Monster Encyclopaedia I: Ravagers of the Realms

Author	August Hahn, Gareth Hanrahan, Lizard
Publisher	Mongoose Publishing
Publish date	2004
OGL Section 15	me1

The material below is designated as Open Game Content

Unraveller

Gargantuan Outsider
Hit Dice: 32d8+224 (377 hp)
Initiative: +4
Speed: 50 ft. (10 squares)
Armour Class: 31 (–4 size, +15 natural, +10 deflection), touch 16, flat-footed 31
Base Attack/Grapple: +32/+59
Attack: Tendril +43 melee (2d6+15 plus unravelling touch) or bite +38 melee (2d12+7 plus devour substance)
Full Attack: Four tendrils +43 melee (2d6+15 plus unravelling touch) and bite +38 melee (2d12+7 plus devour substance)
Space/Reach: 20 ft./15 ft.
Special Attacks: Devour substance, unravel spell, unravelling presence, unravelling touch
Special Qualities: acid resistance 20, damage reduction 20/cold iron, electrical resistance 20, fire resistance 20, immunity to cold and sonic damage, spell resistance 35, telepathy 100 ft.
Saves: Fort +25, Ref +20, Will +22
Abilities: Str 40, Dex 10, Con 25, Int 4, Wis 18, Cha 18
Skills: Climb +50, Listen +39, Search +32, Spot +39, Swim +50
Feats: Blind-Fight, Cleave, Great Cleave, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Initiative, Improved Sunder, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Toughness x3
Environment: The end of the world
Organisation: Solitary or apocalypse (10–50)
Challenge Rating: 28
Treasure: None
Alignment: Usually chaotic neutral
Advancement: —
Level Adjustment: —

All you can see is a cloud of inky darkness, supported on four huge whirlwinds of dark air like ropy legs. A maw of lightning opens and closes at one end. It seems more… real than you can comfortably perceive, as if you are but a shadow and it is all that is.

When the end of all things comes, when the gods are dead and the stars tire of their courses in the sky and fall to earth, when the last battle is fought and there is no more time, then shall the unravellers awake. They are the end, the things made in the beginning to scour all-that-is clean of all-that-is and leave the universe utterly empty and dark. They are not the apocalypse; they are what comes after, to clean up the remains and the debris.

Sometimes, they wake up early.

An unraveller is a concentrated knot of nothingness, a sphere of annihilation spun into a monster. Their very presence causes reality to splinter and divide and unravel into its component parts. A sword struck by an unraveller becomes somehow less real, as if every moment of its existence was suddenly disconnected from every other and it is now nothing more than the memory or the dream of a sword that could be, maybe. A man struck by an unraveller begins to doubt his past, his future slips away, his very frame begins to become insubstantial. Once the unraveller has torn the reality of a object or a creature apart, it devours the component fragments and grows stronger.

They are not very bright creatures; there is so little of them there that higher consciousness is impossible for them, for how can a being think when it devours its own thoughts instantly? They can communicate through telepathy, which feels like spears of ice driven into the brain of those contacted by them. They are drawn to places of great life and complexity, like cities, as such complex sites take the longest to demolish.

Combat

It may be impossible to actually kill an unraveller; certainly, enough damage can be done to the creatures to cause them to disintegrate, but perhaps they shall reform from nothingness when the last trumpet sounds and they arise to perform their appointed task. Unfortunately, a definitive answer on an unraveller’s mortality (or lack of) has yet to be found.

Unravellers exude an aura that saps the very reality of those around it; this is referred to as the process of unravelling. This is their primary mode of attack – the unraveller just stands around, occasionally opening its mouth to suck up the unravelled pieces of reality around it. Particularly troublesome knots of being are torn apart by its tentacles.

Devour Substance (Su): When an unraveller makes a bite attack, it automatically absorbs any un-integrated duplicates (both those created by negative levels or from magic items). It regains ten hit points for every duplicate eaten in this way and the levels or pluses are lost forever.

Unravel Spell (Su): As an attack action, an unraveller can automatically counter or dispel one spell within 300 feet.

Unravelling Presence (Su): Any creature within 150 feet of an unraveller must make a Fortitude save (DC 30) each round to avoid gaining one negative level. This negative level manifests as a sort of shadowy incorporeal duplicate of the creature following him around, out of sync with his movements by a fraction of a second. The negative levels have the movement abilities of the character at the moment they were created, but must always move to follow the character (for example, if a character teleports, he leaves the duplicates behind).

A character may remove this negative level by taking a full-round action to touch this duplicate and re-integrate that aspect of his reality into himself; this requires a Will save (DC 20). A creature can suffer multiple negative levels from this power. If a character does not re-integrate each duplicate, he automatically loses a level for each lost duplicate after 24 hours. This is an energy draining death effect. The Fortitude save DC is Charisma-based.

Unravelling Touch (Su): Any creature struck by an unraveller must make a Fortitude save (DC 30) to avoid suffering the effects of the creature’s Unravelling Presence ability. Furthermore, he must make a saving throw for each of his 1d4 most expensive magical items. These saving throws are Will saves (DC 30) – if a save is failed, that item loses one ‘plus’, charge or use per day (items without pluses, charges or uses per day are immune). This plus, charge or use per day follows the item around just like a shadowy duplicate described above and can be re-integrated in the same way. The save DCs are Charisma-based.