Kaiju, BezravnisThe armored plates of this immense, three-tailed scorpion are fiery red, and its stingers glow with molten heat.Bezravnis CR 26Source Bestiary 4 pg. 168 XP 2,457,600 CN Colossal magical beast (earth, kaiju) Init +9; Senses darkvision 600 ft., low-light vision, tremorsense 600 ft.; Perception +37DefenseAC 44, touch 7, flat-footed 39 (+5 Dex, +37 natural, –8 size) hp 615 (30d10+450); fast healing 30 Fort +32, Ref +24, Will +20 Defensive Abilities ferocity, recovery; DR 20/epic; Immune ability damage, ability drain, death effects, disease, energy drain, fear, fire; Resist acid 30, cold 30, electricity 30, negative energy 30, sonic 30OffenseSpeed 100 ft., burrow 100 ft. Melee 2 claws +40 (4d6+18/19–20 plus grab), 3 stings +40 (3d6+18/19–20 plus 2d6 fire and poison) Space 50 ft., Reach 50 ft. Special Attacks burrowing charge, constrict (4d6+27), heat beam, hurl foe, poison, trample (2d8+27, DC 43), web (+27 ranged, DC 40, 30 hp)StatisticsStr 47, Dex 20, Con 40, Int 3, Wis 26, Cha 23 Base Atk +30; CMB +56 (+60 bull rush, +60 grapple); CMD 71 (73 vs. bull rush, 83 vs. trip) Feats Combat Reflexes, Critical Focus, Greater Bull Rush, Greater Vital Strike, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Critical (claw), Improved Critical (sting), Improved Initiative, Improved Lightning Reflexes, Improved Vital Strike, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Staggering Critical, Vital Strike Skills Climb +31, Perception +37, Stealth +2 (+32 when burrowing); Racial Modifiers +16 Perception, +30 Stealth when burrowing Languages Terran (can’t speak) SQ massive, no breathEcologyEnvironment warm deserts Organization solitary (unique) Treasure incidentalSpecial AbilitiesBurrowing Charge (Ex) Once per minute, Bezravnis can make a charge attack while burrowing through loose earth, sand, mud, or magma, or through any other loosely packed earth or stone. When Bezaravnis reaches the target, it erupts from the ground as part of its attack. If Bezravnis hits the target of its burrowing charge attack, it deals double damage with its attack. Any creatures standing in or flying less than 50 feet above the space Bezravnis occupies at the end of this charge are immediately subjected to Bezravnis’s trample attack. Any buildings entirely within this space take double damage from the trample attack (4d8+54 points)—this damage bypasses hardness. In addition, Huge or smaller creatures must succeed at a DC 40 Reflex save or be buried in earth, as if by a cave-in or collapse. This bury zone extends into all squares affected by Bezravnis’s reach.
Heat Beam (Su) Once every 4 rounds, Bezravnis can fire beams of searing heat and fire from one of its three stingers. Each stinger’s heat beam is a separate attack with its own 4-round recharge period. The kaiju may fire one heat beam from a stinger as a move action, two heat beams as a standard action, or all three as a full-round action. Each heat beam is a 1,200-foot-long line that deals 20d6 points of fire damage to everything in its path (Reflex DC 40 half). If Bezravnis fires more than one heat beam, it can direct them in different directions. The save DC is Constitution-based.
Poison (Su) Sting—injury; save Fort DC 40; frequency 1/round for 6 rounds; effect staggered for 1 round plus loss of fire immunity and resistance; cure 3 consecutive saves. As long as a creature suffers the effects of Bezravnis’s poison, it loses all racial resistances and immunities to fire. Any spell or spell-like effects active when the target fails its initial saving throw against this poison are suppressed as long as it continues to be staggered by the poison. New effects of this nature that become active after that initial failed saving throw function normally if the caster succeeds at a DC 35 caster level check; otherwise, the spell effects are suppressed until the victim is no longer staggered.
