Aeon, ParacletusA small cluster of shimmering lights floats in the air, orbited by multiple vibrant crystals and gemstones.
Paracletus CR 2Source Bestiary 2 pg. 11
XP 600
N Small outsider (aeon, extraplanar)
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +7
Aura emotion aura (DC 12, 30 ft.)
DefenseAC 14, touch 13, flat-footed 12 (+2 Dex, +1 natural, +1 size)
hp 13 (3d10–3)
Fort +4, Ref +3, Will +6
Immune cold, critical hits, poison; Resist electricity 10, fire 10; SR 7
OffenseSpeed fly 40 ft. (good)
Melee slam +3 (1d3–1 plus 1d6 electricity)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 3rd; concentration +4)
At will—sanctuary (DC 12)
3/day—calm emotions (DC 13)
1/week—commune (6 questions, CL 12th)
StatisticsStr 8, Dex 14, Con 9, Int 11, Wis 13, Cha 12
Base Atk +3; CMB +1; CMD 13 (can’t be tripped)
Feats Great Fortitude, Iron Will
Skills Fly +8, Intimidate +7, Knowledge (arcana) +7, Knowledge (planes) +7, Perception +7, Sense Motive +7, Stealth +12
Languages envisaging
SQ extension of all, void form
EcologyEnvironment any (Outer Planes)
Organization solitary, pair, or commune (3–12)
Treasure none
Special AbilitiesEmotion Aura (Sp) Each paracletus exists as the embodiment of a specific emotive duality. Three times per day, a paracletus can create an aura representing one of its two programmed emotions. Creatures in the area must make a DC 12 Will save to resist the aura. A creature that makes its save against the aura is unaffected by that aeon’s aura for the next 24 hours. The paracletus can choose one creature in the area to ignore its effects. The effect of the aura lasts for 10 minutes, and ends if a creature moves more than 30 feet from the aeon. The aura is a mind-affecting compulsion effect. The save DC is Charisma-based. Specific emotive dualities and their powers follow—any single paracletus can only use one of these three dualistic options and cannot change to a different one.
Courage/Fear: The aura acts as bless or bane.
Empathy/Apathy: The aura gives creatures a +2 bonus or a –2 penalty on Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate checks.
Hope/Despair: The aura gives creatures a +2 morale bonus on Will saving throws or a –2 penalty on Will saving throws.
DescriptionWhile mortals possess the gift of free will, both logic and emotion influence their decisions. The paracletus serve the aeons as agents who connect with mortals and study the influence of emotions (particularly the dualistic nature of raw emotion) upon mortal behavior. They wander the planes seeking mortals with particularly strong emotional or logical capabilities (characters with high Charisma or Intelligence scores). Once a paracletus locates such a creature, the paracletus remains nearby, studying the target’s relationship with emotional and logical input and choices. Often, the paracletus will use its emotion aura on the target in order to study how outside influences affect the subject. Unfortunately for the target creature, whether or not the paracletus uses a helpful or harmful effect is, for all intents and purposes, a matter of random chance—even though to the paracletus’s complex reasoning, nothing is left to actual random chance.
If presented the option, a paracletus avoids direct combat, and uses its emotion aura to influence situations. If pressed to defend itself, it flies at opponents, slamming into them and discharging an electrical jolt of energy in addition to buffeting with its crystalline components. The crystals that orbit a paracletus are solidified aspects of logic, while the swirling vapors and lights that make up its central mass are manifestations of raw emotion—when a paracletus is slain, both the crystals and vapors fade away into nothingness.
A paracletus can be chosen as a familiar by a 7th-level neutral spellcaster who has the Improved Familiar feat. A paracletus familiar does not abandon its mission to observe emotions and logic at play, but it does follow its master’s orders—this is one situation where the application of a paracletus’s emotion aura need not be random.
Although the central mass of a paracletus’s body appears to be made of light and energy, it is in fact solid, and feels strangely like electrified flesh to the touch.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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