Sacaanti

Created only through potent magic, a sacaanti blends an imp and a quasit into one fiendish familiar 2 to 3 feet tall, with batlike wings and thick leathery skin. It has no tail, but its stronger wings let it fly faster and farther than an imp. It cannot polymorph as an imp can; instead, it casts spells.

It fights with two claws and a bite. The bite is poisonous: the victim saves vs. poison at +2 or suffers a massive heart attack and dies the next round. It has 60-foot infravision.

Its master usually trains it as a wizard, to one-third the master's level (round down). It prefers ranged spells or a sneaky approach under invisibility to melee. The master can channel spells through it, using its senses to aim and its position for range, but each spell deals the sacaanti 1 point of damage per spell level; a fireball costs it 3 hit points.

It can become ethereal at will, as many times a day as its master has levels; choosing this in place of an attack takes effect before any attacks that round. Each turn it regains 1 hit point, and its master enjoys the same regeneration whenever the two are no more than a mile apart. The fusion strips away the imp and quasit immunities to fire, cold, and normal weapons, but holy symbols, holy word, and other magic that banishes extraplanar beings from the Prime Material Plane cannot touch it.

A secretive cabal of wizards first bred sacaantis in its laboratories about a century ago, and they remain very rare. Both parent fiends are hard to summon and nearly impossible to keep in one room. The joining requires a precisely worded wish backed by two polymorph other spells that both succeed, and half the attempts kill both subjects. A survivor, though, is unshakably loyal to its creator, something no imp or quasit ever is. Its alignment is always evil, lawful, neutral, or chaotic to match its master's.

From the start, creature and master share a telepathic link that deepens over the years until each becomes an extension of the other. Either may tap the other's senses, infravision included, and if the master is unconscious the sacaanti can move his body, making it walk, run, or do any task short of casting spells. The life bond is in place from the moment of creation. If the sacaanti dies, its wizard is stripped of a level, plus another for each full decade of the bond, dying if this drops him below 1st level; if they were bonded less than ten years, he instead slips into a coma a day later, lasting one week per year of the bond. If the master dies, the sacaanti has 24 hours to avenge him before it dies too. Neither likes being apart more than a few days.

Far more than a pet or errand-runner, a sacaanti is often like the child its wizard never had, as well as a formidable tool. It eats raw meat every day, never sleeps, and is oddly tidy for a creature of such origins.