Undying Mind Reaver

An undying mind reaver, sometimes called a reaver-lich, looks just like a living mind reaver: mauve skin, an octopus head with four tentacles around the mouth, and hands with three fingers. What sets it apart is the skin, dry and often wrinkled instead of glistening with slime.

Like the living kind it lashes with four tentacles. Once one hits, it bores in for 1d4 automatic damage per round. Dealing 5 or more in a round to a tentacle (AC 7) makes it withdraw and try again elsewhere with a new attack roll; reaching the brain takes 1-4 rounds. Tentacles that land below the head bore for 4 rounds, then let go.

Death did not take its mind blast, a 60-foot cone widening from 5 to 20 feet that stuns for 3d4 rounds unless the victim saves vs. wands, along with standard mind reaver psionics, on par with a 7th-level psionicist (14 devotions, 5 sciences, 4 disciplines). It adds mind thrust plus its own individual powers. Its psionic summary covers four disciplines. Telepathy grants domination and mind link as sciences, with awe, contact, ESP, ego whip and post-hypnotic suggestion as devotions. Psychoportation gives teleport and probability travel, plus astral projection. Psychometabolism adds body equilibrium, and psychokinesis adds levitation and body control. Beyond these it has two sciences and five devotions that vary by individual.

It also casts spells as a 9th-level mage (4/3/3/2/1), drawing on whatever it has stolen from wizards or plundered from tombs, and always craves more. In any round it skips psionics it can cast and use its tentacles.

It lacks the special attacks of a human lich, such as the chilling touch, but shares the usual undead immunity to sleep, hold and charm. Priests cannot turn or dispel it, and it ignores holy water, cold iron, silver, sunlight and protection from evil, though spells that specifically target undead affect it.

It rejects mind reaver communities ruled by a reaver hivemind and happily makes living kin its mind-controlled slaves, just as it enslaved everything when alive. On the surface it usually lives alone, often in the remote tower of a wizard it murdered. In the deep underworld these creatures band together, freely trading spells and help against foes such as aboleth, cloakers, duergar, drow and their living kin. They can be diplomatic and keep alliances that pay off, but to them all others are cattle and promises mean nothing. They see true liches and gazer tyrants as chief rivals and destroy them when it is safe to do so.

It needs no food, but its strongly magic-resistant body never fully adapts to undeath, so it suffers creeping desiccation and wrinkling, countered by soaking in baths or swallowing liquids of every sort, from water and broth to strong drink. Poisons taken this way do harm it, though never below 6 hp and never fatally, and its state neutralizes most poisons, healing their damage, in 2d4 turns.

It no longer needs brains but still loves eating them. Each brain has a 3 in 12 chance of giving it glimpses of 1d12 of the owner's thoughts, either random or, if it concentrates on a subject like treasure sites, spells or magic items, the most relevant ones. Essence of its brain is a common ink ingredient for scribing spells and greatly aids crafting magic that affects minds.