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Inevitable, Kastamut

This squat figure seems to be a clockwork approximation of a dwarf, crafted from dark bronze or a strange steel alloy. Its eyes glow with a piercing white light.

Kastamut CR 6

Source Pathfinder #118: Siege of Stone pg. 86
XP 2,400
LN Medium outsider (extraplanar, inevitable, lawful)
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +14

Defense

AC 19, touch 12, flat-footed 17 (+3 armor, +2 Dex, +4 natural)
hp 80 (8d10+36); regeneration 3 (chaotic)
Fort +8, Ref +4, Will +9
Defensive Abilities armor of will, constructed; DR 5/chaotic; SR 17

Offense

Speed 20 ft.
Melee +1 warhammer +14/+9 (1d8+7/×3)
Special Attacks compulsive orthodoxy
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 8th; concentration +10)
At will—bane (DC 13), command (DC 13), forbid action (DC 13), litany of sloth (DC 13)
5/day—litany of weakness (DC 13)
3/day—divine favor, enthrall (DC 14), litany of entanglement (DC 15), protection from chaos (DC 13), zone of truth (DC 14)
1/day—bestow curse (DC 15), litany of vengeance (DC 17), terrible remorse (DC 16)
1/week—plane shift (self only)

Statistics

Str 18, Dex 15, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 17, Cha 14
Base Atk +8; CMB +12; CMD 24
Feats Alertness, Improved Initiative, Persuasive, Weapon Focus (warhammer)
Skills Diplomacy +13, Intimidate +13, Knowledge (history, religion) +6, Knowledge (planes) +9, Perception +14, Sense Motive +14, Survival +12
Languages truespeech
SQ discern heritage, slow and steady

Ecology

Environment any
Organization solitary, pair, or council (3–5)
Treasure standard (+1 warhammer, other treasure)

Special Abilities

Armor of Will (Su) A kastamut’s powerful will generates a protective field of force that grants it an armor bonus equal to the kastamut’s Wisdom modifier.

Compulsive Orthodoxy (Su) Once per week as a full-round action, a kastamut can place a geas-like curse upon a single target. If the target creature fails a DC 16 Will save, it must conform unerringly to specific cultural traditions or customs chosen by the kastamut. Each time the cursed creature fails to perform a customary ritual or tries to commit a prohibited act, it must attempt a new Will save at the same DC. If it fails, it is forced to conform to the culture’s accepted mores. If it succeeds, its actions are not restricted, but it immediately takes 2d6 points of nonlethal damage and gains the sickened condition until it resumes following the chosen customs. This curse remains in effect for 1 year or until the afflicted creature benefits from a break enchantment or remove curse spell (use the kastamut’s caster level for associated caster level checks). This is a mind-affecting, compulsion effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Discern Heritage (Su) As a swift action, a kastamut can determine the cultural heritage of a single creature it can see. The kastamut learns the target’s racial background, clan affiliation, and any other pertinent information that can help it determine the customs and traditions most appropriate to that creature’s bloodline and upbringing. A target can resist this effect with a successful DC 16 Will saving throw. A creature that succeeds at the save cannot be affected by that kastamut’s discern heritage ability for 24 hours. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Slow and Steady (Ex) A kastamut’s speed of 20 feet is never modified by armor or encumbrance.

Description

Many know how the axiomites, entities of pure law who dwell in the Eternal City of Axis, forged the first and greatest of the inevitables—living constructs to wage war against the proteans and the unbridled chaos of the Maelstrom. Yet, even as the laws governing the multiverse have been altered over time, so too has the role of the inevitables changed. Beyond defending Axis’s borders, inevitables were tasked with seeking out threats to the order of all things. To fulfill these missions, the axiomites created many more types of inevitables. Among the lesser known are the kastamuts, charged with protecting the traditions of cultures spread across the Great Beyond.

