Stingcone Sorcerer

A stingcone floats by natural levitation. Its body is an upright cone, wide end on top, tapering to a barbed stinger. A mouth of powerful jaws opens in the top, and four retractable arms ring the rim. The arms look disturbingly human, but each hand has three middle fingers between two opposed thumbs. These beings are intelligent, hostile and extremely dangerous.

Their senses are formidable: infravision to 160 feet, sight that pierces into the Ethereal and Astral planes for 90 feet, and normal vision that doubles as a permanent detect magic.

Their magic resistance is 44% against most magic and 77% against petrification and polymorph. Any spell their resistance stops is either absorbed as healing or bounced entirely back at its caster, as a free reflex that costs no action. Absorbed damage becomes replacement hit points; a spell that deals no damage gives 1 hit point per spell level, and surplus points can be held for 12 rounds to offset later injury. A reflected spell affects its source, though multiple bounces of a single spell affect its caster no more than once, so a wizard whose fireball engulfs two stingcones suffers one fireball's worth of harm at most. No limit has been found to how many spells one can absorb or reflect in a round.

Every half-century of life adds a wizard level, so the typical stingcone casts as a mage of 22nd to 27th level. They study and memorize spells as humans do and can fix one spell of each level as an innate ability, permanent once chosen and regained daily without study. All their spells are cast by silent will, and much of their research goes into converting captured human spells into pure will-force. Most have invented spells of their own.

Along with a spell (and whatever it reflects), each round it may strike physically as many as six times at anything in reach. The jaws bite for 3d4. Each arm can punch for 1d4, swing any weapon as large as a polearm for its usual damage, or grabs a foe so the bite hits automatically; each round both roll 1d20, and the higher roll decides whether the grip holds.

The tail strikes for 2d4. On an attack roll of 16 or better it impales, adding 1d6 as the hollow bone stinger injects milky fluid and an egg. Three saves vs. poison follow: against paralysis, against levitating helplessly a few feet up for 2d4 turns (moving only by pushing off nearby solid objects), and to see whether the egg is fertile. A sterile egg simply melts away. A viable one begins developing in 1d6 days and then eats the host for 1 hit point a day until death or until cure disease kills the larva, while gnawing pain imposes -4 on the victim's attacks, Armor Class and ability scores. Cutting it out requires a system shock roll and inflicts 2d4 damage.

Stingcones prefer to dwell near others of their race, both for protection and for the pleasure of outscheming one another, but usually act alone or through magically controlled slaves.

They eat any mammal or reptile, keeping captives as slaves until mealtime. Tomb tappers earn their special loathing, since the stingcones' mind-bending magic seems not to touch them. In one prime world an ancient magic held by rival beings confines them beneath a great desert, yet their reach extends past it through agents, including certain desert nomads, slaver-wizards who came seeking the lore of fallen ancient kingdoms, and a few members of a secretive cabal of wizards whom they have subverted without yet revealing themselves to the rest.