Web (Ex) Bezravnis’s webs are immune to fire damage. In addition, these webs are semi-living things that continue to crush and squeeze those entangled by them. If a creature is entangled in the webs, at the start of each turn during which it is entangled, it takes 2d6+6 points of bludgeoning damage as the webs crush and constrict it. This ability otherwise functions the same as the universal monster ability.DescriptionBezravnis, known also as the Inferno Below, dwells in the sands of a sparsely inhabited high-altitude desert found in the shadow of the world’s largest mountain range. There, the 130-foot-long beast slumbers the centuries away until its cycle of wakefulness rouses it from its torpor and causes it to emerge from the sands in an eruption of fire and ash. The Inferno Below then begins its rampage, traveling in a straight line toward a heavily populated region bordering the great desert. Typically, the Inferno Below’s rampage is limited to a single city, and never the same one twice in a row. After destroying no less than two-thirds of the city, it retreats back to the vast desert, burrows deep, and settles into a new sleep of ages.
The reason for the Inferno Below’s cyclic rampages is not well understood, but the cycle of these rampages functions like clockwork—they take place every 273 years with little deviation. As there seems to be no pattern to the kaiju’s attacks themselves, with a different city being targeted each cycle, the cities of the bordering nations do their best to prepare for the monster’s attack. The nations themselves have little love for each other, and attempts to generate lures to direct the kaiju’s march toward an enemy city are common—yet these lures have yet to work, and in fact they seem to result in the kaiju attacking a city in the luring nation more often than not. Other cities spare no expense during a so-called “Inferno Season,” and send huge armies of scouts into the desert to watch for signs of the kaiju’s emergence or traces of its burrowing passage through the sands, in hopes of determining the direction of the beast’s travel and warning likely target cities (or, in the case of a trajectory that leads it to an enemy city, working to silence warnings).
Kaiju scholars have correlated Bezravnis’s appearance with the passage of a singular red comet in the skies above the world—an astronomical event known as the Inferno Star. As the comet nears the world, Bezravnis emerges, and as the comet vanishes from the sky, the kaiju turns its back and returns to the desert. Confirmation of this correlation has given rise to numerous theories. Some believe that Bezravnis first fell to the world from the Inferno Star, and its advent wakens within the beast a bewildered longing for home that drives it into a frenzy. Others hold that the kaiju exists as a guardian against an even more deadly occupant of the Inferno Star, and that by displaying its power by destroying a city, Bezravnis is in fact protecting the world by driving the Inferno Star back into the depths of space.
But Bezravnis doesn’t always have the luxury of waiting for the Inferno Star to draw near before waking. At several points in the past, lunatics, cults, and accidents have woken the kaiju before its appointed time. Some mad, apocalyptic-minded spellcasters use powerful magic to cause great explosions above the sands where the kaiju slumbers. Earthquakes, severe weather phenomena, and similar natural events have been known to waken the monster early as well. When Bezravnis wakens off-cycle like this, the monster is particularly foul-tempered. It’s rampage does not follow a straight line—instead, its travels are erratic as it pursues the perceived cause of its wakening with single-minded ferocity and tenacity. In this way, cults have accomplished what the border nations have not—leading the kaiju to attack an enemy. Of course, such tactics are dangerous and often backfire, for Bezravnis is fast and destructive, and it has been known to follow such tormenters.
Bezravnis doesn’t seem to be particularly vexed by the presence of other kaiju, and ignores them unless it is attacked first. Once attacked, however, the Inferno Below becomes singularly focused and deviates from its path to fight the target creature as long as it remains visible or alive. Smaller foes can sometimes distract the kaiju from its path in this manner if they can deal enough damage upon the creature to bait it into directing its furious rage on them.Creatures in "Kaiju" CategorySource Bestiary 4 pg. 165 In the furthest reaches of the globe, where civilization itself is a legend and mapmakers can only make guesses about lands and denizens, immense creatures that are worshiped as gods walk the world. Capable of devastating entire cities in a single day of ruin and unleashing powerful supernatural attacks, these fabled, so-called “gods” are anything but. These massive monsters are known as kaiju, and the tales told of their genesis are as varied as the strange forms and capabilities of the monsters themselves.
