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Ahu-nixta
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Blob Monster: The ahu-nixta's natural form is a somewhat shapeless mass that can form eyes, mouths and grabbing appendages.
- Pieces of God: One of the authors of the Codex of the Endless Void hypothesises the ahu-nixta as both belonging to the Void and being the physical embodiment of the Void itself. She further claims that the ahu-nixta exist to expand the Void into other realms by building themselves (or rather itself) into pieces of the realm.
- Man in the Machine: Ahu-nixta drudges and tappers can't live outside their armour.
- Powered Armor: Weak and easy prey in their natural state, the ahu-nixta long ago mastered clockwork design, building armour that could carry them through the voids between stars and bolster their physical abilities.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Ahu-nixta reproduce from clusters of organic matter encased in a resinous, amorphous mass. It's unknown how long a hive node, as they're called, can exist in stasis before bursting, but they have been found in ancient and long-abandoned vessels, adrift in the Void, buried in the ruins of sunken cities, and attached to debris, hurling through the planes.
- Starfish Aliens: The ahu-nixta is a shapeless horror that hails from the Void beyond Midgard.
Tapper
Challenge Rating: 1
- Magic Eater: Tappers collect psychic energy from intelligent creatures.
- Shock and Awe: Once a tapper attaches to a target, it generates an electrostatic field to protect itself while draining its victim.
Harpooner
Challenge Rating: 12
- Spider Tank: Harpooners wear clockwork armour crafted from the chitinous carapaces of a spider of Leng.
- You Will Not Evade Me: Each of the harpooner's eight legs is equipped with a harpoon cannon, which can pull grappled foes toward it.
Alpha Node
Challenge Rating: 21
- Asteroids Monster: The clockwork encasement of the alpha node is the collective encasement of dozens of ahu-nixta in various stages of development and stasis. When the alpha node is destroyed, its clockwork encasement breaks apart, flinging dozens of half-developed larval ahu-nixta and mature cephaloids into the surrounding Void.
- Charm Person: The alpha node can command one individual, with whom it has a mental connection.
- Humongous Mecha: The alpha node is a spherical conglomeration of clockwork components mashed together that measures 30 feet in diameter.
- Mind Hive: The alpha node is a collective, a sort of hive mind that gathers to spawn individual ahu-nixta.
- You Will Not Evade Me: The alpha node channels the Void, creating a current that draws creatures toward itself.
A-mi-kuk
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- The Berserker: A-mi-kuks viciously attack any creatures that threaten them, regardless of the foe's size or power.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: A-mi-kuks have a deathly fear of fire, and anyone using fire against one has a good chance of making it flee in terror, even if otherwise outmatched.
Arboreal Grappler
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Combat Tentacles: Arboreal grapplers' limbs have been warped into long, muscular tentacles covered in shaggy, red fur. They use these limbs to snatch prey and drag it behind them.
- Killer Gorilla: Arboreal grapplers are evil, carnivorous apes with a taste for humanoid flesh.
- To Serve Man: Arboreal grapplers prefer humanoid flesh, elves in particular. Some suggest this arises from hatred as much as from hunger, a cruel combination of fascination and revulsion for the walking limbs of humanoid creatures.
Asanbosam
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Metal Muncher: In times of desperation, asanbosams grind iron filings off their own hooks to slake their cravings for iron.
Astral Devourer
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Extra Eyes: The sides of each snake making up an astral devourer are lined with milky, unblinking eyes.
- Hive Mind: When enough serpents on the Astral Plane gather, they form a collective creature called an astral devourer, which has a hive mind made up of all the minds of its component creatures.
- To Serve Man: Astral devourers are driven by hunger and particularly love the taste of sentient planar travellers.
Astral Snapper
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Eaten Alive: When the astral snapper enters the victim's body by opening a portal in it to the Astral Plane, many believe the astral snapper has simply broken off its attack and vanished. They count themselves lucky right up until the first pains of being devoured from the inside strike them.
- Scary Teeth: The astral snapper's wide grin reveals a mouth full of shark's teeth.
- To Serve Man: Astral snappers hunt humanoids on the Material Plane and feed on their victim's innards.
Aurora Horribilis
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Brown Note: When they notice admirers of boreal lights, auroras horribilis descend from the sky to share their songs, which incorporates secrets of the universe and often induces madness in listeners.
