Kyton, SuffraganBladed whips and spiked chains sprout from the stumps of this humanoid torso’s amputated limbs. Elongated saw blades loll out of its distended mouth.Suffragan CR 5Source Nidal, Land of Shadows pg. 58
XP 1,600
LE Medium outsider (evil, extraplanar, kyton, lawful)
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +12DefenseAC 18, touch 14, flat-footed 14 (+3 Dex, +1 dodge, +4 natural)
hp 51 (6d10+18); regeneration 2 (good weapons and spells, silver weapons)
Fort +5, Ref +8, Will +8
DR 5/good or silver; Immune cold; SR 16OffenseSpeed 30 ft., climb 30 ft.
Melee 4 bladed limbs (1d6+1 plus trip)StatisticsStr 13, Dex 16, Con 17, Int 11, Wis 16, Cha 14
Base Atk +6; CMB +7; CMD 21 (25 vs. trip)
Feats Dodge, Power Attack, Weapon Focus (bladed limb)
Skills Acrobatics +12, Climb +9, Heal +12, Intimidate +11, Knowledge (planes) +6, Perception +12, Sense Motive +9, Stealth +12
Languages Common, Infernal
SQ configuration of chains, slow fallEcologyEnvironment any (Plane of Shadow)
Organization solitary, pair, or tangle (3-6)
Treasure standardSpecial AbilitiesBladed Limbs (Ex) The chains and bladed whips extruding from a suffragan's stumps can deal piercing or slashing damage, as chosen by the suffragan with each attack.
Configuration of Chains (Ex) As a swift action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, a suffragan can choose the configuration of the blades and chains sprouting from its amputated limbs. The suffragan's configuration of chains affects its number of attacks, its reach, its base speed, and its climb speed, in addition to affecting other statistics or granting additional abilities, depending on the configuration. The configurations available to the suffragan are described below, and the suffragan retains the selected configuration until it spends a swift action to change it. Most suffragans frequently use the old form configuration, which is reflected in the statistics above.
Midnight's Blessing Configuration: The suffragan rolls onto its back and extends all of its chains and whips to their full lengths. The kyton can make up to eight bladed limb attacks each round and has a reach of 10 feet. Its base speed and climb speed are 5 feet.
Old Form Configuration: The suffragan uses the chains and whips sprouting from the stumps of its amputated legs to walk. The kyton can make up to four bladed limb attacks each round and gains the trip special ability with its bladed limb attacks. Its base speed and climb speed are both 30 feet, and it gains a +4 bonus to its CMD against trip combat maneuvers.
Prowler Configuration: The suffragan uses most of its chains and whips for locomotion while hunched low to the ground like a beetle. The kyton can make up to two bladed limb attacks each round. Its base speed and climb speed are both 50 feet, and it gains the pounce ability as well as a +8 bonus to its CMD against bull rush, reposition, or trip combat maneuvers.
Slow Fall (Ex) A suffragan in any configuration can use its bladed whips and chains to slow its fall. When within reach of a wall, a suffragan can slow its descent and fall any distance without harm.DescriptionBorn from the twisted souls of the Joyful Things—Zon- Kuthon’s most devoted zealots—suffragans appear as humanoid torsos with chains or barbed whips sprouting from the stumps of their amputated arms and legs. Suffragans display an uncanny ability to reconfigure their barbed limbs to suit any task at hand. When desperate or when fighting a cornered foe, most suffragans roll onto their backs to strike with a tempest of chains and whips. Albeit uncommon, other suffragan configurations include wings or fins made of interlocked limbs.
A suffragan’s face is as much a horrific fusion of metal and flesh as its body. Barbed blades droop from its mouth, its tongue replaced with jagged metal that undulates eerily.
Like all kytons, suffragans delight in inflicting terror and suffering, particularly upon the pure and weak. They enjoy giving captives small, overlapping, painful lashes with their barbs and blades. Suffragans often refer to their torturous work as blessings they are bestowing on their cruel god’s behalf, though their words are garbled around their mouth blades.