Like kolyaruts, kastamuts are humanoid in shape. However, kastamuts are shorter and stockier, giving the appearance of a dwarf—or an artistic impression of a dwarf—crafted in flowing curves and planes from dark bronze or gold-tinged steel. Unlike kolyaruts, kastamuts make no effort to disguise their identities when dealing with mortals. Depending on how long a kastamut has been in service, dents or cracks may mar its metallic shell, evidence of past battles against rebels and renegades.

A typical kastamut stands about 5 feet tall and weighs approximately 250 pounds.

Ecology

Kastamuts represent the powerfully conservative forces of tradition and custom at the core of most well-defined civilizations. They oppose sudden, radical changes in the course of a culture’s traditions, and work to prevent the destruction of established belief systems, rites, and social customs. While some kastamuts carry out this task by protecting a society’s heritage sites, most work directly against agents of change—internal or external—that threaten a civilization.

Kastamuts do not waste time or energy on small infractions against tradition. A petulant child resisting his parent’s teachings draws no attention from Axis. Even fundamental shifts in the beliefs shared by a large group of people are allowed, so long as they progress along the lines of a normal cultural development. What kastamuts do work against are immediate, substantial changes, such as when a new ruler outlaws a nation’s long-standing religion and seeks to wipe out all practice of the old faith in favor of a new one, especially if the new religion has no precedent. Turning slowly from old ways to new ones can be part of the natural order, but violently rebelling against traditional practices in favor of untested systems gives rise to chaos, which the powers of Axis cannot abide.

Some scholars speculate that a kastamut’s appearance reflects the level of importance tradition has within dwarven society. It would be easy to assume the similarity is mere coincidence, except for the fact that, in Axis, actual coincidences are rare, and almost everything has a logical explanation behind it.

Habitat and Society

Kastamuts are constructs crafted from the pure essence of law, so their culture is strictly defined by the laws of Axis. No kastamut has rank or authority above any another kastamut. Each is subject solely to those commands given by the Transcendental Council of the Defined Infinite, also known as the Godmind of Axis, or its direct representatives.

Dwarves are the most likely to have dealings with kastamuts, as they take their traditions much more seriously than most other races. Dwarves’ long lifespans mean that any changes in custom that do take place usually happen very slowly, but they are more prone to violent upheavals than elves, increasing the chances that a kastamut will get involved in order to prevent things from changing too much at once.

Kastamuts find human civilization vexing. Humans’ comparatively short lifespans and their tendency toward individualism create countless variations of culture and tradition and introduce the high probability of sudden and radical change. Only human civilizations that manage to survive 20 or more generations seem to acquire the metaphysical depth necessary to gain the Godmind’s attention.

Since their missions on the Material Plane focus on preserving cultural traditions, kastamuts spend most of their time around centers of civilization. Aside from dwarven population centers like Highhelm, Janderhoff, and Kalsgard, kastamuts have been known to be active in Taldor, Osirion, Vudra, and even Geb and Tian Xia.

This does not mean, however, that kastamuts are never encountered in the wilderness. In fact, many of the cultures in the greatest danger of being subverted or destroyed are found in the wilds. A few of these inevitables are believed to operate in the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse, working against those Chelish colonists seeking to quell resistance by the region’s indigenous population. Pathfinder Society reports also indicate that at least one kastamut haunts the western border of Irrisen, working against white witches and their minions who attempt to eliminate the many Ulfen tribes that dwell there. At the same time, kastamuts have also appeared in Irrisen and Nidal to oppose rebels seeking to undermine the cultural status quo.

Creatures in "Inevitable" Category

NameCR
Arbiter2
Hykariut18
Impariut10
Kastamut6
Kolyarut12
Lhaksharut20
Marut15
Novenarut4
Rokyamut19
Valharut11
Yarahkut14
Zelekhut9

Inevitable

Source Bestiary 2 pg. 161
Originally invented and forged in the Outer Planes by the axiomites, inevitables are living machines whose sole purpose is to seek out and destroy agents of chaos wherever they can.