- Wintry Auroral Sky: Auroras horribilis can manifest anywhere on a world, but prefer to dance and sing within naturally-occurring auroras.
Avalanche Screamer
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Super-Scream: When facing multiple foes simultaneously, an avalanche screamer uses its scream to harm as many targets as possible. In unstable areas, the sound can cause avalanches.
- Too Many Mouths: Several toothy maws are spread across an avalanche screamer's body.
Avulzor
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Lawful Evil
- Biomanipulation: Avulzors can shape bone as if it were putty, transforming an ogre's pelvis into a usable chair or a dwarf's teeth and ribs into a complex musical instrument.
- Take Over the World: Natives of a dimension inundated with necrotic energy, avulzors weave plans for dominating the other planes of existence.
- Too Many Mouths: The avulzor's neck ends in a nest of lamprey-like heads.
Bagiennik
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Healing Hands: A bagiennik can heal another creature by smearing some of its oily secretion on that creature's flesh. If the bagiennik feels beneficent, it heals injured animals or people.
Bloodsapper
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Overly-Long Tongue: The bloodsapper has a long, thick red tongue, ending in a hollow spike, which it uses to impale and drink prey's blood.
- To Serve Man: While it can drink the blood of animals and wild beasts, the bloodsapper vastly prefers the blood of sapient bipedal creatures.
Boot Grabber
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Alignment: True Neutral
- Ankle Drag: The boot grabber grabs hold of its victim's legs or feet with its strong hand-shaped appendages. Once it has seized its target, the boot grabber secretes a strong adhesive to stop its foe from pulling free and continues to crush its lower limbs.
- Bioweapon Beast: Boot grabbers are believed to have been created centuries ago in twisted experiments conducted by deranged arcanists seeking new weapons against rivals. By melding alien protoplasm harvested from shoggoths with the dismembered bodies of human captives from a rival magocracy, the wizards created the boot grabber.
- Blob Monster: Boot grabbers are ooze-like aberrant creatures whose transparent, amorphous body is easily mistaken for a puddle or patch of wet rock.
Brain Hood
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Fantastic Racism: The brain hood is inherently evil and despises all living things that possess bodies of their own.
- The Symbiote: Brain hoods are parasites that attach to beasts, helping the host find food but otherwise subjugating the dim intelligence within it. Outside of its host, a brain hood poses little danger to intelligent creatures or creatures who are not beasts.
Butatsch
Challenge Rating: 14
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Deadly Gaze: The butatsch's eyes can burn prey with a gaze.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: A butatsch is studded with thousands of glaring eyes.
Catscratch
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Hulking Out: Catscratch fugue is a bacterial infection that only affects felids and feline humanoids. Once a cat is angry, it swells to a massive size, turning into a catscratch intent on destroying everything in sight. Only a wish spell can cure a catscratch once it has transformed.
Chelicerae
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Giant Spider: The chelicerae resembles a massive spider.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Some chelicerae victims wake up weeks later with no memory of the events, far from home, drained of vitality and spells.
- Magic Eater: The chelicerae cannot replenish its spells naturally. Instead, it uses grappled spellcasters as spell reservoirs, draining uncast spells to power its own magic.
- The Paralyzer: Chelicerae strike victims with a venomous bite and then pinning its prey within its jaws. There, their helpless body can hang for days on end as the chelicerae pursues obscure and eldritch tasks, before they're released.
Child of Yggdrasil
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Hybrid Monster: Legends say the children of Yggdrasil came from a dragon's egg laid on the World Tree, which hatched a huge mass of serpents, each of them infused with the sap and cold wisdom of the World Tree itself.
- When Trees Attack: The children of Yggdrasil are sentient parts of the World Tree, saplings with long 'hair' of ash leaves, radial symmetry, and four root-like legs.
Forest Emperor
Challenge Rating: 15
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Acid Attack: The forest emperor can spray a cone of acid from its flower-ringed eye pits.
- Metamorphosis: When a child of Yggdrasil comes across the fresh corpse of an adult dragon, it attempts to devour the heart, then spins a thick green cocoon of acidic vines around itself. After a week, it turns into a larger and more vicious aberration known as a forest emperor.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: A forest emperor is vaguely reminiscent of a giant centaur with bony wooden limbs.
