Qlippoth, GongorinanThis human-sized, crab-like creature scuttles on six stumpy legs, and
each of its four arms sports a different method of inflicting pain.Gongorinan CR 11Source Bestiary 6 pg. 226, Pathfinder #64: Beyond the Doomsday Door pg. 90
XP 12,800
CE Medium outsider (chaotic, evil, extraplanar, qlippoth)
Init +10; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +18DefenseAC 27, touch 17, flat-footed 20 (+6 Dex, +1 dodge, +10 natural)
hp 137 (11d10+77)
Fort +14, Ref +13, Will +7
Defensive Abilities all-around vision, freedom of movement; DR 10/lawful; Immune acid, cold, mind-affecting effects,
polymorph effects; Resist electricity 10, fire 10; SR 22OffenseSpeed 40 ft., climb 40 ft.; air walk
Melee +1 scimitar +18/+13/+8 (1d6+7/15–20), claw +15
(1d8+3 plus bleed), pincer +15 (1d6+3 plus grab), sting +15
(1d4+3 plus poison)
Special Attacks bleed (1d6), constrict (1d6+7), horrific appearance
(DC 20), oviposition, web (+17 ranged, DC 22, 11 hp)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 11th; concentration +16)
Constant—air walk, freedom of movement
At will—statue
3/day—baleful polymorph (DC 20), protection from law
1/day—dimension door, mass reduce person (DC 19), polymorph any object (DC 23)StatisticsStr 23, Dex 23, Con 24, Int 13, Wis 18, Cha 20
Base Atk +11; CMB +17; CMD 34 (42 vs. trip)
Feats Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Critical (scimitar), Improved Initiative, Multiattack, Power Attack
Skills Acrobatics +20, Climb +28, Disguise +19 (+27 as a
boulder while in statue form), Knowledge (arcana) +15,
Perception +18, Stealth +20 (+28 among rocks), Swim +17;
Racial Modifiers +8 Disguise as a boulder while in statue
form, +8 Stealth among rocks
Languages Abyssal; telepathy 100 ft.EcologyEnvironment any underground (Abyss)
Organization solitary, pair, or cast (3–10)
Treasure standard (+1 scimitar, other treasure)Special AbilitiesHorrific Appearance (Su) Those who succumb to a gongorinan’s horrific appearance become confused for 1d4 rounds.
Oviposition (Su) A gongorinan can implant a stony egg the size of a human heart in the body of any Small or larger pinned, helpless, or willing creature as a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity. This action deals 1d4 points of Constitution damage to the victim. If the victim survives this damage, the egg takes root deep in the victim’s body, links to its mind, and begins gestating. The egg grows rapidly, dealing 1 point of Intelligence drain every day. Once this Intelligence drain affects a creature that has an effective Intelligence score of 1, the egg “hatches” inside of the victim. This causes the victim to immediately transform into a horrid animal, aberration, magical beast, or vermin (the exact choice is made by the gongorinan according to its strange goals and unknowable desires), whereupon it begins living out its new life via pure instinct—this effect otherwise functions as baleful polymorph with the creature having failed its secondary Will save to retain its personality. A gongorinan can command the actions of a creature that has undergone this transformation as if the victim had been affected by dominate monster (this works even on creatures that are normally immune to such effects as a result of being mindless) as long as the gongorinan is within 120 feet of the creature. The effect can be reversed by break enchantment (DC 22—treat the gongorinan’s Hit Dice as the caster level), but cannot be dispelled.
Poison (Ex) Sting—injury; save Fort DC 22; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect 1d3 Strength damage and staggered for 1 round; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Constitution-based.DescriptionThe gongorinans are the spawn of the qlippoth lord Yamasoth, although one could be forgiven for thinking of them less as offspring and more as parasites. A gongorinan’s basic shape resembles that of an immense, stocky crab, save that it lacks crabs’ aquatic adaptations—gongorinans are terrestrial creatures. A typical gongorinan has no fewer than a dozen stalked eyes, and is capable of extending these eyes from the upper edges of its body just above its mouth to a length of nearly 3 feet, giving it extraordinary vision in all directions. A gongorinan’s mouth is a complex tangle of sliding plates and toothy ridges that rasp and shriek against each other as it speaks and chews, but despite their frightening shapes, these mouthparts are ill-suited for making physical attacks; the gongorinan relies upon its arms for that. Each gongorinan has four arms, and each is a different, highly specialized appendage. The humanoid arm is used for fine manipulation or wielding weapons, while the mantis-like claw is used to shred flesh and create deep, bleeding wounds. The needle-covered tentacle is used to sting and inject a painful poison to stagger foes, while the pincer is used to snatch and hold victims close for oviposition.