During the height of the first war between law and chaos, while the Outer Planes were still forming from the raw chaos of the primal reality, inevitables were constructed by the axiomites as an unflinching army—soldiers powerful and devoted enough to march on the madness-inducing hordes of proteans who sought to unmake reality and return it all to the primal chaos they so adored. While this war has long since cooled to a simmer, and the reality of the Outer Planes is now not so easily threatened by the entropic influence of the proteans and their home plane, the defense of the axiomites' home plane remains the inevitables' primary goal. Despite the proteans' subsequent adaptation and study of how best to make themselves more resistant to the inevitables' attacks, these constructed soldiers remain imposingly effective.

Today, many inevitables—almost all of those encountered on the Material Plane—pursue a new aspect of their original mission: tracking down those who flagrantly flout the forces of law and redeeming them or, more often, eliminating the threat they present to the ordered nature of the multiverse. Matched on the side of chaos by the manipulative imentesh proteans, new inevitables awake to find themselves locked in a proxy war, knowing that losing the Material Plane to chaos would place their masters in a dangerous position.

Genderless, incorruptible, and caring nothing for power or personal advancement, inevitables are cunning and valiant shock troops in the service of law. Though they regularly interact with their creator race on their home plane, they have no society of their own, and are almost always encountered singly on other planes, each more than capable of pursuing its own mission. These individual crusades range from enforcing important or high-profile contracts and laws to forcibly correcting those mortals who would seek to cheat death. How they deal with the guilty varies according to the transgression: sometimes this means a simple geas or mark of justice to ensure that the target works to right his wrongs or never again strays from the path of law, but just as often an offense worthy of an inevitable's attention is severe enough that only immediate execution will suffice. Such decisions are not always popular—for the kindly priest who transcends mortality and the freedom fighter who battles the evil-yet-rightful king are every bit as guilty as grave-robbing necromancers and demon-worshipers—but the inevitables are always just, and few dare stand in the way of their judgment. Those inevitables who have completed a given mission often wander through whatever society they find themselves in, seeking other lawbreakers worthy of their ministrations. Brave souls with a worthy cause are always welcome to approach an inevitable and present their case, but should be wary of invoking the help of such powerful, single-minded beings—for an inevitable may not see the situation the same way they do, and though all inevitables do their best to preserve innocent life, they're not above sacrificing a few allies or innocents in an effort to bring down a greater villain.

Physically, inevitables often have humanoid forms or aspects, but their bodies appear somewhere between clockwork constructs and fine statues in the greatest classical tradition. Constructed of stone, adamantine, and even more precious materials, each inevitable is brought to sentience in the axiomites' forges already programmed with the details of its first target. Though they know that all beings outside of the lawful planes harbor chaos in their hearts, inevitables also understand that such conflicted creatures may yet be forces for law as much as for chaos, and thus overlook all but the most flagrant offenses. The most commonly recognized types of inevitables are as follows.

Arbiters: Scouts and diplomats, often assigned to wizards as familiars in the hopes of directing such individuals to the cause of law.

Kolyaruts: Cloaked and stealthy humanoid warriors who track and punish those who break contracts.

Lhaksharuts: Juggernauts who search for permanent breaches and links between planes and invasions from one dimension to another.

Maruts: Towering beings of stone, steel, and storm who bring a fitting end to those mortals who try to cheat death in attempts to live forever.

Zelekhuts: Winged, centaur-like constructs who track down those who flee just and legal punishment, returning them to their rightful judges or carrying out the sentence themselves.

Primal Inevitables

While the lhaksharuts are generally thought of as the most powerful caste of inevitable, there exist others of even greater skill and strength—these are known as the primal inevitables. These goliaths were among the first weapons of war forged by the axiomites to fight the protean menace—the methods to create more have long been lost to the axiomites, and those few primals who remain alive to this day have become legendary. None have been encountered in living memory, but the possibility of a primal's emergence is enough to give the proteans second thoughts when ideas of invading the inevitables' home plane arise.