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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 9356602" data-attributes="member: 2209"><a href="https://paizo.com/products/btpy9g21?Pathfinder-Campaign-Setting-Occult-Bestiary" target="_blank">Occult Bestiary</a>Pathfinder 1eAnimus Shade: Every intelligent mind exists as a war of aspects—primitive survival urges and base wants opposing intellectual reason and high-minded goals. Some of these aspects dominate the mind, defining a creature’s personality, while others are shackled away. Sometimes, psychic injuries can loosen these shackles, revealing aspects of a creature they normally control and hide away. When a creature dies from a psychic injury, its conscious mind may shear away, leaving only those subconscious aspects—their animus—behind. Called animus shades, these spectral undead are gripped with feral rage and lash out at the living. Individuals who engage in psychic combat are particularly prone to succumbing to this form of undeath, and their shades sometimes seek out their former opponents, not content until their one-time adversaries are slain. Animus shades always bear a superficial resemblance to their former, living selves, but manifest in death as wild brutes, made powerful by their anger and feral by their long suffering. Animus shades’ forms appear hunched and contorted after a lifetime of being crushed beneath the weight of the dominant psyches. They sport wicked claws, overlong limbs, cracked flesh, and other nightmarish deformities reflecting the fears their living selves harbored about the dark corners of their own minds. Any gear or items they possessed appear rotted, cracked, and torn in spectral form, though they may carry ghostly versions of the weapons they used in life, deadly implements still capable of harming the living. Most often, animus shades linger near the sites of their deaths or wander without any specific purpose. As many psychic contests occur in mindscapes or on far-flung esoteric planes, animus shades are frequently found roaming such realms, endlessly raging over the sometimes centuries-old defeats that resulted in their demises. Even when not consumed by such losses, animus shades commonly target those they happen across who remind them of the dominant selves that repressed them in life—whether because of similarities in physical appearance, personality, or activity. However, some rare animus shades possess greater clarity of focus and are gripped with the need to undo the accomplishments of their living selves, taking pleasure in destroying everything that they once loved or took pride in. As animus shades result from psychic violence, they most commonly appear among intelligent races and beings known for mastering occult forces. Even among such races, these undead prove far more common within cultures and groups that cultivate psychic prowess— they’re well known to the people of Vudra, for instance, and have long been documented by Iroran priests. However, for the majority of the Inner Sea region’s people, they’re easy to mistake for ghosts or other undead—often to tragic ends. Fortunately, in lands that value strength over mental prowess, or in strictly martial cultures, animus shades are almost unknown. Members of races such as hobgoblins, kobolds, and orcs, which rarely give rise to psychically talented individuals, almost never rise as animus shades. Because of the psychic violence that spawned them, animus shades rarely, if ever, cooperate. In death, even animus shades created from former allies slain by the same foe viciously strike out at each other. The mental trauma that fills them and holds them to the world scars these undead deeply, but ultimately makes them most resentful of themselves—as they know their own weakness or distraction resulted in their deaths. Much of their rage is thus pointed inward, and they take particular satisfaction in viciously unleashing their hatred on those who resemble themselves, especially if such conflicts remind them of the battles in which they died. “Animus shade” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature that has a Charisma score of at least 6 and an Intelligence score of at least 8. Medusa Animus Shade: ?Combusted: Even scholars of the strange consider most tales of spontaneous combustion to be nothing more than urban legend. But those with deep knowledge of the occult know it is indeed possible for a person to feel a sudden fever come on, only to find the heat within her body rising to incredible levels until she bursts into flames and perishes, leaving behind only a charred corpse. The sudden and violent deaths of such individuals make it easier for dark powers to reanimate their bodies, and sometimes for the victims to return from the dead on their own. Whatever the method of their return, these undead creatures—known as combusted—all suffer the telltale signs of their demise: their corpses continuously burn and their desiccated flesh is never fully consumed by the flames. Potentially appearing at any location known to be a hot spot for undead, these shambling horrors frequently wander into nearby bodies of water in a futile attempt to extinguish the flames that took their lives. The combusted of the Inner Sea region are rare and largely solitary. One notable exception is in the legendarily haunted lands surrounding the ruined city of Shadun in Qadira, between the volatile Zhonar and Zhobl volcanoes. Few dare travel there, and even fewer return, yet several of those who have visited that ash-cloaked land and escaped tell of ember-eyed creatures lurking in the night. More than once, while telling such tales, an explorer has burst into flames and quickly resurrected as a violent combusted. No one knows what links Shadun and this terrible end, but the phenomenon has happened enough times that many in southern Qadira know it as the Curse of Last Ash. Combusted