Psychopomp, ViduusThis dour being has a mostly humanoid form with its lower body
wrapped in a cocoon-like husk.Viduus CR 4Source Bestiary 6 pg. 223, Inner Sea Bestiary pg. 41
XP 1,200
N Medium outsider (extraplanar, psychopomp)
Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, spiritsense;
Perception +14DefenseAC 16, touch 10, flat-footed 16 (+6 natural)
hp 47 (5d10+20)
Fort +5, Ref +4, Will +10
DR 5/adamantine; Immune death effects, disease, mindaffecting
effects, poison; Resist cold 10, electricity 10; SR 15OffenseSpeed 30 ft., climb 30 ft.
Melee quill +5 touch (1d4 plus censor or expurgate)
Special Attacks censor, expurgate, quillStatisticsStr 10, Dex 11, Con 18, Int 15, Wis 19, Cha 16
Base Atk +5; CMB +5; CMD 15
Feats Alertness, Improved Initiative, Iron Will
Skills Bluff +11, Climb +8,
Diplomacy +11, Knowledge
(history, planes, religion) +10,
Perception +14, Sense
Motive +14, Stealth +8
Languages Abyssal, Celestial,
Common, Infernal
SQ spirit touch, transformationEcologyEnvironment any (Boneyard)
Organization solitary, pair, or library (3–12)
Treasure standardSpecial AbilitiesCensor (Su) A viduus that strikes a living creature with its quill rewrites memories. The target must succeed at a DC 15 Will save or its memories are affected similarly to modify memory. The viduus can rewrite 1 day’s worth of the target’s memories with a single strike. The target is confused for the next 1d4 rounds. A creature’s memories can be restored by lesser restoration, modify memory, or similar spells. Memories lost in this manner are copied into one of the numerous tomes protected by the viduus and can be relearned by reading that tome. This is a mind-affecting effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.
Expurgate (Su) A viduus that strikes an undead creature with its quill can obliterate that creature’s memories and rob it of its will to act. The undead creature must succeed at a DC 15 Will save or have all of its memories erased. This renders the undead immobile, as if under the effects of halt undead. An intelligent undead can attempt a saving throw at the end of each of its turns to end the effect, but unintelligent undead remain halted until the effect is removed by an outside force. The effect is broken if the halted creature is attacked or takes damage. The save DC is Charisma-based.
Quill (Su) A viduus’s quill deals piercing damage and is treated as a light weapon and a touch attack. It cannot be used by other creatures as anything other than a standard writing quill.
Transformation (Su) A viduus that is reduced to 0 hit points transforms. Its cocoon body bursts open, expelling a swarm of biting black-and-white centipedes (same statistics as a spider swarm) and a bank of mind fog (CL 4th) centered on the viduus’s square. A viduus can purposefully transform by spending 3 consecutive full-round actions, in which case it reforms somewhere in the Boneyard 1 month later.DescriptionViduuses occupy the many libraries and scriptoriums of the Boneyard, where they catalog the comings and goings of extraordinary souls: their lives, deeds, deaths, and secrets. Existence holds many mysteries, and those mortals who had brushes with the extraordinary have their tales and confessions recorded by these semi-cocooned scholars and added to the volumes of the Boneyard’s expansive libraries. Although pretentious in the extreme, viduuses prove quite knowledgeable about many historical and planar secrets, and what they don’t know they generally have a decent idea of how to research, potentially summoning assistants from across the planes to aid them.Creatures in "Psychopomp" CategorySource Bestiary 4 pg. 217
All life has its beginning and its end. From the moment of birth, everything that shrieks and struggles upon the Material Plane crawls toward a singular finale, that fatal climax that grants passage into the unimaginable infinities of the afterlife. As the spirits of the deceased flow from the confusion of mortality to their ultimate fates, they are each judged by the gods of death, who assure that all who die reach their prescribed afterlife. Yet with all the worlds of the Material Plane, the countless faces and exceptions of mortality, and all those who would turn fate and finality to their own devices, death as a system and institution requires more agents than a single deity or pantheon to uphold. These agents are the psychopomps—denizens of Purgatory and the dispassionate stewards, chroniclers, and guides of all that die.
Psychopomps preside over the flow of life. Their primary concerns focus upon souls in the vulnerable transition between death and their final destinations upon the planes. Psychopomps carry out their duties with the dispassion of veterans and cynics. In terms of service measuring in ages, psychopomps meet countless souls from innumerable worlds, and soon nearly every story, fate, plea, and exception becomes all too familiar. They care little for the histories or personalities of the souls that pass them by, concerned only for the efficient and unvaried processing of each spirit to its final unremarkable eternity. Damnation and paradise are the same to them, as are heroes and villains, and no psychopomp cares one jot for great deeds left undone, other fates hanging in the balance, or bribes worth even a world’s ransom. But while drudgery is the lot of many psychopomps—interrupted only by the diversions they sometimes create for themselves—their system is not without flaws. There are creatures who would seek to deny the natural order of death—fiends that prey upon souls, spirits lost in their migration, and undead abominations. To counter such abnormalities and preserve the flow of souls as the multiverse requires, numerous specialized psychopomps exist to protect the dead and counter any who would seek to pervert the state of death to their own ends.
Noteworthy among psychopomps are their masks. Many who have dealings with the living wear some manner of grim face covering or funerary mask. While these masks are not part of a psychopomp’s body and grant them no special abilities, the legends of numerous cultures suggest that for a living creature to see a psychopomp’s unmasked countenance invites a premature death. Those psychopomps who deal predominately with the dead typically eschew such marks of station except as a formality.
As psychopomps help convey souls to all of the Outer Planes, and thus provide petitioners equally to each of those realms, they enjoy a special status among many planar races as respected neutrals. As such, most other planar races grant them a wide berth, with even archons and demons going out of their ways to avoid interfering with death’s emissaries. Soul-hungry daemons and reality-violating qlippoth are among the only races that actively oppose psychopomps. Consequently, the deadlier classes of psychopomps watch for and hunt disruptive members of these races, seeking to expunge the paths between the planes of any that would impede the certain cycle of death.
The death gods create the weakest psychopomps out of mortal souls, usually those who served Purgatory in life or worshiped deities of judgment. The gods may transform psychopomps which perform exemplary service into greater members of their kind, though rarely an exceptional hero or champion of Purgatory may become a superior psychopomp when she dies. There is little competitiveness or jealousy among the ranks of these creatures, as their primary motivation is fulfillment of their eternal duties, and there is little point in coveting another’s rewards and responsibilities.
The following are the most common types of psychopomps. Other varieties exist, tasked with more obscure duties for the gods of death, or responsible for alien worlds where the native creatures have radically different life cycles and outlooks compared to humanoids.Psychopomp UshersBeings ancient and dispassionate rise above the psychopomp droves, emissaries of death who have presided over the dooms of whole nations, races, and worlds. These eldest and most efficient servants of death hold great respect for the gods of death, but are not necessarily their minions, striving to fulfill their own visions of death’s ultimate purpose and process over all other objectives.
Atropos the Last Sister
Barzahk the Passage
Ceyanan the Shepherd
Dammar the Denied
Imot the Symbol of Doom
Mother Vulture
Mrtyu, Death’s Consort
Narakaas the Cleansing Sentence
The Pale Horse
Phlegyas, Consoler of Atheists
Saloc, Minder of Immortals
Teshallas the Primordial Poison
Vale the Court of Ancestors
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