A typical gongorinan stands about 6 feet tall and weighs 800 pounds. When at rest, a gongorinan retracts its limbs into its rock-encrusted body, allowing it to appear remarkably like nothing more than a large, misshapen boulder. Larger specimens known as elder gongorinans exist (and often have additional and even more dangerous arms), but these are quite rare save for in realms where Yamasoth’s influence is strong.
All gongorinans carry a brood of horrific egg masses, yet these eggs are not used for the propagation of their kind (a process governed by a more traditional and nightmarish method best left undescribed). Instead, these eggs carry within their stony shells a raw quintessence of the Abyss, infused with the ichor-seed of the gongorinans’ lord Yamasoth. Whereas most creatures are driven to breed and multiply, the gongorinans are instead driven to seek out humanoid hosts for their eggs. The implantation happens via the gongorinan’s mouth and a hideous ovipositor that’s neither tongue nor toothed, prolapsing throat, but something worse. Fortunately for most who might encounter a gongorinan, the oviposition process leaves the horrid qlippoth open to attack and cannot be performed quickly, yet to a lone adventurer caught and overwhelmed by a gongorinan, this is small comfort indeed.
Once an egg has been implanted, it takes many days to grow, and the gongorinan prefers to carry the unfortunate host off to restrain it in a hidden location for the duration. Victims are often cocooned in webs while the egg gestates. As it grows, the egg feeds on the victim’s mind, absorbing the victim’s intellect until it has reduced the host to a drooling wreck. At this point, the egg doesn’t hatch so much as it merge with the host, effecting a horrific and permanent transformation into a monstrous form. The gongorinan can influence this ultimate form as it lays its egg. It typically chooses powerful creatures already found in the region, for these “young” are loyal to their parent and serve it as guardians or playthings. Victims retain no portion of their previous personality, but those who have been rescued from this horrific fate via powerful magic do retain memories of their time as a monstrosity. Many never quite recover from these ordeals, and often develop a peculiar form of madness in which they regard their life as a monster as having been their true life, and their true form and life as the curse. The most despondent seek the promise of peace through suicide rather than endure the dreams of their life as a monster—dreams that carry within them a most horrible longing to return to the qlippoth’s arms.
Gongorinans are an industrious breed of qlippoth, and wherever they find themselves, they invariably form hive-like complexes in which to live. These gongorinan “cities” are labyrinthine affairs with plenty of chambers for their transformed children. In the Abyss, gongorinan hives can grow truly immense, with populations in the thousands, but the Material Plane is no stranger to their hive citiesElder GongorinanAn elder gongorinan is a Large creature with at least 4
additional Hit Dice. For every 4 additional Hit Dice an elder
gongorinan has, it gains an additional arm—these additional
arms may duplicate an existing claw, sting, pincer, or hand.
An elder gongorinan with additional hands can make
additional weapon attacks, but these are all treated as offhand
attacks. The final CR of an elder gongorinan should
be calculated after comparing its statistics to the expected
values on Table 1–1 on page 289.
Some elder gongorinans have different arms; listed
below are four examples of potential additional limbs.
Club: This whiplike arm ends in a bony growth that delivers
a slam attack. A creature struck by this attack must succeed at
a Fortitude saving throw or be staggered for 1 round (DC = 10 +
1/2 the gongorinan’s Hit Dice + its Strength modifier).
Serpent: This arm is a serpent capable of delivering a
bite attack injecting poison that deals Constitution damage
rather than Strength damage.
Whip: This arm is a thin, segmented limb tipped with
a long tendril. The arm deals slashing damage on a hit,
has 5 feet more reach than normal, and attempts a free trip
attack if it hits a target.
