Aeon, AgnoiaThis cylindrical creature of pale fog and dark shadow stands on three clawed feet. Three pale arms jut from around the column, each ending in a hand with long, black claws.Agnoia CR 14Source Concordance of Rivals pg. 52
XP 38,400
N Large outsider (aeon, extraplanar)
Init +8; Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect magic, detect thoughts; Perception +25
Aura ignorance (30 ft.)DefenseAC 29, touch 17, flat-footed 25 (+4 deflection, +4 Dex, +12 natural, –1 size)
hp 200 (16d10+112)
Fort +14, Ref +14, Will +18
Defensive Abilities all-around vision; Immune cold, critical hits, poison; Resist electricity 10, fire 10; SR 25OffenseSpeed 30 ft., fly 40 ft. (good)
Melee 3 claws +23 (2d6+8 plus bleed)
Space 10 ft., Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks bleed (1d3 Int damage), forgotten one
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 16th; concentration +21)
Constant—detect magic, detect thoughts
At will—modify memory (DC 19), touch of idiocy
3/day—feeblemind (DC 20), quickened touch of idiocyStatisticsStr 26, Dex 19, Con 24, Int 25, Wis 22, Cha 21
Base Atk +16; CMB +25; CMD 43 (45 vs. trip)
Feats Combat Casting, Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Great Fortitude, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Power Attack, Quicken Spell-Like Ability (touch of idiocy)
Skills Appraise +26, Fly +17, Intimidate +24, Knowledge (arcana) +34, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +26, Knowledge (engineering) +26, Knowledge (geography) +26, Knowledge (history) +34, Knowledge (local) +26, Knowledge (nature) +26, Knowledge (nobility) +26, Knowledge (planes) +34, Knowledge (religion) +26, Perception +25, Sense Motive +25, Spellcraft +15, Stealth +19, Use Magic Device +13
Languages envisaging
SQ compression, extension of all, glance of understanding, lore minder, void formEcologyEnvironment any (Outer Planes)
Organization solitary, pair, or forgetting (3–8)
Treasure noneSpecial AbilitiesAura of Ignorance (Su) Creatures other than aeons that attempt Knowledge checks within 30 feet of an agnoia automatically fail. An agnoia can suppress or resume its aura of ignorance as a swift action.
Forgotten One (Su) A creature under the effects of an agnoia’s feeblemind cannot be the target of divination spells, including discern location or legend lore. In addition, memory of the target is dulled in all creatures other than aeons; the target cannot be considered an ally of any creature. Most creatures forget about the target once it is out of sight, although friends and family members might retain memories for longer based on the strength of their feelings for the target.
Glance of Understanding (Su) An agnoia knows the weaknesses of any creature it sees, as though it had succeeded at a Knowledge check to identify the creature’s weaknesses with a result of a natural 20.
Lore Minder (Ex) An agnoia treats all Knowledge skills as class skills and can attempt Knowledge checks untrained, even if the DC is higher than 10.DescriptionAgnoias are not yet deemed outcasts by the ranks of aeonkind, but they teeter on the edge of exile from the ranks of the caretakers of reality. Like all aeons, agnoias work to maintain a precarious cosmic balance—in their case, this balance is between the dissemination of knowledge and the preservation of ignorance. Although these aeons once worked to keep this balance in careful check by distributing truths across planetary and planar gulfs and obliterating dangerous truths from mortal minds, agnoias collectively decided several years ago that the sum total of knowledge in the multiverse had reached dangerous heights. Creation had become too well informed to sustain redoubts of ignorance for long, and the balance agnoias worked to maintain was in danger. As a group, the agnoias agreed that they would wholly forsake their duties regarding the spread of learning and instead focus on fostering ignorance, returning the multiverse to a safely unenlightened level. Agnoias connected to universities and libraries turned on their associates, setting controlled fires and transporting scholars to isolated wildernesses. This rapid change in direction, nearly unprecedented by aeon standards, caused most other aeons to mark agnoias as reckless and dangerous.
Agnoias see this change as absolutely vital to the performance of their overall function as arbiters of knowledge and ignorance. In fact, some agnoias express frustration that the drive to obliterate universal knowledge wasn't initiated much sooner, when knowledge was more centralized in nascent civilizations and therefore easier to manage. No agnoia would dare to blame the Monad directly for this error in intellectual administration, as they see it, but most agnoias express some satisfaction for finally being able to act as they deem fit rather than remaining shackled to a higher power.
