Seemer

A seemer is fey glamour that has condensed into a living thing. It can copy any living being, a flea, a dragon or a particular person, and even plants; several seemers together could pose as a whole forest. Whatever it imitates, it shows each observer his or her deepest fear. Facing a group, it may lock onto one character's terror and look the same to everyone, or become a different horror for each viewer.

It lets the game master toy with the characters: an old foe living or dead, a meddling neighbor ruler, a blood-corrupted abomination, or plain phobias: spiders by the hundred, a living blaze, a flood of gore.

It senses a character's psychic energy at 500 yards, so it has already changed shape before it is seen, and it attacks any intelligent being not native to the shadowy faerie realm. Because it embodies a personal terror, it gains automatic surprise unless the viewer saves vs. paralyzation.

It fights with the weapons and powers of whatever it mimics: a fire elemental form strikes with burning limbs, a python form constricts. 'Spellcasting' forms create spell-like effects from glamour, though never abjurations or divinations, and 'fighters' wield glamour-made weapons. Because the glamour lacks the hardness of steel or the heat of fire, any attack deals no more than 2d6, or less if the real attack would. So a huge spider form deals just 1d6, and an orog swinging a long sword 1d8+2. Poison, aging, level drain and similar indirect effects are placebos that victims and allies believe in until they fade after 2d4 hours.

Seemers are solid and take damage normally. Sunlight weakens them, imposing -2 on attack and damage rolls. They control glamour superbly but struggle to see through it, so their perception is poor.

Peaceful encounters with outsiders are very rare. Natives with at least a greater glamour score can talk with them, and those with an extraordinary score have a 5% chance per 10 points of winning brief cooperation.

When the shadowy faerie realm was young, seemers were rare and neutral, drawing shapes from viewers' minds rather than always from their fears. As the glamour grew, so did their numbers, but the dark god's influence seeped through the realm and tainted most of what it produced. Neutral seemers survive, yet most now are evil and determined to destroy intruders.

A seemer is born when glamour in one place grows so dense it sparks into life. The newborn copies the first living thing it sees and starts searching for food: the psychic energy of observers. Since deep fears fill so much of the subconscious, those are the images it seizes and becomes.