AshullianThis enormous, eyeless eel-person has a round head atop its long neck and a thick torso with four hand-like tentacles and two long tails. Its skin is translucent, displaying colorful fluids rippling within, and embedded with strange objects.Ashullian CR 11Source Pathfinder #135: Runeplague pg. 86
XP 12,800
CE Large outsider (native, water)
Init +11; Senses blindsight 30 ft., scent; Perception +16DefenseAC 26, touch 16, flat-footed 19 (+7 Dex, +10 natural, –1 size)
hp 137 (11d10+77)
Fort +9, Ref +14, Will +11
Defensive Abilities gaze attacks, illusions, visual effects, and other attack forms that rely on sight; Resist cold 30; SR 22OffenseSpeed 20 ft., swim 60 ft.
Melee 4 tentacles +17 (1d6+3), 2 tail slaps +12 (1d8+1)
Space 10 ft., Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks powerful tentacles, synesthetic masterpiece (DC 20)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 11th; concentration +16)
At will—hydraulic push, mage hand, prestidigitation
3/day—aqueous orb (DC 18), quickened hydraulic push, hydraulic torrent (DC 18)
1/day—cone of cold (DC 20), major creation, telekinesis (DC 20)StatisticsStr 16, Dex 25, Con 23, Int 18, Wis 14, Cha 21
Base Atk +11; CMB +19; CMD 32
Feats Agile Maneuvers, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Quicken Spell-Like Ability (hydraulic push), Toughness, Weapon Finesse
Skills Craft (any 3) +18, Disable Device +16, Knowledge (planes) +12, Perception +16, Sleight of Hand +21, Spellcraft +18, Stealth +17, Swim +25, Use Magic Device +19
Languages Aklo, Aquan
SQ bowerEcologyEnvironment any water (Kaer Maga)
Organization solitary or collective (2-4)
Treasure standardSpecial AbilitiesBower (Su) By spending 1 hour in intense concentration, an ashullian can designate a 50-foot-radius area within 200 feet as its bower. An ashullian’s senses permeate its bower, allowing it to perceive the entire area with its blindsight and to touch, taste, smell, and hear everything within it. An ashullian always has line of effect to any area of its bower, and can cause any of its spell-like or supernatural abilities to originate from any point within its bower instead of from its own space. While inside its bower, the ashullian can use its telekinesis and major creation spell-like abilities at will to affect any creatures and objects located within. The ashullian’s bower remains in place until the ashullian dies, moves more than 200 feet from the bower, or creates a new bower. A dispel magic spell or effect cannot dispel an ashullian’s bower, although it can suppress the bower as though it were a magic item.
Powerful Tentacles (Ex) An ashullian treats its tentacle attacks as primary natural attacks.
Synesthetic Masterpiece (Su) Once every 1d4 rounds, an ashullian can briefly channel its artistic mastery to flood its bower with an overwhelming multisensory experience. Non-ashullians within its bower must each succeed at a DC 20 Fortitude saving throw or take 5d8 points of sonic damage and be staggered for 1 round, and must also succeed at a DC 20 Will save or take 5d8 points of damage and be fascinated for 1 round (during this round, the creature does not view anything within the bower that does not attack the affected creature as a potential threat). A creature that fails both saving throws is stunned for 1d4 rounds, rather than staggered or fascinated for 1 round. The save DC is Charisma-based.DescriptionBlind, contemplative artists from the lightless depths of the Elemental Plane of Water, ashullians coaxed sounds, tastes, and other diverse stimuli into miles-wide galleries among the plane’s freezing currents. A powerful race of subterranean humanoids beneath Kaer Maga coveted the ashullians’ abilities and tore open a planar rift that captured several ashullians but also flooded the humanoids’ underground chambers with icy water. The humanoids vanished, and their ashullian prisoners now haunt the Kaer Magan caves known as the Drowned Levels. For generations, these creatures have prowled the chambers of their vanished captors. Ashullians seek objects that realize their eclectic and unpredictable aesthetic sense and showcase whatever oddities they find—which could include anything from a sodden scroll or a jeweled brooch to a severed foot—by wearing them in their flesh or displaying them in their magical bowers.
Ashullians are not inherently aggressive, but they demand that strangers contribute curios for their art. An ashullian’s sense of a “curio” is utterly alien to most creatures, and can range from a bauble or scarf to a moist lump of bread or a long strip of newly flayed skin. Denying an ashullian is likely to provoke its rage.
A typical ashullian’s lithe form measures 16 feet from head to tails and weighs only 200 pounds.EcologyAn ashullian’s eyeless, eellike head has a small, lipless mouth full of unsettling humanlike teeth. Its elongated cranium sits above a supple neck and four sharp-tipped tentacles. Its torso splits into two thick tails as long as the rest of its body. An ashullian’s transparent, leathery skin reveals a body cavity with swirling iridescent ribbons of fluid in place of organs. Ciliated clefts and soft, flexible spines—the ashullian’s sensory apparatuses—run along its back and arms.
Although their ancestors lived in the Plane of Water, the ashullians beneath Kaer Maga are now native outsiders. Their artistic abilities are stunted, degenerate versions of those of their progenitors, who may still swim within enormous sensory galleries in the Elemental Plane of Water. Ashullians on Golarion can realize their grand visions only within their bowers, exercising incredible control in pursuit of their inscrutable artistry. Within a bower, the diverse contents’ own sensory elements— such as the coarse texture of rusted mail, the sour taste of reagents, and the stink of decaying flesh—are combined with whorls of scent, sounds, and other minor manifestations injected by the ashullian. An ashullian can create and move objects within its bower by thought alone, and can even suspend basic physical laws there; if an ashullian chooses, an object remains eternally suspended in the water in defiance of gravity, or remains dry despite being submerged. An ashullian revels in the synesthetic glory of its bower, but other creatures find the multisensory experience overwhelming.
The ancient magic that brought ashullians to the Drowned Levels keeps most of them trapped there. A few, though, have escaped their prison via purloined magic, while others have simply vanished without a trace. Ashullians whisper that these paragons transcended their existence through ultimate artistic mastery and seek to follow these mythical examples.
Ashullians are spawned singly and mature on their own. Ashullians grow slowly and can reach 300 years old. The bodies of deceased ashullians are almost always incorporated into the bowers of younger ashullians as an artistic statement about aging or the transience of life.Habitat and SocietyWhen not tending to their individual bowers, ashullians search the Drowned Levels for inspiration and clues to a means of escape. Ashullians are not the only occupants of these dismal, sodden halls; water elementals and other aquatic creatures swim through the ashullians’ domain. Ashullians are generally content to let familiar creatures pass, although they have an intense fixation on visitors from the surface. These visitors are first pestered for trinkets and curios, but eventually restrained and stripped layer by layer so the ashullian can experience their full sensory measure. Occasionally, visitors escape an ashullian’s attention by presenting a novel artistic display and fleeing while the creature is occupied. Ashullians are rarely welcome within another ashullian’s bower, as each considers its own artistic experiments to be superior to those of its kin and is unabashedly critical of others.
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