Agnoias have a particular dislike for mortal explorers and planar travelers. As mortals learn to travel quickly across their worlds and between the planes, they spread their knowledge like a plague, disrupting nascent civilizations and exposing long-sequestered secrets. Such travelers are agnoias' most frequent targets, as these aeons consider them vectors for spreading the disease of enlightenment. Agnoias work to close planar gates and sabotage transport vessels, first seeking to control the transmission of knowledge and then working to eradicate it. Although they have little concern for mortal lives that might be lost in a sinking ship or a burning library, they aren't cruel and usually time their actions to minimize the loss of innocent—and particularly ignorant—life. Agnoias often work alone, but this is primarily because they view their tasks as urgent and their numbers are very few. When given the opportunity to work together, agnoias operate in eerie concert, each seeming to predict the actions of the others with automatic prescience.
Agnoias don't apply their recent knowledge-obliterating directive to their own kind. Many agnoias in fact hoard knowledge, and they are surprisingly well informed on a broad variety of topics. Most have labored for years in academies or universities, absorbing minutiae on particular specialties and adding this information to their vast mental storehouses. Getting an agnoia to part with its knowledge is all but impossible, however, as each knows that any information might start yet another cascade of erudition it must later extinguish.
In combat, agnoias prefer to reduce their enemies' intellects as quickly as possible. Their preferred tactic is to afflict their most intelligent opponents with feeblemind, which agnoias augment by removing targets' memories not only from the targets' own minds, but also from the consciousness of reality. Victims of this attack have their intellects reduced, and their effect upon the cosmic network of knowledge is dulled—people once familiar with a victim find their recollections clouding over, and any intellectual influence a victim may have had (such as authored works, public lectures, or tales of daring exploits) is removed. This effect even extends to printed works; a shelf of books authored by a victim transforms into paper covered with incomprehensible marks, unable to convey meaning or knowledge. Although this power is permanent, it is reversible, unfortunately for the agnoias. If a victim's intellect is restored, so too are her works and the memories of her.
Agnoias are keen observers; their eyes drift around their bodies and switch from one side to another with a mere blink. They are particularly difficult to surprise, and their keen vision allows them to detect even magical auras with ease. Agnoias are also apt judges of character and have several lifetimes of experience interacting with mortals. As a result, they can predict actions and motivations with shrewd consideration that is as much a factor of their experience as it is their magical ability to detect creatures' thoughts.
Agnoias appear as columns of fog and shadow. Within their roiling forms, the shadows never obscure the fog and the fog never conceals the dark shadow. Although an agnoia can walk on the three clawed feet protruding from the bottom of its column, it can just as easily fly with a thought. An agnoia's three claws are spread radially around its torso. Despite their vaporous appearance, agnoias aren't insubstantial, but they can compress their forms to fit into small spaces.
A typical agnoia is 16 feet tall and weighs 900 pounds.Creatures in "Aeon" CategorySource Bestiary 2 pg. 8
Beyond passion, beyond mercy, beyond reason, the faceless caretakers of reality toil without end, silently struggling to preserve the tenuous balance upon which all existence depends. These voiceless forces are the aeons, inscrutable shapers and eliminators of the multiverse. They exist beyond the understanding of most mortals, endlessly striving toward goals unfathomable even to many of the planes' eldest inhabitants. Aeons build order from the chaos of the Maelstrom, seed new life upon barren worlds, and halt the rampages of forces grown overbold. They rend nations to vapor, dismantle planets into cosmic dust, and pave the way for calamities. Their ways are at one moment beneficent and in the next utterly devastating, but always without ardor, compassion, or malice. Every aeon dispassionately but determinedly strives toward the same objective—an ever changing, amending, and readjusting pursuit of multiplanar equilibrium. United in this eternal and perhaps impossible pursuit, aeons embody the planes-spanning hand of a metaphorical omnipotent clockmaker, endlessly tuning and adjusting the myriad gears of reality in pursuit of ultimate perfection.
The balance aeons seek in all things begins with themselves. Most aeons embody a powerful dichotomy sustained in equilibrium. From the potency of birth and death meeting in akhanas to the philosophies of fate and freedom embodied by theletos, the workings of existence take on form and will within their living manifestations. Even the lesser paracletus unite diverse elements of creation in their intricate orbits. Such stability reaches beyond the shapes of aeons to inspire and direct their minds, imbuing each with a singular purpose and area of control. Thus, each embodies the realm of reality it would seek to balance, attempting to enforce a harmony as perfect as that of its physical form upon all things. The forms of various types directly suggest their abilities and objectives, with pleroma aeons, for example, exhibiting the power to create or annihilate, and using such influence to alter that which has grown either too abundant or sterile.
