Visage

Visages are undead tanar'ri, onetime servants of a fallen demon prince of undeath now called the Shrouded Prince, raised again through his power over the dead. They serve him alone, and thankfully they are very rare. In their true shape they look like misty, see-through phantoms with a ghastly white mask in place of a head and no legs, gliding or flying as they please. Yet they are solid, blocked by walls, though able to slip through gaps far too small for a human.

Most speak the common tongue, the better to move among people, and they absorb the languages of every victim whose essence they steal.

Its razor claws are the least of the danger. Its real weapon, which sages call lucidity control, lets it seize the senses of anyone in its sight, usually so subtly the victim never suspects. A victim who has no idea gets no save. One who realizes something is toying with their mind may save vs. spell; success shows the world as it really is, but a new save is required every round to avoid slipping back into the illusion.

Rather than simply blinding, it mixes truth with lies, stretching distances, moving or dropping real objects at bad moments, reshaping a building's apparent layout. Once victims distrust their senses, it claws them or leads them into a pit or another monster's path.

Once a day it can also use domination on one target, exactly as the wizard spell. That takes concentration, so it cannot use domination and lucidity control at once, but two visages working together often split the jobs, one warping a group's perceptions while the other uses a dominated victim to make the lie convincing.

Worst of all, a visage that kills someone can take on that person's shape and part of their essence, copying voice, habits and skills almost perfectly; only a close friend might spot missing quirks. It keeps both mind powers in borrowed form. With the spirit taken, the victim cannot be raised or resurrected and cannot become a petitioner. Slaying the visage within one day of the theft reverses this, and if the fiend is on the victim's plane the chance of a successful resurrection doubles. If the visage holds the spirit longer than a day, or drops it to take a new form, the soul withers and is gone for good.

Poison, cold, paralysis, magical fear, and sleep, charm or hold effects do not touch them. Only +1 or better magical weapons hurt them, and holy water does nothing. Clerics and paladins can turn them only on the special row. They have no link to the Ethereal Plane.

Their only society is service to the Shrouded Prince, without whom they would not exist. They obey only him and treat one another as equals, never fighting or competing, yet care nothing for each other and will abandon companions the moment flight seems wise.

They can turn up anywhere. The only place that is not alien to them is the Negative Energy Plane, and rumor places them there only in a lost fortress said to drift somewhere in the void. Even so, they share no special bond with that plane, or with anything except their master.

Though made by a former Abyssal lord, visages are outcasts among the tanar'ri, recognized and attacked on sight. Fiends dread them, for while a slain tanar'ri usually returns in some lesser form, a visage gets neither rebirth nor true oblivion, forever enslaved to the magic that made it.

Nobody knows how many exist or whether other ways of making them exist; some wonder whether whole Abyssal layers are hidden behind their illusions.