Crystalline Monolith
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
- Berserk Button: The crystalline monolith is especially unforgiving to those that try to steal or damage crystals in its lair.
- Crystalline Creature: The crystalline monolith is a living, towering menhir of shimmering crystal. While motionless, it is indistinguishable from a giant crystal.
- Psychic Powers: The crystalline monolith attacks with mind spears and bursts of psychic energy.
Dimensional Shambler
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Brown Note Being: The very sight of a dimensional shambler can frighten and madden other creatures.
- No Mouth: The dimensional shambler's only facial features are a pair of dead eyes.
Dorreq
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Tentacled Terror: The dorreq resembles a twitching ball of tentacles surrounding an inhuman face dominated by a squid-like beak.
Eater of Dust
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Extreme Omnivore: Eaters of dust can consume just about anything with their mawblades. They can even gain nourishment from eating dust or soil (hence the name eater of dust).
- No Face Under the Mask: An eater of dust resembles an imposing knight wearing baroque plate, which is in truth a secreted resin that hardens into a shell as strong as steel.
- Private Military Contractors: Eaters of dust roam the lower planes selling their services to fiendish rulers for the chance to sample interesting morsels.
Faceless Wanderer
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- The Blank: The faceless wanderer's face is a bone-white, featureless oval disc.
- Transferable Memory: The faceless wanderers survive by stealing memories from sentient humanoids.
- Was Once a Man: Humanoids that die when their memories are completely drained by a faceless wanderer are transformed into more faceless wanderers.
- Would Not Hurt A Child: Faceless wanderers don't harm young humanoids and sometimes even aid them. Scholars speculate this is because children possess fewer memories than adults.
Far Wanderer
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: True Neutral
- Human Aliens: These elf-like humanoids originate from the Court of Countless Stars beyond the light of known suns, on a demi-plane between cold and distant constellations.
- Mage Species: The far wanderers possess innate psychic powers, which they can manifest into harming or healing energy.
- Omniglot: The far wanderer understands the literal meaning of any spoken or written language it hears or reads.
- Star Power: The far wanderer channels the energy of the living god-star Yorama.
Fate Eater
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: True Neutral
- Abstract Eater: Fate eaters consume the threads of Fate itself. The Norns view them as vermin and sometimes engage particularly canny planar travellers either to hunt them or to help repair the damage they have done.
- Knowledge Broker: Fate eaters trade information about various dooms, fates and outcomes, but one must have something rich in destiny to trade—or at least, juicy gossip about gods and demons.
Flame-Scourged Scion
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Extra Eyes: A flame-scourged scion has a crown of long, branching tentacles set with goat-like eyes.
- Playing with Fire: The flame-scourged scion can fill the area around itself with a cloud of burning embers.
Flying Polyp
Challenge Rating: 11
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Blow You Away: They can control and direct wind to use as a weapon.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: The flying polyp is a towering column of flesh, eyes, tentacles and mouths.
- Leaking Can of Evil: Flying polyps once ruled from cities of towers. When dragons appeared and refused to serve them, a blood-soaked conflict ended with dragons victorious. The few surviving polyps were bound in the Ethereal Plane, but after centuries of exile, the polyps uncovered a ritual that allowed them to exist in the Material Plane while still being bound to the Ethereal Plane.
Gaunt One
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Overly-Long Tongue: A gaunt one has a strange, writhing tentacle for a tongue.
- Picky People Eater: Gaunt ones have an inherent hunger for hearts.
- Was Once a Man: When the Covenant of Infinum's experiment to create the perfect servitor race failed spectacularly, a magical transformative wave was unleashed, transforming their slaves into gaunt ones.
Ghast of Leng
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Extreme Omnivore: The ghasts of Leng are malevolent predators, willing to eat anything that moves.
- I'm a Humanitarian: In the frenzy of feeding, it is not uncommon for one of the ghasts to be torn apart and consumed by its fellows.
- Food Chain of Evil: In their native Plateau of Leng, ghasts primarily prey upon gugs.
- Weakened by the Light: Ghasts of Leng are incapable of withstanding sunlight and keep themselves to the dark caverns in the earth.
Greater Ghast of Leng
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Large and in Charge: Greater ghasts are stronger, tougher, and usually taller than their peers, who look to them for leadership.