A suffragan kyton stands about 5 feet tall and weighs 160 pounds.
Ecology
Suffragan kytons are born from the souls of Joyful Things (see page 57) who were so warped and depraved in their post-ritual transformations that they became true servants of Zon-Kuthon: kytons. Newly created suffragans lack appendages, but they quickly and eagerly embrace the kyton desire to improve their flesh. For suffragans, this means affixing chains and whips to their stumps. As the creatures had long ago shed their attachment to typical human forms, suffragans learn how to reconfigure their limbs as needed to suit the task at hand.
Suffragans take pride in the bladed metal drooping from their mouths, replacing those components frequently with longer, sharper, or more brightly colored pieces of metal. They understand that their distinctive facial features evoke revulsion or even fascination in others, but they typically misinterpret this attention as adoration rather than horror.
Suffragans serve loyally as functionaries and majordomos to eremites in the massive sanctuaries to Zon-Kuthon on the Plane of Shadow. The suffragans skitter about these echoing structures, carrying about their various tasks with fervent devotion.
Suffragans have no need to eat or drink, and they are often so long out of the habit—having been fed through feeding tubes or magic while they were mortal—that they seem to have entirely forgotten how to. Suffragans understand that other creatures must eat, and they take delight in preparing what they believe to be elaborate meals for their mortal victims. Unfortunately, a suffragan’s ideas of food range from the unusual (such as a bowl of moth wings) to the gruesome (such as lumps of flesh cut from the suffragan’s torso).
Habitat & Society
Even among the inscrutable kytons, suffragans have a particularly alien mind-set. Suffragans don’t feel at all bound by the humanoid shape; they switch between climbing, crawling, and walking without much thought. When suffragans deign to take on humanoid forms, they seem to have forgotten how to move in that form, walking with painfully twisted torsos or in a disturbing crouch. Other kytons often find suffragans’ zealous dedication to Zon-Kuthon off-putting and prefer to assign them to minor tasks or other busywork to keep them occupied and out of the way. Suffragans tend to take great pride in these tasks, no matter how menial, believing they are loyally serving more powerful or devout kytons.
Suffragans often serve as torturers or jailors and take a particular, sadistic glee in the pain they inflict upon mortal victims. Generally, kytons utilize torture now as an end to itself, but rather as a gateway to a perverse form of enlightenment or as a debasing method of dominance. Suffragans blur this line, however. They are among the cruelest pain inflictors and the most zealous Kuthite servants among their kind. They believe that their own bodily transformations—as well as the excruciating pain they have endured and continue to suffer—are the purest and most powerful method of worshiping the Midnight Lord. Thus, they seek to perpetuate this evil obeisance through inflicting what they refer to as the blessings of Zon-Kuthon upon any who fall into their grasp.
As suffragans switch easily and naturally between their configurations, they are often quite comfortable with other creatures that have malleable forms. Suffragans particularly like oozes, keeping them as pampered pets when possible and feeding them cast-off bits of flesh or the remains of their victims. Suffragans find doppelgangers and faceless stalkers intriguing, and such captives might earn an opportunity to escape by promising an entertaining display of shape-shifting.Creatures in "Kyton" CategorySource Bestiary 3 pg. 170
Despicably cruel and equally horrible to gaze upon, kytons are evil fiends who feed on the fear and suffering of mortals through painful supernatural means. Their monstrous appearances vary, but their stoic and amoral dispositions are universal, for no kyton cares anything for the plights typical of the creatures they prey upon. They are beings wholly dedicated to metamorphosis achieved through horrific trials of self-mutilation and the mystical power provided them by their sapping of mortal anguish.
