Inevitable, ImpariutDressed in noble regalia, this humanoid creature of metal and wood has a piercing gaze.Impariut CR 10Source Pathfinder #131: The Reaper's Right Hand pg. 86
XP 9,600
LN Medium outsider (extraplanar, inevitable, lawful)
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +23DefenseAC 24, touch 12, flat-footed 22 (+2 Dex, +12 natural)
hp 134 (12d10+68); regeneration 5 (chaotic)
Fort +12, Ref +8, Will +12
Defensive Abilities constructed; DR 10/chaotic; SR 21OffenseSpeed 30 ft.
Melee +1 mithral longsword +18/+13/+8 (1d8+6/19–20), slam +12 (1d8+2) or 2 slams +17 (1d8+5)
Special Attacks dethrone, kingslayer
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 12th; concentration +17)
At will—arcane mark, discern lies (DC 19), dispel magic
3/day—dimension door, hold monster (DC 20), invisibility, magic missile, mark of justice
1/day—plane shift (willing targets only), true seeingStatisticsStr 20, Dex 15, Con 18, Int 15, Wis 18, Cha 21
Base Atk +12; CMB +17 (+19 reposition, steal); CMD 29 (31 vs. reposition or steal)
Feats Alertness, Combat Expertise, Improved Reposition, Improved Steal, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack
Skills Diplomacy +20, Disguise +17, Intimidate +20, Knowledge (history, nobility, planes) +14, Perception +23, Sense Motive +23, Stealth +8
Languages truespeech
SQ change shape (Small or Medium humanoid; alter self), royal giftEcologyEnvironment any urban
Organization solitary, pair, or intervention (3-5)
Treasure standard (+1 mithral longsword, other treasure)Special AbilitiesDethrone (Ex) An impariut can attempt a reposition or steal combat maneuver in place of a slam attack.
Kingslayer (Su) Against any creature with a title denoting leadership or nobility (such as a baroness, chief, or lord), an impariut’s attacks gain a +2 bonus on attack rolls and deal an additional 1d8 damage. Against any creature recognized as an autonomous region’s head of state (such as an empress or king), an impariut’s attacks instead gain a +4 bonus on attack rolls, deal an additional 2d8 damage, and ignore any damage reduction the target has.
Royal Gift (Su) Once per day as a full-round action, an impariut can grant its blessing to a willing humanoid creature by touching it for 1 full round. The target gains a +1 sacred bonus on Will saving throws; a +2 sacred bonus on saving throws against disease and poison; and a +2 sacred bonus on Knowledge (history), Knowledge (nobility), and Sense Motive checks for 1 year. A single creature can have no more than one royal gift from an impariut at a time. As long as the royal gift lasts, the impariut can sense the target’s position and general condition, as per status. The impariut can remove a royal gift as a free action, and a royal gift can be removed by dispel law. An impariut can only maintain one royal gift for every 4 Hit Dice it has (3 royal gifts for a standard impariut).DescriptionMonarchs, dictators, governors, and mayors may rule under the pretense of sustaining lawful civilization, yet those who abuse their power or harm their people undermine the foundation of government. To the forces of Axis, these bad actors represent a threat to cosmic order and a means by which the chaos of uprisings and revolution can take hold. The mortal agents of lawful deities are responsible for encouraging responsible governance; where they fail, an impariut must intervene.
Each impariut is a stern counselor sent to reform a powerful leader, guiding that figure toward sustainable policies that maintain order. Unlike many inevitables that care only that the universal order is upheld, impariuts exhibit slightly more patience and flexibility, knowing that an iron-fisted response is as likely to trigger riots as a negligent regime. As a result, impariuts are capable diplomats and teachers, equally proficient with incentives as with unflinching punishments.
An impariut stands precisely 7 feet tall and weighs exactly 350 pounds.EcologyImpariuts are armored advisors built from the petitioners of mortal rulers in the Adamantine Crucible of Axis. Whereas a petitioner’s memories are all but destroyed when creating most inevitables, impariuts maintain a fundamental sense of their accomplishments and failings during their mortal lives—all the better to recognize these deeds in others. Each impariut also bears a slightly different appearance that reflects the designs and fashion of its former existence, such as wearing the colors or regalia associated with its former kingdom. That said, most of every impariut’s appearance, knowledge, and morality is standardized, infused into its body upon its creation. This knowledge includes an encyclopedic expertise on mortal history, law, methods of civic administration, and social welfare.Habitat and SocietyImpariuts engage in extended assignments beyond Axis, often infiltrating a royal court for several weeks to learn about a disreputable ruler. After assembling a proper profile of the target, the inevitable typically approaches the wayward ruler in private to reveal its true identity, enumerate the ruler’s foibles, detail the likely consequences of continued negligence, and provide an assessment of how best to correct the situation. In a typical case, the impariut offers the ruler its ongoing assistance as an advisor to help steer the leader back to a proper path. However, if at any point the inevitable ascertains that the ruler is beyond redemption, it is empowered to execute the head of state and shepherd the best suitable replacement. This replacement is usually the legal heir, but if that individual is also deemed to be dishonest, an impariut will balance public sentiment with legal entitlement to identify the best candidate.
When a ruler’s deposition seems immediately necessary, an impariut might forego private counseling and cast off its disguise to condemn a wayward ruler before a crowd, snatch his crown, and hurl him from his seat of power. In rare cases in which corruption is widespread, an impariut might gather a local council of lesser leaders to establish a new government in as peaceful a way as possible. The only taboo for impariuts is that each avoids directly intervening in any nations it ruled during its mortal life. This does not prevent an impariut from answering a distant descendant’s question if contacted directly, but impariuts view anything more than this reactive assistance as a conflict of interest.