Grindylow
Challenge Rating: 1
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- For the Evulz: Grindylows' single passion in life consists of lurking in tide pools, rivers and lagoons, where they wait for gnomes, halflings or human children to approach so they could drag them under the water. Their true enjoyment is derived from the attack and the fearful reactions of their prey, not the resulting meal.
- Voice Changeling: Grindylows have some talent at voice mimicry.
Heggarna
Challenge Rating: 1
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Normal animals react to the heggarna with a strange ferocity, which can be recognised by experienced hunters.
- Killer Rabbit: During the day, the heggarna disguises itself as a stray cat, lurking near the homes of potential prey and fleeing with feline-like caution when anyone comes near.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The heggarna has multiple caterpillar-like claspers, the jagged, circular maw and slippery body of an oversized leech, and the head and colouration of a tiger.
- Nightmare Weaver: The heggarna infuses the victim's subconscious with terrible nightmares for its own vile amusement.
Helashruu
Challenge Rating: 13
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Mirror Monster: Helashruu resemble towering mirrors covered in tentacles and eyes. Sages versed in planar lore believe the helashruu were created when a mirror of lifetrapping swallowed a powerful, deity of chaos and shattered under the strain of the energies it tried to contain.
- The Unintelligible: The helashruu's communication usually takes the form of a jumbled mishmash of thoughts, and making sense of what they say is often next to impossible.
Hound of Tindalos
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Clock Roaches: Hounds of Tindalos hunt those who travel the planes of existence or break the bonds of time. None know if the hounds take offence to travel through time and space or if there is some quality of such travellers that they find irresistible.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The hound resembles a hairless dog with human-looking hands, the head of a bat, and a short, sharp black beak.
- To Serve Man: Hounds of Tindalos prefer human prey even when presented with other options.
Kachlian
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Combat Tentacles: A kachlian fights with numerous writhing tentacles protruding from its body.
- Pocket Dimension: The interior of a kachlian's shell has a pocket of extra-dimensional space that holds its belongings. The older and more powerful the kachlian, the larger this extra-dimensional space. When a kachlian is slain, any creature can access the extra-dimensional space, which gradually fades over a month.
- Soul Eating: The kachlian consumes the souls of creatures, tearing them to pieces, absorbing the parts it considers valuable and discarding the rest.
Kaveph
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Cannon Fodder: The kaveph are seen as expendable by the ghasts of Leng, and are often sent in first to try and soften up more powerful enemies before the ghasts swarm in to devour them.
- Eyeless Face: The kaveph's bulbous face is eyeless.
- Mood-Swinger: When not serving the ghasts of Leng, kaveph's interactions with one another are puzzling and often violent. At one moment they might coexist in peace, then—often for incomprehensible reasons—they lash out against each other in some sort of mindless blood frenzy until only one of them stands.
Lambent Witchfyre
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Unaligned
- Evil Living Flames: The lambent witchfyre is composed of living blue flame, and like liquid fire, it flows along the ground, searching for food, which is any organic matter that can burn.
Lunarchidna
Challenge Rating: 2 (lesser), 4 (greater), 6 (transcendent)
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Fantastic Racism: Lunarchidnas hate elves and love to make them suffer. They poison water sources, set fire to villages, and bait monsters into stampeding through elf communities.
- Lunacy: The lunarchidna's power is tied to the moon. During a new moon, the lunarchidna becomes barely more than a savage animal, as its mental ability dulls. During a full moon, the lunarchidna can channel lunar light through its body, and is smart enough to make plans and write notes.
- Would Hurt a Child: Lunarchidnas especially enjoy stealing away elf children to use as bait to trap the adults that come to the rescue.
Mad Spring Behemoth
Challenge Rating: +1
- Mutants: Rarely, a particularly durable or lucky specimen is warped into a mighty monstrosity by its exposure to a spawning storm. Greatly increased in size and strength, these creatures are known as mad spring behemoths.
Malleable
Challenge Rating: 1 (minor), 5 (moderate), 10 (major), 16 (massive)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Master Race: Malleables think themselves superior to all other creatures, which are simply prey. Their goals are to drain every creature they can of psychic energy and rule the world as a massive, roiling meat puddle.
- One to Million to One: Malleables can join together, creating a larger, more powerful creature that shares their combined intellect and can in turn separate into smaller malleables when suitable.
