Today's Frightful Fridays! A-Z! offering is a Lovecraftian horror writ small. I was taken by the alien mouse that Patrick pointed out, and I wanted to include it in the A-Z challenge, but "A" was already taken by the aerolion. A quick visit to the thesaurus later, and I learned a new word (heterochthonous), one which I could twist to my own ends. Hopefully, this doesn't seem too tortured a way to get an "H" entry.
The extra offering assumes that a character figures out that the dead creature can be carried and that the character would actually want to carry around this weird corpse.
I hope you enjoy the heterochthonmouse, and I will be back tomorrow, probably with another tentacled monster. Thanks for reading!
At first glance this appears to be an extraordinarily large mouse, but it reveals its utterly unnatural features: seven black eyes and three tentacles that dominate its face.
Heterochthonmouse CR 9
XP 6,400
CN Tiny aberration (chaotic)
Init +11; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +16
Defense
AC 24, touch 20, flat-footed 16 (+7 Dex, +1 dodge, +4 natural, +2 size)
hp 105 (14d8+42)
Fort +7, Ref +13, Will +12
Defensive Abilities evasion; DR 10/lawful; Immune acid, cold, polymorph; Resist fire 10
Offense
Speed 30 ft., climb 20 ft.
Melee 2 claws +19 (1d2–2 plus musophobia), 3 tentacles +14 (1d2–2 plus stupefying touch)
Space 2-1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft. (5 ft. with tentacle)
Special Attacks chaos field, stupefying touch
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 14th; concentration +19)
Constant—entropic shield
Statistics
Str 6, Dex 25, Con 17, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 21
Base Atk +10; CMB +15; CMD 24 (28 vs. trip)
Feats Agile Maneuvers, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Mobility, Skill Focus (Stealth), Weapon Finesse
Skills Acrobatics +20, Climb +19, Perception +16, Stealth +36
Languages Aklo (cannot speak)
Ecology
Environment any
Organization solitary, pair, or colony (3–12)
Treasure incidental
Special Abilities
Chaos Field (Su) A heterochthonmouse affects reality in a 30-foot radius centered on the creature. During the creature’s turn, it randomly sets the local gravity and flow of time in its chaos field. Gravity is normal (50%) or reversed (50%, per reverse gravity), and creatures passing through the field are hasted (25%), unaffected (50%) or slowed (25%). The heterochthonmouse is unaffected by its own chaos field, and it can choose the effects in the field (usually only when it wishes to avoid detection).
Musophobia (Su) Claws—contact; save Will DC 22; frequency 1 day; effect 1d4 Wis drain. A character under the effect of this curse will become frightened when he sees a mouse. The save DC is Charisma-based.
Stupefying Touch (Su) If a heterochthonmouse hits its target’s touch AC with a tentacle attack, the target must succeed at a DC 22 Will save to avoid taking 1d4 Int damage. If the target fails, the heterochthonmouse gains 5 temporary hit points.
Every location has its pests, and sanity-blasting unrealities are no exception. Heterochthonmice escape through tears in reality and go virtually unnoticed, especially when an apocalyptic threat also emerges from one of those tears. A heterochthonmouse weighs roughly i2eiπ pounds and measures πe inches in height.
In realms of madness, a heterochthonmouse gets as much notice as a normal insect would in the material plane; it is ignored until it makes a nuisance of itself, in which case it gets squashed or otherwise destroyed. In worlds with normal reality, a heterochthonmouse can be quite disruptive and even dangerous through the localized distortions it carries. Additionally, a heterochthonmouse’s touch is anathema to the minds of most creatures, either by causing them to mentally regress or by inducing madness.
Due to the globe of unreality surrounding a heterochthonmouse, it does not even realize it is away from its home. Fortunately for those faced with an incursion of heterochthonmice, their typical, rodent-like fecundity is severely reduced when they travel to the material plane. A pair of heterochthonmice only produces one or two offspring once per year, and the young creatures must stay within one of the parents’ chaos fields to survive.
--------------------
Heterochthonmouse Corpse
A heterochthonmouse corpse retains the creature’s chaos field for 1d4 hours. Anyone who possesses the corpse is unaffected by the field and can control the field’s effects by asserting his will (and succeeding at a DC 14 Wisdom check) as a move action. If a spell with the chaotic descriptor targets the corpse, the field stays in effect for a number of hours equal to the spell level. The field’s duration can be extended indefinitely, but, once it expires, it can no longer be restarted.