A kaiju is a monster of tremendous size—far larger than almost any other creature. Each kaiju is unique, but they all share a few traits in common (see the kaiju subtype on page 307). Kaiju can be of different types, but most are magical beasts. Although kaiju are semiintelligent and can generally understand a single language, they cannot speak. Some legends tell of certain gifted or unique people being able to call kaiju from vast distances to aid them in times of distress. This type of bond with a kaiju isn’t well understood, but rarely comes to those who already possess great power. Rather, it is the helpless, the compassionate, and the meek who can bring forth kaiju.
Kaiju generally dwell in distant, remote wildernesses, often in unusually close proximity to one another. There they battle, but never quite seem to finish their constant conflicts before one of the beasts staggers away to recover from the clash, defeated only for the moment. Visitors to one of the remote lands where kaiju frequently clash can often explore without too much fear, as long as they take care not to be too visible or destructive as they explore. Unless a kaiju is being attacked or is particularly aggressive (such as when it’s defending a territory), it’s likely to ignore Medium or smaller creatures that wander in its vicinity, just as a human might ignore an ant crawling nearby.
A kaiju’s supernatural metabolism allows it to draw energy and nutrition from sources other than food— each kaiju “feeds” in a different way on a different form of energy, but when denied its energy source it does not starve. Instead, the immense monster simply falls into torpor, hibernating until a new source of energy awakens it once again. In some cases, a kaiju can lie dormant for ages—so long that civilizations have time to unknowingly encroach upon lands the monster claimed long ago as its territory. As long as the new civilizations take care to not accidentally waken the monster, they can coexist with the slumbering kaiju in relative peace for many, many years. Yet eventually, some event will inevitably waken the slumbering giant and call it forth into a rampage.
Certain events can drive a kaiju into a destructive frenzy. Powerful storms or natural disasters, rare and dangerous rituals designed to call out to them, the use of incredibly powerful magical weapons, wars, and the approach of other kaiju can all send one of these creatures on a rampage of wrath. When a kaiju begins such a rampage, it leaves its remote wilderness home and travels far afield, often for hundreds or even thousands of miles through unexplored wilds or across entire oceans until it reaches the source of the irritation.
Upon arriving in such a location, the kaiju seeks out the source of whatever enraged it, or if no obvious source is apparent, it simply tramples a path of destruction through whatever city or fortress or locale happens to be in its way. Once a kaiju’s rampage begins, it can last for weeks, with the monster periodically retreating between attacks into wildernesses or oceans near the source of the disturbance to rest or recuperate.
Societies that are frequently plagued by kaiju attacks often build special magical siege engines designed to drive off the monster, or even seek to recruit the aid of other kaiju to battle the intruder. Unfortunately, the collateral damage caused by multiple kaiju is significant, and fighting fire with fire in this way may leave behind nothing but rubble.
All kaiju are Colossal, and have a space and reach of no less than 50 feet each. A bipedal kaiju typically stands between 100 and 200 feet in height; quadrupedal kaiju are half as tall. A kaiju’s size makes a battle against one challenging to run. At the scale needed to track tactical movement for Medium creatures, a kaiju takes up a massive amount of space. When designing an encounter with a kaiju, plan ahead and prepare a larger area so that you can track the kaiju’s movement effectively.Known Kaiju The kaiju presented on the following pages are but three of the legendary creatures said to dwell in remote places in the world. Here is a list of others, including the places they’re rumored to dwell.
Agmazar, the Star Titan of the vast jungle Cimurlian, the Great Bear of the frozen north Ebeshra, the Winged Razor of the furthest clouds Igroon, the Dragon Eater of the lost island Mantraska, the World Talons of the rain forest Shbloon, the Vortex Maw of the ocean deep Lord Varklops, the Thrice-Headed Fiend of the dormant volcano Queen Vorgozen, the Shapeless Feeder of the vast swamp Yarthoon, the Moon Grub of the darkest nights Yorak, the Horned Thunder of the great mountains Zimivra, the Endless Coils of the trackless desert
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