- Perpetually Protean: Malleables have no set form, and can stretch and alter their forms easily, moving on appendages or flowing like an ooze. They might form faces if they wish to convey an emotion, or take the shape of a truly terrifying beast to create panic.
- Photographic Memory: It is said that malleables have perfect memories and the oldest ones remember ancient lore other creatures have long forgotten.
- Was Once a Man: Creatures that consume psychic energy can become so infused with it that their bodies implode, warping their mind and creating a hunter that hungers to consume and grow. Malleables do not remember their previous personal lives, but they do retain facts and lore.
Mamura
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Deal with the Devil: They were once good-aligned, pixie-like fey called polevoi, but at some point they swore their souls to the Black Goat of the Woods and were corrupted by her foul magic.
Mimic
Map Mimic
Challenge Rating: 1/4
Alignment: True Neutral
- Fool's Map: A map mimic can assume the shape, texture and colours of anything up to the size of a dinner plate. Their preferred form is parchment paper, and they can display the path they've followed, complete with important landmarks, on their hide. In this form, they hide until another unsuspecting adventurer discovers them. Anyone who follows the map is led back to the parent mimic, lying in ambush.
Mngwa
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Hybrid Monster: The mngwa are the offspring of a sentient feline beast from the Ethereal Plane that mated with a lioness long ago.
Moon Nymph
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Moon nymphs take on a visage that matches the dreams of their victims. Some might see a beautiful elf, others a handsome dwarf, and lovers of animals might even see a sleek feline or an adorable canine.
- Lunacy: Moon nymphs travel to Midgard by way of moonbeams, and their power wanes and waxes as the cycles of the moon progress.
- Nightmare Weaver: The moon nymph haunts mortals' dreams by emitting a wave of hallucinatory nightmare visions.
Mordant Snare
Challenge Rating: 15
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Dying Race: Mordant snares are few in number and cannot reproduce. Since the secret of their creation was lost long ago, eventually they will die out.
- Parasite Zombie: Mordant snares attack by extruding filaments that inject acid into victims; this liquefies organs and muscle while leaving the skeleton, tendons and skin intact. With the body hollowed out and filled with acid and filaments, the mordant snare can control it from below like a puppet. These puppets look and move like zombies.
Murgrik
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Belly Mouth: A toothy maw is stretched over the murgrik's belly.
- Combat Tentacles: The murgrik's tail is made up of a dozen lashing tentacles.
- Mutants: Those who study murgriks believe the creatures are ordinary alligators warped by their proximity to the Abyss.
- Too Many Mouths: A murgrik has two extra mouths: one affixed to a stalk between its eyes and one stretched over its belly.
- To Serve Man: Murgriks prefer to prey on intelligent creatures.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The only known way to deter a murgrik from attacking is to introduce a heron, real or illusory. The reason a murgrik retreats from herons is a mystery.
Nalusa Falaya
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Child Eater: Humanoid young are their preferred delicacy, and many nalusa falaya have a particular appetite for elven young.
- Shadow Walker: A nalusa falaya can slither from shadow to shadow.
- Was Once a Man: Rumour has it that these creatures were once mortals but have been corrupted by energies from the Void.
Nharyth
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Animate Body Parts: The nharyth is a hideous mass of coiling intestines.
Nightgaunt
Challenge Rating: 10
Alignment: Lawful Evil
- Beware My Stinger Tail: The nightgaunt has a barbed, venomous stinging tail.
- The Blank: Nightgaunts only have a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be.
- Enemy Mine: On occasion, nightgaunts ally themselves with the forces of light against greater chaos and particularly hated demon lords. Such alliances last only so long as is necessary to restore the rule of law and burn out corruption. Once this is accomplished, they either leave, satisfied in their work, or remain to attack the wounded forces of good.
- Horse of a Different Color: Nightgaunts serve as the advance guard and battle steeds of the ghouls that inhabit the darkest corners of the Shadow Realm.
Ningyo
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Beast with a Human Face: This small fish has the face of a human.
- Immortality Inducer: Legend tells that anyone who consumes the raw flesh of a ningyo will live forever.
- Weird Beard: The ningyo has eight squirming tentacles where whiskers would be.
Oculo Swarm
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Eye Scream: A weakened oculo swarm can reinvigorate itself by tearing fresh eyes from almost any living creature.