While aeons are not malicious creatures, they care nothing for individual beings or the struggles and emotions central to most life. The ruin of an entire city or burning of a vast forest means equally little in their manipulation of symmetry. By the same right, creating new life or constructing defenses against impending calamities are equally characteristic acts. For aeons, only the final tally matters, and a land overpopulated by humanoids is just as much in need of culling as a land overrun by ravenous fungi. Just as a body's natural defenses have neither mercy nor malice for invading parasites, aeons don't muddy their objectives with emotion. Such impartiality extends to the interactions between aeons as well. Without culture, society, or even memory beyond the immediate needs of the multiverse, they build no relationships and, in general, have no personalities beyond an automaton-like directness. A vague caste system exists, with aeons that hold influence over greater multiversal principles acknowledged as superior by their lesser brethren. This caste system rarely translates to actual direction and obedience, though. Should the acts of a greater aeon jeopardize the works or even lives of a multitude of lesser aeons, the efforts of the more potent aeon proceed without hesitation. Only in matters of great existential concern do multiple aeons cooperate, directed into doing so by the united consciousness of their race and the multiverse itself, and even then rarely for long.
Many mistake aeons for friends or allies of nature and its creatures. While this might be true at times—and is definitely true if reality as a whole is considered a vast, united organism—aeons care no more for the trees of the forest than for the towers of civilization. For them, all life is life and all death is death, to be preserved or scoured regardless of its arbitrary shape.
In rare cases, aeons have been known to deviate from the whims of the multiverse. Such rogue aeons typically arise from interacting with other races excessively, living beyond their intended times, being exposed to unusual ideas, or being forced to perform acts they otherwise wouldn't contemplate. These aeons typically take on extreme personalities, coming to favor one aspect of their being over the other—an akhana is just as likely to become an artist of life as a mass murderer. Normal aeons perceive their rogue brethren as high-priority disturbances in the balance of the multiverse and seek the destruction of such rarities with all haste.Monad, the Condition of AllAll aeons are bound in a state they know as “the condition of all” or “monad,” a supreme oneness with all members of their race and the multiverse itself. Therefore, aeons exist as an extension of the multiverse; in a fashion similar to the way bones, muscle, and the various humors create a mortal, they exist as part of a greater being. When destroyed or upon accomplishing specific goals, their energies simply dissipate and become reabsorbed into the monad. They do not die, but are instead recycled. They have no discernible memories and seem to exist only in the present, arriving to repair balance. Relationships with non-aeons are generally nonexistent, and they feel no sense of affection, remorse, vengeance, or similar emotions. Aeons deal with each task as its own action, independent from all other tasks. Thus, an individual once at violent odds with an aeon may, upon their next encounter, have the aeon's full and undaunted support.Aeon SubtypeAeons are a race of neutral outsiders who roam the planes maintaining the balance of reality. Aeons possess the following traits.- Immunity to cold, poison, and critical hits.
- Resistance to electricity 10 and fire 10.
- Envisaging (Su) Aeons communicate wordlessly, almost incomprehensibly. Caring little for the wants and desires of other creatures, they have no need to engage in exchanges of dialogue. Instead, aeons mentally scan beings for their thoughts and intentions, and then retaliate with flashes of psychic projections that emit a single concept in response to whatever the other being was thinking. The flash is usually a combination of a visual and aural stimulation, which displays how the aeon perceives future events might work out. For instance, an aeon seeking to raze a city communicates this concept to non-aeons by sending them a vivid image of the city crumbling to ash. An aeon's envisaging functions as a non-verbal form of telepathy. Aeons cannot read the thoughts of any creature immune to mind-affecting effects.
- Extension of All (Ex) Through an aeon's connection to the multiverse, it gains access to strange and abstruse knowledge that filters through all existence. Much of the knowledge is timeless, comprised of events long past, present, and potentially even those yet to come. Aeons gain a racial bonus equal to half their racial Hit Dice on all Knowledge skill checks. This same connection also binds them to other aeons. As a result, they can communicate with each other freely, over great distances as if using telepathy. This ability also works across planes, albeit less effectively, allowing the communication of vague impressions or feelings, not specific details or sights. Due to the vast scope of the aeon race's multiplanar concerns, though, even the most dire reports of a single aeon rarely inspire dramatic or immediate action.
- Void Form (Su) Though aeons aren't incorporeal, their forms are only a semi-tangible manifestation of something greater. An aeon's void form grants it a deflection bonus equal to 1/4 its Hit Dice (rounded down).
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