Vargouille

A vargouille is a hideous human head with leathery bat wings, fangs, a crown and beard of squirming tentacles, eerie green glowing eyes and a permanent sneer. It never speaks but shrieks as it attacks. Native to the lower planes, it also turns up in caves, sewers and city catacombs on the Prime Material Plane and in the neutral planes.

Seeing one while hearing its shriek forces a save vs. spell; failure freezes the victim in fear until the vargouille attacks them, and that first attack automatically hits. Anyone who saves or has been attacked is immune for that fight. It has 120-foot infravision and hates light, putting out lamps and torches, and it shuns daylight and continual light, which blind it.

Its poisoned bite blocks healing: on a failed save vs. poison the damage never heals naturally. Heal mends 1d8 of it, regenerate mends 3d8 over time (1 hp per round), and only a carefully phrased wish fixes all of it or restores normal healing.

Its kiss on a paralyzed victim begins a grotesque change. After 1d6 hours the head goes bald. After another 1d6 the ears lengthen to points, teeth turn to fangs, tentacles sprout from scalp and chin, and Intelligence and Charisma each drop 1d6. After a final 1d6 hours the head is a vargouille with bat-wing ears; it tears free, the body dies, and it flies off. The change cannot finish by day, continual light halts but does not cure it, and a priest of 7th level or higher can reverse it with cure disease.

They lurk underground or indoors, hunting outside only at night. Spread by infected travelers, they now hide even beneath busy cities, waiting for explorers rather than risking being seen. Their only culture is the pack: the strongest rules, and the weak or wounded are eaten.

They keep no treasure but leave victims' gear where it falls. Few creatures prey on them, though good beings want them gone and friends of the transformed seek revenge. They prefer live prey but eat carrion and weak packmates.

Legend says the wizard Vorsanne the Siegemistress, a genius of terror weapons, made the first nine and loosed them behind enemy lines during a long siege of a rival duchy, and the panic won her the war. Later she became a lich and retired to a watery layer of the Abyss, where she sails as a pirate in a three-masted ship of her enemies' bones, trading flocks from the hundreds she brought to powerful tanar'ri for favors. Driven only to reproduce, vargouilles swamp any place without organized defense. One tale says a lesser sorcerer commanded a flock with shields and banners showing her family crest until the lich came to discourage him; true or not, con men have grown rich selling such items.