- Eye Spy: The entire oculo swarm sees what any single member sees. Before attacking or entering a potentially dangerous area, individual eyes scout ahead for prospective victims or dangerous foes.
- Living Lie Detector: Bemmean wizards have been known to employ oculo swarms as lie detectors during negotiations. A swarm instinctively reads eye movements, and can communicate by moving in a specific way or by changing the colour of its irises. If negotiations go poorly, its employer gives the swarm permission to add a fresh pair of eyes.
- Oculothorax: The oculo swarm is a collection of hundreds of floating eyes, trailing ganglia and dripping caustic fluid that sizzles when it hits the ground.
Ostinato
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Emotion Eater: Ostinatos feed off the vitality and personality of mortals.
- The Symbiote: Ostinatos wander the mortal world as repetitive snippets of song, searching for hosts and rich feeding grounds. They enter hosts secretly, remaining undetected to prolong their feasting as long as possible.
Pale Screamer
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Artificial Hybrid: Pale screamers are created by mixing human and jellyfish-like creatures together using twisted, magical surgery.
- Bioweapon Beast: Most pale screamers are the result of experimentation by intelligent aberrations and are brainwashed to serve their masters unquestioningly.
- Eaten Alive: The pale screamer enjoys eating prey alive, often in front of its victims' companions.
- No Biological Sex: Pale screamers are artificial creatures and do not breed naturally.
- Was Once a Man: Some pale screamers remember snippets of their lives as humans and suffer horrible mental anguish. Most are disposed of by their masters. A few turn rogue and attempt to return to their former lives, only to give into their evil urges for humanoid flesh or be killed by their former family and friends.
Parzz'val
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Evil Knockoff: Parzz'vals are created by the treacherous wizard Enkada Pishtuhk in his efforts to recreate a controllable, loyal version of Pah'draguusthlai the Devourer. Thus far, his attempts have failed. His failed creations are released into the Wasted West to wreak havoc.
- Flower Mouth: The parzz'val's mouth is a huge tripartite maw filled with jagged, web-shrouded ridges.
- Hungry Menace: Parzz'vals have enough intelligence to reason and problem solve, but are largely guided by their monstrous appetites.
Primal Oozer
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Combat Tentacles: The barbed tentacles on the primal oozer's jaw latch on to creatures it bites and inject an oozing disease into the prey. This disease slowly liquefies the victim's skin, and eventually melts the creature completely into a new ochre jelly.
Quoreq
Qwyllion
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Deadly Gaze: Qwyllions are imbued with a deadly gaze attack that can transform victims into wights.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Qwyllions' large eyes glow with unearthly green light.
- The Starscream: Anyone who dares to employ a qwyllion must be constantly vigilant, because these creatures are prone to renege on any agreement eventually.
Rift Swine
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: A rift swine has difficulty perceiving anything smaller than itself as a threat, and attacks most other creatures on sight and fights until killed.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Eyes are spread all over a rift swine's body.
- Hungry Menace: Rift swine eat nearly anything, possess a fiendish cunning, and delight in the destruction they cause.
Sema
Challenge Rating: 1
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Blood Knight: Semas are cruel and seem to take great joy in jumping out of the darkness and spilling blood.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Semas have extremely sensitive eyes and prefer to live in dark places. They find excessive amounts of light distasteful, and in open sunlight they are known to keen, howl and clutch at their heads as if the very presence of the light causes them pain.
Servant of Yig
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Poisonous Person: The servant of Yig's unholy venom causes the body of a victim to swell until its plump flesh ruptures.
- Snake People: The servant of Yig is a hideous amalgam of man and snake, a fanged humanoid head with expressionless features sitting atop the shimmering coils of a snake.
Shoggoth
Challenge Rating: 19
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Blob Monster: A shoggoth is an intelligent, gelatinous blob that can reshape itself at will.
- Brown Note: The fluting noises made by a shoggoth are otherworldly and mind-shattering.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: A shoggoth can form eyes, mouths, tentacles and other appendages as needed.
- Turned Against Their Masters: Created by the elder things as servants, the shoggoths rebelled long ago and slew their masters without pity.
The Shoth
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
- The Assimilator: The singular purpose of Shoth, and therefore all the shoth, is to dissolve willing, sentient life in great bubbling pools called zolvs. When this happens, the creature wades into the thick protein bath and its body is dissolved, rising again as a vaguely-humanoid ooze.