Worm: This arm ends in a maw capable of making a bite
attack. On a hit, the bite inflicts confusion for 1d3 rounds
unless the victim makes a successful Will save (DC = 10 +
1/2 the gongorinan’s Hit Dice + its Charisma modifier).Creatures in "Qlippoth" CategorySource Bestiary 2 pg. 218
Before the Abyss was taught how to process and transform larvae into demons—indeed, before larvae even existed or the idea of mortal life had been conceived—it was rife with foul life. These creatures exist still, yet in drastically reduced numbers and often only in the deepest pits of the plane. Known as the qlippoth (the singular and plural are identical), these fiends may well be the oldest form of life in the Great Beyond—certainly, they were already in existence before the proteans discovered them. Some believe that the qlippoth come from an unknowable realm on what might be described as the “outside shell” of the Outer Sphere, but if the qlippoth are to be taken as indicative of what order of existence rules in such a realm, it is a good thing indeed that this outer realm is so impossibly distant.
The qlippoth do not possess in their forms anything approximating the human shape except by cosmic fluke or sinister mockery. In their twitching, squirming visages, the mad might make comparisons to life’s most primeval shapes—spiders and cephalopods, insects and worms, and even baser forms of life. What this might imply about these lower forms of life has disturbed philosophers for ages, and is not a train of thought that many enjoy lingering upon.
Since the rise of mortal sin, the rule of the Abyss has passed from the qlippoth to the much more fecund demons. When the Abyss first “learned” how to transform mortal souls into demons, the resulting explosion of demonic life culminated in a violent and destructive war with the then-rulers of the Abyss—the qlippoth. For unguessed millennia this war raged across the countless layers of the Abyss. The qlippoth had the advantage of knowing their ancient realm and, as a general rule, were individually more powerful than most demons, but the demons had numbers on their side. And as the demons continued to win battle after battle, new powers among their kind rose—balors, balor lords, nascent demon lords, and eventually demon lords themselves. Over time, the qlippoth were hunted nearly to extinction on the upper layers of the Abyss, and were forced to retreat deep into that realm’s darkest and most remote realms, to places even the demons feared to tread.
Here, the qlippoth have festered and lurked for ages. None can say how many qlippoth survived that ancient war, for none can know how deep the Abyss goes. The qlippoth dwell in these darkest pits, periodically emerging to do battle against their hated demonic foes, yet their wrath is not limited to the demonic host. The qlippoth know that daemons played a role in “teaching” the Abyss how to birth demonic life, and their war with the denizens of Abaddon is one fueled more by a driving need to punish than any need for survival. Yet as the eons have worn on, the qlippoth have come to realize that the true enemy is not a fiendish race—it is mortal life itself. For as long as mortal life continues to sin and die, the Abyss can continue to birth demons into its pits and rifts. The destruction of sin, by changing the way mortals live, would halt demonic growth, yet the qlippoth have no concept of how this goal might be achieved—to the qlippoth, only the murder of all mortality can suffice.
As a result, all qlippoth possess within their minds a burning hatred of mortal life, particularly humanoids, whom they know to be the primary seeds of sin. When a qlippoth is conjured to the Material Plane, it seeks any way to escape control in order to maul and destroy humans—they have a particular hatred of children and pregnant women, and if given a choice between harming someone already dying or close to death and someone with a full life ahead of them, they always choose to attack the latter, save for the rare case where the death of an elder or a dying loved one might result in a chain reaction of death among the young.
When called via spells like planar ally that require opposed Charisma checks or similar mechanics in order for the conjuring spellcaster to secure the outsider’s aid, evil humanoids take a —6 penalty when interacting with qlippoth due to the sin in their souls. The promise of a task that would afford the qlippoth the opportunity to kill many humanoids, or a sacrifice of a pregnant woman or a child, can sometimes offset this penalty. When a qlippoth shakes off the shackles of a conjuration, it attempts to remain on the Material Plane as long as possible, and during that time tries to murder as many mortals as it can, doing its part to deprive the Abyss of possible future sinful souls to build demons from. Qlippoth Lords That the qlippoth have among their kind paragons akin to demon lords is indisputable, yet these powers rarely, if ever, emerge from the deepest realms of the Abyss to interact with the rest of the multiverse. They are only rarely worshiped on the Material Plane, but such cults, where they exist, are singularly destructive and ruinous.
Yet the power granted by mortal worship can have a curious effect on a qlippoth—it can, in a way, infect it with the sins of its worshipers. Qlippoth who become so infected are either murdered by their kin or forced to flee to the upper realms of the Abyss, where they complete their transformation and, instead of remaining qlippoth lords, become demon lords. One can know the nature of a demon lord that began life as a qlippoth most easily by its shape—those demon lords, such as ichthyic Dagon or foul and festering Jubilex, bear little or no sign of a humanoid frame.
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