As inevitables, impariuts are physically tireless and capable of working for centuries at a time. However, extended exposure to irresponsible governance sometimes erodes an impariut’s judgment or causes it to take especially drastic measures when a lighter hand would suffice. These rogue impariuts are very rare, and each one rebels in its own way; one might become a serial killer of monarchs, whereas another might establish itself as the leader of a nation. Other inevitables or lawful outsiders usually neutralize these malfunctioning impariuts swiftly. To minimize these transgressions, senior inevitables encourage impariuts to return to the Eternal City between assignments. There these inevitables can bask in the perfect orderliness, grounding themselves and mentally preparing to guide another generation of imperfect nobles. Impariuts between assignments share information freely, evaluating and circulating the most effective leadership techniques, disciplinary tactics, and methods of avoiding any unintended consequences of their intervention.
Even though impariuts most often answer orders from Axis, a mortal spellcaster can petition an impariut to serve as a counselor for a careless king or tutor for an adolescent heir. So long as the inevitable’s proposed pupil seems able to learn and rule, an impariut might charge as little as 500 gp per month of nonhazardous instruction.
Those spellcasters who would instead force an impariut to obey can placate it by offering rare history volumes and noteworthy biographies, gaining a +1 bonus on the binder’s Charisma check for every 100 gp worth of literature provided (maximum +4). At the same time, though, an impariut judges the conjurer, assessing whether the spellcaster might ultimately undermine the region’s rule of law—and whether to destroy the conjurer at a later date.Creatures in "Inevitable" CategorySource Bestiary 2 pg. 161
Originally invented and forged in the Outer Planes by the axiomites, inevitables are living machines whose sole purpose is to seek out and destroy agents of chaos wherever they can.
During the height of the first war between law and chaos, while the Outer Planes were still forming from the raw chaos of the primal reality, inevitables were constructed by the axiomites as an unflinching army—soldiers powerful and devoted enough to march on the madness-inducing hordes of proteans who sought to unmake reality and return it all to the primal chaos they so adored. While this war has long since cooled to a simmer, and the reality of the Outer Planes is now not so easily threatened by the entropic influence of the proteans and their home plane, the defense of the axiomites' home plane remains the inevitables' primary goal. Despite the proteans' subsequent adaptation and study of how best to make themselves more resistant to the inevitables' attacks, these constructed soldiers remain imposingly effective.
Today, many inevitables—almost all of those encountered on the Material Plane—pursue a new aspect of their original mission: tracking down those who flagrantly flout the forces of law and redeeming them or, more often, eliminating the threat they present to the ordered nature of the multiverse. Matched on the side of chaos by the manipulative imentesh proteans, new inevitables awake to find themselves locked in a proxy war, knowing that losing the Material Plane to chaos would place their masters in a dangerous position.
Genderless, incorruptible, and caring nothing for power or personal advancement, inevitables are cunning and valiant shock troops in the service of law. Though they regularly interact with their creator race on their home plane, they have no society of their own, and are almost always encountered singly on other planes, each more than capable of pursuing its own mission. These individual crusades range from enforcing important or high-profile contracts and laws to forcibly correcting those mortals who would seek to cheat death. How they deal with the guilty varies according to the transgression: sometimes this means a simple geas or mark of justice to ensure that the target works to right his wrongs or never again strays from the path of law, but just as often an offense worthy of an inevitable's attention is severe enough that only immediate execution will suffice. Such decisions are not always popular—for the kindly priest who transcends mortality and the freedom fighter who battles the evil-yet-rightful king are every bit as guilty as grave-robbing necromancers and demon-worshipers—but the inevitables are always just, and few dare stand in the way of their judgment. Those inevitables who have completed a given mission often wander through whatever society they find themselves in, seeking other lawbreakers worthy of their ministrations. Brave souls with a worthy cause are always welcome to approach an inevitable and present their case, but should be wary of invoking the help of such powerful, single-minded beings—for an inevitable may not see the situation the same way they do, and though all inevitables do their best to preserve innocent life, they're not above sacrificing a few allies or innocents in an effort to bring down a greater villain.
Physically, inevitables often have humanoid forms or aspects, but their bodies appear somewhere between clockwork constructs and fine statues in the greatest classical tradition. Constructed of stone, adamantine, and even more precious materials, each inevitable is brought to sentience in the axiomites' forges already programmed with the details of its first target. Though they know that all beings outside of the lawful planes harbor chaos in their hearts, inevitables also understand that such conflicted creatures may yet be forces for law as much as for chaos, and thus overlook all but the most flagrant offenses. The most commonly recognized types of inevitables are as follows.
Arbiters: Scouts and diplomats, often assigned to wizards as familiars in the hopes of directing such individuals to the cause of law.
Kolyaruts: Cloaked and stealthy humanoid warriors who track and punish those who break contracts.
Lhaksharuts: Juggernauts who search for permanent breaches and links between planes and invasions from one dimension to another.
Maruts: Towering beings of stone, steel, and storm who bring a fitting end to those mortals who try to cheat death in attempts to live forever.
Zelekhuts: Winged, centaur-like constructs who track down those who flee just and legal punishment, returning them to their rightful judges or carrying out the sentence themselves. Primal Inevitables While the lhaksharuts are generally thought of as the most powerful caste of inevitable, there exist others of even greater skill and strength—these are known as the primal inevitables. These goliaths were among the first weapons of war forged by the axiomites to fight the protean menace—the methods to create more have long been lost to the axiomites, and those few primals who remain alive to this day have become legendary. None have been encountered in living memory, but the possibility of a primal's emergence is enough to give the proteans second thoughts when ideas of invading the inevitables' home plane arise.
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