- Hive Caste System: The shoth divide themselves into different castes according to their age. Newly dissolved shoth are called soozes. After a century, they earn the title oth, and serve as generals or scholars. The few who live for 500 years or more become droths, who no longer appear humanoid.
- I Gave My Word: The shoth are true to their word. They are interested in gaining the trust of others and do not employ trickery, deception or intimidation. Once the shoth have targeted a creature or group for dissolution, they are true friends and allies.
- Starfish Aliens: The shoth are an aberrant race of oozing humanoids from outside the known planes.
- Walking the Earth: The shoth have no home world, and wander the universe inside massive oozing vessels capable of interplanar travel.
Shukankor
Challenge Rating: 9
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Extra Eyes: A shukankor has multiple eyes that swivel about on long lime stalks.
- Feathered Fiend: These vile ratite-like aberrations use their vicious claws and beaks to kill and devour any creature they encounter.
- No Biological Sex: Shukankors are neither female nor male and reproduce by not dismissing their replicas. These replicas become free-thinking and separate from the parent after a day.
- Self-Duplication: The shukankor can temporarily replicate itself, creating smaller, weaker clones that obey its telepathic commands and even sacrifice themselves to protect their creator.
Spawn of Arbeyach
Challenge Rating: 5
Alignment: Lawful Evil
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Spawn of Arbeyach are roughly humanoid, with some insectoid qualities like two extra arms.
- Pest Controller: Spawn of Arbeyach can silently communicate with and give orders to all swarms of insects.
Spawn of Roggsothoff
Challenge Rating: 2
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Mushroom Man: A spawn of Roggsothof looks like a vaguely humanoid creature with a mushroom-like cap.
- The Virus: The spawn of Roggsothof seek creatures to infect with their spores to create more of their kind.
- Weakened by the Light: Spawn of Roggsothof are sickened while in sunlight, and die after an hour of continuous exposure.
Spider of Leng
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: These bloated purple spiders have small claws on six of their legs that serve as hands.
- Poisonous Person: Spiders of Leng can spit venom, and their blood is poisonous and corrosive to most creatures native to the Material Plane.
Broodmother of Leng
Challenge Rating: 11
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Black Widow: Spiders of Leng often bring treasures or captives back to the broodmother's cavern to prove their worth as a mate. If a spider is deemed worthy, it is eaten, its life force and magical talents passing on to the next generation. If a spider is unworthy, it is killed and dropped into the depths of the broodmother's caverns.
- Kill All Humans: Each broodmother looks upon her brood as a personal army that shall one day wipe all humanoids from the face of the Material Plane.
Stellar Rorqual
Challenge Rating: 12
Alignment: True Neutral
- Defeat Equals Explosion: When the stellar rorqual dies, it releases all of its stored solar energy in a massive explosion.
- Living Ship: A stellar rorqual can be used as a living ship to provide passage between planes. This partnership can be based on friendship or domination, depending on the method of training.
- Space Whale: Stellar rorqual are born, live and die in the Void between the stars.
Tusked Skyfish
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Lawful Good
- Electric Jellyfish: These jellyfish have a natural electrical charge.
- Flying Seafood Special: These aerial jellyfish waft through the air like balloons, suspended by internal alchemical reactions. This movement takes them almost vertically when they wish, or drifts with the winds. They can reach altitudes of 30000 feet.
- Horse of a Different Color: When fitted with special saddles, tusked skyfish can be ridden without harming their riders.
Ulnorya
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Chest Burster: Ulnorya implant eggs within corpses slain by their poison. Within five days, an egg hatches into a new ulnorya.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The ulnorya combines elements of spiders, scorpions and octopodes.
- Nested Mouths: The ulnorya's jagged maw reveals rows of razor teeth.
- Self-Duplication: An ulnorya can replicate itself and become its own hunting partner.
Urochar
Challenge Rating: 17
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- The Ageless: Strangling watchers are effectively immortal. Gargantuan specimens in the deepest reaches of the underworld are several millennia old.
- Combat Tentacles: An urochar slithers upright on and crushes their prey with four muscular tentacles.
- Cyclops: At the top of the urochar's writhing trunk, a great lidless eye glows with baleful orange light.
