Finding himself trapped, he bit off the hand and fed on it for centuries. A mad god of strife later freed him to hunt a rival's soul, and after being caught and freed again he fled the threat of fresh imprisonment. He now roams the planes after his usual prey, the faithful dead, and after the god of shadows, whom he has sworn to destroy.

Ghaskarr always acts first unless fighting a deity. After any bite, his spittle burns for another 1d10 acid each round for three rounds, stacking with further bites. Instead of biting, once per round he can exhale a corrosive mist over a 20-foot-diameter area before him, dealing 2d12 acid every round a victim stays coated, until it is neutralized or washed off by long soaking in running water. His howl works on mortals as the 4th-level wizard spells confusion and fear for as long as they hear it; even deities can be frightened, though they save at +6. A successful save vs. spell staves off the howl for one round.

Anyone who hits him in melee must save vs. breath weapon or be splashed by blood hot as molten copper, taking 1d8 heat damage per round until it is wiped away. His wounds fester and close at once as he heals 5 hp each round, and his shifting, watery hide explains his excellent AC. Only magic of +3 or greater harms him. His magic resistance falls to 40% against demipowers and 20% against greater powers.

He can plane shift or teleport without error at will. Running, he turns ghostly and nearly limitless in speed, a blur leaving a reek of rot and a nameless dread; he once retraced four years of a man's life in an hour. Slowed, he is solid again but still treads any terrain as if on air, and he can turn invisible at will. Hunting a soul, he can leap straight to its birthplace and follow emotional traces years or centuries old, rebuilding every step of its life; no living thing can hide once he has its trail. Killed improperly, he re-forms in the plane of howling winds after a week.

Souls are hard to destroy; only a god, an evil like Ghaskarr, or a place of unspeakable corruption can do it. He lives by raiding the planes for the spirit-stuff of the faithful dead, ignoring the faithless and the false and finding the unripe souls of the living sickening. When he devours one, his maggots swarm off his black-boned frame to eat it and crawl back sated, leaving him bloated; that soul is gone forever, beyond even divine recall. He savors the scent of hatred and is revolted by giddy, careless joy, and the screaming nightmares he leaves behind are favorite morsels of the Night Serpent.

From afar, Uthrak-Vohl looks like a colossal turtle: a granite-hard dome on three club-footed legs as thick as old oak stumps, yet it bounds over any ground as fast as a galloping horse. Under the shell's rim gapes a wet, toothless, blood-red hole that can stretch into a probing snout, lined with grinding cartilage plates that pulp anything drawn in. Forty squid-like tentacles, each over 100 feet long and studded with suckers, ring the maw and can strike forward, sideways or behind. Lacking eyes and ears, it still senses every warm-blooded creature around it and knows at once which are elves. Its mind is dim, driven by hatred of all life and a craving for elves.

It rose from the mingled blood of the elven creator god and the one-eyed orc god after their legendary battle and slipped away to a forgotten layer of the Abyss, wallowing in its sludge until the bestial hunter god or another power sends it forth, which in recent millennia has happened nearly every century. The elves once built a secret escape gate keyed to platinum triangles, but the beast touched one, and the hunter god eventually sent it through, wrecking the gate and the hidden elven realm beyond until a human princess banished it.

It can fight an army at once, each tentacle striking a different foe, or bring up to eight against one target. A tentacle deals 1d10, and if its attack roll beats the needed number by 5 or more it also wraps up a man-sized victim, which then takes 1d10 per tentacle each round. Breaking free takes a combined Strength of 18 per tentacle from rescuers (36 for two), not counting the victim's own. Sixteen points of damage sever a tentacle, and tentacle damage does not count against the monster's total. A victim still held after four rounds is pulled into the maw, which deals 8d8 per round until the prey dies, then swallows it to be permanently disintegrated by stomach acid.

While standing still it can kick once per round with one leg for 4d8, reaching 20 feet past its shell. It recovers 2 hp each round, needs no air, and is also immune to acid and cold. Fire hurts its legs, tentacles and mouth, but it can simply withdraw into its dome and wait out any blaze. Killed improperly, it re-forms in the Abyss after a decade. If tricked into a space marked by two triangles, one drawn inside the other, it can be banished from the world by a lightly modified dismissal, dispel evil, banishment or teleport without error.

It can swallow almost anything but is nourished only by elves, and it goes centuries between meals while digesting each haul for years, which suggests it feeds on elven spirits rather than flesh. Elven sages debate whether ores might also sustain it, and whether millennia without elves would finally starve it.