With the Cold Subtype: Far from the Inner Sea region, in distant Minkai, those exposed to the black flames that consumed the Shojinawa manor—as well as their descendants—found themselves vulnerable to an odd form of spontaneous combustion that leads to combusted with the cold subtype instead of the fire subtype and that deal cold damage instead of fire damage. Echohusk: Echohusks are the walking corpses of creatures slain by powerful psychic attacks and animated by the mental energies that caused their deaths. The mind and soul of an echohusk are erased from its being, leaving nothing but the psychic echo of the creature that scoured its mind. Echohusks are common in and around Geb, where death from the powerful mental attacks of psychic spellcasters—even liches—is an all too common occurrence. In such areas, echohusks are found in groups, obeying the commands of their dark masters. In the deep reaches of the underworld, where lost travelers or wayward patrols might encounter psychic horrors like neothelids, masterless echohusks are more common; the ancient and terrible creatures that happen to spawn them typically have little use for mindless servants. Many psychic creatures have attempted to perfect the technique of creating echohusks, but only the attacks of the incorporeal undead known as psychic stalkers (see page 45) can create echohusks without fail. The horrific nature of psychic stalkers is likely the reason for this phenomenon. “Echohusk” is an acquired template that can be added to any living, intelligent corporeal creature, referred to hereafter as the base creature. Bubear Echohusk: ?Dread Echohusk: A dread echohusk possesses the psychic residue of the overwhelming fear it felt when it lost its life. Psychic Lich, Relentless Psychic Lich: Most psychic liches are humans, or come from other races renowned for their psychic abilities. To become a psychic lich, one must create and infuse a memoir, which serves a similar function to an ordinary lich’s phylactery. This memoir projects the lich’s personal legend into the Astral Plane, which is tethered through the planes to a physical object, typically a magically strengthened book or scroll (10 hit points, hardness 1, break DC 15). Each psychic lich must create its own memoir by using the Craft Wondrous Item feat. The character must be able to cast psychic spells at a caster level of 11th or higher. The memoir costs 120,000 gp to create and has a caster level equal to that of its creator at the time of creation. “Psychic lich” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature), provided it can create the required astral memoir. A psychic lich retains all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here. Human Psychic Lich Psychic 11: ?Psychic Stalker: Psychic stalkers are the undead minds of psychic spellcasters who died unexpectedly—and likely violently. Such minds are sometimes powerful enough to persist even after their bodies’ destruction, transforming into incorporeal creatures composed entirely of thought. Despite their will to endure, the forms in which psychic stalkers survive bear little continuity with their former, living bodies. At the moment of death, psychic stalkers are traumatically torn from their corporeal forms and the lives they once had. As such, they retain no memories or abilities from their former existence. Knowing only that they are missing a vital part of their being, psychic stalkers are dominated by the desire to take control of new bodies. Psychic Vampire, Vetalarana, Thought-Sapping Psychic Vampire: A psychic vampire is usually born when a creature with psychic potential dies in a state of denial, stubbornly clinging to the material world through sheer willpower. As it dies, the creature attempts to draw on its own psychic energy and that of any living beings around it in order to cling to its mortal existence. It inevitably fails, but if its will is strong enough, it rises again. No longer able to sustain itself using its own mental energy, it hungers for the energy of others. Psychic vampires can’t create spawn, and thus their numbers remain relatively small.“Psychic vampire” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature with 5 or more Hit Dice (referred to hereafter as the base creature). Most psychic vampires were once humanoids, fey, or monstrous humanoids. Human Psychic Vampire Slayer 7: ?Animus Shade, Spectral Undead, Mind-Bending Foe: ?Medusa Animus Shade, Spectral Medusa: ?Combusted, Shambling Horror: ?Echohusk, Walking Corpse of a Creature Slain By a Powerful Psychic Attack and Animated By the Mental Energies That Caused Their Death: ?Echohusk, Mindless Servant: ?Bubear Echohusk, Hulking Humanoid: ?Dread Echohusk, Echohusk Variant: ?Psychic Lich, Mind-Bending Foe: ?Human Psychic Lich Psychic 11, Gaunt Ghoulish Figure: ?Psychic Stalker, Disturbing Presence, Undead Mind of a Psychic Spellcaster Who Died Unexpectedly, Incorporeal Creature Composed Entirely of Thought, Incorporeal Undead: ?Psychic Vampire, Undead Abomination, Mind-Bending Foe: ?Human Psychic Vampire Slayer 7, Fearfully Thin Man: ?Undead, Undead Creature: ?Undead That Gorge on Life Energy: ?Undead Spirit: ?Incorporeal Undead: ?Undead Ally: ?Ghost, Normal Ghost, Typical Ghost: ?Ghost, Nightmarish Creature of Dark Emotion, Twisted Tormented Creature, Incorporeal Undead: ?Haunt, Incorporeal Undead: ?Lich, Ordinary Lich: Scholars of such lore can only speculate as to what causes a neothelid to begin the transformation into an overlord. The change could be a natural process of age and development, though nothing about neothelids can truly be called natural. It may be that by delving into forbidden lore, they discover potent secrets, just as other rituals grant mortals the hideous power of lichdom. Lich, Psychic Spellcaster: ?Vampire: ?Nosferatu: ?Vetala Vampire: ?Wraith: ?Allip: ?</blockquote>

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