- Death-Activated Superpower: When a strangling watcher dies, it releases all the fear it consumed in its lifetime in a single, soul-rending wave.
- Emotion Eater: Urochars feast on the fear of those caught in their crushing tentacles.
- Rubber Man: Despite their size, strangling watchers are slender and boneless, and can squeeze through small passages.
Vallowex
Challenge Rating: 7
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Chest Burster: Vallowexes release eggs into potable water. After a creature drinks the eggs, a tadpole hatches in its stomach, then slowly consumes the host from the inside out, emerging as a vallowex when the host dies.
- Eyeless Face: In place of eyes, a vallowex sees through blindsight.
Vangsluagh
Challenge Rating: 4
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Too Many Mouths: In place of a head, a vangsluagh has a writhing mass of hundreds of rubbery, blue-grey tentacles, each ending in an eerily human-looking mouth.
- Was Once a Man: Creatures maddened in the shadow of Uthul Vangslagish eventually transform into vangsluagh.
- With Cat Like Tread: Vangsluagh create a din everywhere they go; the mouths on their tentacles perpetually scream, whistle, bleat, growl and cry. Even when a vangsluagh wants silence, their own bodies betray them.
Voidling
Challenge Rating: 11
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Combat Tentacles: Voidlings consist largely of lashing tendrils of solid shadow.
- Deal with the Devil: Voidlings are summoned by those hungry for power at any cost, and serve very well for years or even decades, until one day they turn on their summoners. If they succeed in slaying their summoner, they grow in strength and return to the void.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: Exactly what voidlings seek when they have not been summoned—and what triggers their betrayals—is a mystery.
Wardu
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Deadly Gaze: A wardu can channel magical power through its central eye.
- Vampiric Draining: Wardu can only absorb sustenance from blood, no matter the species.
Xenabsorber
Challenge Rating: 3
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
- Crystalline Creature: The xenabsorber's body is comprised of magically-attuned blue crystal.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: At any given moment, the xenabsorber might be in its native blue crystalline state, fully disguised as a creature, or wearing aspects of many different creatures.
- Power Copying: When it vibrates on the same magical frequency as a nearby creature, the xenabsorber can change itself to copy some trait or ability of that creature.
Xhkarsh
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: Neutral Evil
- Demonic Possession: A xhkarsh can send a portion of its consciousness to inhabit the body of a fate-corrupted creature. The target retains control of its body, but the xhkarsh can control its actions for 1 minute each day and can modify its memories.
Yann-An-Oed
Challenge Rating: 2
Alignment: True Neutral
- Combat Tentacles: In place of each arm, the yann-an-oed has a mass of long, writhing tentacles.
- Waddling Head: The yann-an-oed is shaped like a bipedal frog or toad, with stumps for arms.
Yavalnoi
Challenge Rating: 6
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Interspecies Romance: Yavalnois are capable of procreating with almost any creature from the sea, from sahuagin, giant crabs to krakens.
- Supernatural Suffocation: While outlined in the blue light emitted by a yavalnoi's anchor-shaped organ, a creature can't breathe underwater.
Ziphius
Challenge Rating: 8
Alignment: True Neutral
- Kraken and Leviathan: The smaller ziphius vary between enormous and impossibly large; most are at least 75 feet long. The largest reported ziphius encountered was larger than the frigate it attacked and sank.
- Sea Monster: Ziphius are said to dwell in the deepest oceans, and are quickly attracted by living prey in the water. Many ships on routes where a ziphius is known to hunt keep a goat, sheep or pig aboard to throw overboard as an offering if the ziphius' distinctive dorsal fin is spotted.
Zoog
Challenge Rating: 0
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
- Arch-Enemy: Zoogs are mortal enemies of cats, feeding on kittens at any opportunity, and they themselves are stalked by grown cats in turn. Lions, tigers, house cats, leonino and sphinxes all take any opportunity to hunt and kill a zoog.
- You Dirty Rat!: While zoogs seem little more than a pest to some, they possess a devious intelligence and a willingness to scheme to their advantage. Their ability to plot and communicate makes them much more dangerous than ordinary rodents. They are prone to serving dark gods of the Void and Outer Darkness and are very willing to steal, spy and nibble away ancient bonds and seals as directed by evil wizards, clerics or monsters.