Despite being often categorized by mortals as shadow-dwelling devils, kytons calmly refute such claims, seeing themselves as above the principles of Hell's denizens. Instead, kytons seek ecstasy through pain in the form of deliberate and violent self-transformation, adhering to the belief that by altering the physical and spiritual matter that makes up their form, they can reach a state of perfect being. Removing aspects of themselves and replacing them with more desirable or powerful pieces one at a time, kytons believe that experiences of heightened emotion and sensation (typically in the forms of terror and pain) lead to greater states of awareness and existence. The dedication with which they practice this belief places them on the level of zealots, their fanatical commitment made all the more disturbing by their eerie composedness and unnaturally cool dispositions.
The original kytons were born of the first truly selfish and depraved thoughts conceived by mortals. These creatures surprised and horrified the early gods with their power and hideous nature, and so the gods chained them in a remote part of Hell. The kytons embraced their chains and, seeking to fulfill their unnatural hunger for pain, escaped to the Plane of Shadow, which lay much closer to their mortal prey. Now, kytons are born of mortal souls that were spiritually and physically tortured in life, victims of their own masochism, sacrifices to gods of suffering, or those promised to the fiends either by their own will or by sadistic cultists. Obscure rituals force the sacrificed souls to bypass the normal judgments of the afterlife and instead become mired in the Plane of Shadow. Over an excruciating and lengthy span of time, these souls are warped and twisted until they emerge as frail new kytons. A kyton's first willing act must be to cut away part of its own flesh, proving it is worthy of its kyton nature—the first step in an immortal lifetime of replacing its own substance with the stronger parts of other creatures. By drawing strength from its new grafts, a kyton grows and becomes both stronger and more terrible to behold. Thus, weaker kytons resemble the mortal creatures they once were, whereas older ones are horrifying patchworks of transplanted material that rarely look like their original forms. Many kytons still proudly wear the chains that bound them (either to Hell or to the torture devices that created them), trophies of their power to defy the gods or mortal fate.
Kytons' need to replace parts of themselves with those of stronger mortals puts them in perpetual danger of attacking creatures that are too powerful for them to kill. For this reason, kytons are pragmatic and ruthless in their battles, scrutinizing all potential outcomes of a situation before taking action. Seeing strength in numbers, kytons often attack or trap a mortal victim as a team, hauling the unfortunate soul to the Plane of Shadow, converting their prey into a new kyton or dividing its body and soul among them for grafting and nourishment.
The kytons of the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary are a specific type of kyton (other kytons call them “evangelists”); they have all the traits listed in the kyton subtype (see page 306). The kytons listed here are but a few of the other known types—many more exist on the Plane of Shadow. Kyton Demagogues The powerful kyton rulers called demagogues possess strength hardly fathomable by mortals. They exist within a power structure similar to that of archdevils. Lesser kytons view these overseers as horrid sovereigns among their kind, and though there are many outlying areas on the Plane of Shadow not controlled by demagogues, kytons who find themselves wandering through a demagogue's territory know to show respect for these lords of suffering.
Demagogues are so advanced in their metamorphosis of self-mutilation and augmentation that no two look alike. Some are strangely beautiful, some are horrors beyond sane description. A demagogue's powers are vaster than even many of their kyton brethren dare consider—they construct enormous cities out of the countless bodies of their victims, weaving entire networks of veins and spiritual energy to create breathing, pulsating metropolises. Demagogues seek to control as much of the realm around their organic superstructures as they can, a feat that proves forever challenging in the dark, shifting corners of the Plane of Shadow. Though one rarely finds reason to leave the confines of its home plane, a demagogue's influence is far-reaching, and kytons who value their lives do as they are commanded, lest they incite the awful and calculating rage of a mighty overlord. The following are some of the most powerful kyton demagogues that reside in the Plane of Shadow, watching over their pulsating kingdoms in massive, gory towers. - Barravoclair, Lady of the Final Gasp
- Fharaas, the Seer in Skin
- Inkariax, the White Death
- Morrobahn, the Parasite Seed
- Raetorgash, the Skull-Hoarder
- Sugroz, the Voice in Screams
- Vevelor of the Broken Dream
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