Psychopomp, MorbaiThis hunched, barefoot old woman leans heavily on her gnarled staff. She wears two plague masks on opposite sides of her head.Morbai CR 6Source Concordance of Rivals pg. 59
XP 2,400
N Small outsider (extraplanar, psychopomp)
Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, spiritsense; Perception +14 (+18 on sight-based checks)DefenseAC 20, touch 15, flat-footed 16 (+4 Dex, +5 natural, +1 size)
hp 68 (8d10+40)
Fort +13, Ref +6, Will +9
Defensive Abilities all-around vision; DR 5/adamantine; Immune death effects, disease, poison; Resist cold 10, electricity 10; SR 17OffenseSpeed 30 ft., fly 20 ft. (perfect)
Melee cane +10/+5 (1d4+1)
Special Attacks channel energy 4/day (DC 17, 4d6)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 8th; concentration +9)
At will—bleed (DC 11), delay poison, detect poison, disrupt undead, resistance, stabilize
1/day—accelerate poison (DC 13), contagion (DC 14), neutralize poison, poison (DC 14), remove diseaseStatisticsStr 12, Dex 18, Con 21, Int 14, Wis 17, Cha 13
Base Atk +8; CMB +8; CMD 22
Feats Great Fortitude, Improved Channel, Selective Channeling, Skill Focus (Heal)
Skills Craft (alchemy) +13, Craft (poison) +13, Fly +14, Heal +17, Knowledge (nature) +13, Knowledge (planes) +13, Perception +14 (+18 on sight-based checks), Profession (herbalist) +14, Sense Motive +14; Racial Modifiers +4 on sight-based Perception checks
Languages Abyssal, Celestial, Inf
SQ healer’s muse, spirit touch, who lives and who diesEcologyEnvironment any (Boneyard)
Organization solitary, pair, or team (3–9)
Treasure standardSpecial AbilitiesHealer’s Muse (Su) A morbai can grant her blessing to a mortal creature by prodding it with her staff as a standard action. This blessing grants its target a +2 bonus on skill checks to identify, treat, or study diseases and poisons, as if the morbai had used aid another. The target of a morbai’s blessing can use the psychopomp’s Fortitude save modifier in place of his own on attempts to resist disease.
Who Lives and Who Dies (Su) A morbai channels energy, treating her Hit Dice as her cleric level. She can choose negative or positive energy every time she channels.DescriptionCurious creatures of balance, morbais are psychopomp masters of healing and poison who help directly cause or prevent mortal deaths. They fight mass outbreaks to help prevent epidemics that would glut the bureaucracy of death, but also foster the creation of new diseases to ensure mortal populations are always kept in check. While they can directly address outbreaks with their considerable skills and spell-like abilities, most morbais prefer inspiring and fostering mortal physicians to act on their behalf, usually appearing as cantankerous advisors or overbearing patients to test their preferred agents’ resolve. Though generally good natured—if sarcastic—morbais act swiftly when confronting the machinations of leukodaemons, their most frequent antagonists.
A morbai stands just over 3 feet tall, resembling a hunched-over, old woman whose race always matches that of whoever views her. Each wears two plague masks, one on either side of her head, which conceal her faces and obscure where she actually focuses her attention. Her curved back and ragged shawl partially conceal two pairs of small, brown-feathered wings.Creatures in "Psychopomp" CategorySource Bestiary 4 pg. 217
All life has its beginning and its end. From the moment of birth, everything that shrieks and struggles upon the Material Plane crawls toward a singular finale, that fatal climax that grants passage into the unimaginable infinities of the afterlife. As the spirits of the deceased flow from the confusion of mortality to their ultimate fates, they are each judged by the gods of death, who assure that all who die reach their prescribed afterlife. Yet with all the worlds of the Material Plane, the countless faces and exceptions of mortality, and all those who would turn fate and finality to their own devices, death as a system and institution requires more agents than a single deity or pantheon to uphold. These agents are the psychopomps—denizens of Purgatory and the dispassionate stewards, chroniclers, and guides of all that die.
Psychopomps preside over the flow of life. Their primary concerns focus upon souls in the vulnerable transition between death and their final destinations upon the planes. Psychopomps carry out their duties with the dispassion of veterans and cynics. In terms of service measuring in ages, psychopomps meet countless souls from innumerable worlds, and soon nearly every story, fate, plea, and exception becomes all too familiar. They care little for the histories or personalities of the souls that pass them by, concerned only for the efficient and unvaried processing of each spirit to its final unremarkable eternity. Damnation and paradise are the same to them, as are heroes and villains, and no psychopomp cares one jot for great deeds left undone, other fates hanging in the balance, or bribes worth even a world’s ransom. But while drudgery is the lot of many psychopomps—interrupted only by the diversions they sometimes create for themselves—their system is not without flaws. There are creatures who would seek to deny the natural order of death—fiends that prey upon souls, spirits lost in their migration, and undead abominations. To counter such abnormalities and preserve the flow of souls as the multiverse requires, numerous specialized psychopomps exist to protect the dead and counter any who would seek to pervert the state of death to their own ends.
Noteworthy among psychopomps are their masks. Many who have dealings with the living wear some manner of grim face covering or funerary mask. While these masks are not part of a psychopomp’s body and grant them no special abilities, the legends of numerous cultures suggest that for a living creature to see a psychopomp’s unmasked countenance invites a premature death. Those psychopomps who deal predominately with the dead typically eschew such marks of station except as a formality.
As psychopomps help convey souls to all of the Outer Planes, and thus provide petitioners equally to each of those realms, they enjoy a special status among many planar races as respected neutrals. As such, most other planar races grant them a wide berth, with even archons and demons going out of their ways to avoid interfering with death’s emissaries. Soul-hungry daemons and reality-violating qlippoth are among the only races that actively oppose psychopomps. Consequently, the deadlier classes of psychopomps watch for and hunt disruptive members of these races, seeking to expunge the paths between the planes of any that would impede the certain cycle of death.
The death gods create the weakest psychopomps out of mortal souls, usually those who served Purgatory in life or worshiped deities of judgment. The gods may transform psychopomps which perform exemplary service into greater members of their kind, though rarely an exceptional hero or champion of Purgatory may become a superior psychopomp when she dies. There is little competitiveness or jealousy among the ranks of these creatures, as their primary motivation is fulfillment of their eternal duties, and there is little point in coveting another’s rewards and responsibilities.
The following are the most common types of psychopomps. Other varieties exist, tasked with more obscure duties for the gods of death, or responsible for alien worlds where the native creatures have radically different life cycles and outlooks compared to humanoids.Psychopomp UshersBeings ancient and dispassionate rise above the psychopomp droves, emissaries of death who have presided over the dooms of whole nations, races, and worlds. These eldest and most efficient servants of death hold great respect for the gods of death, but are not necessarily their minions, striving to fulfill their own visions of death’s ultimate purpose and process over all other objectives.
Atropos the Last Sister
Barzahk the Passage
Ceyanan the Shepherd
Dammar the Denied
Imot the Symbol of Doom
Mother Vulture
Mrtyu, Death’s Consort
Narakaas the Cleansing Sentence
The Pale Horse
Phlegyas, Consoler of Atheists
Saloc, Minder of Immortals
Teshallas the Primordial Poison
Vale the Court of Ancestors
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