Deceivers

Most oni that emerge on the Material Plane do so into a new body of humanoid flesh, yet this is not the case for all oni. Periodically, when an evil spellcaster wishes to engage the servitude of an oni as a familiar, the result is something relatively unusual—an oni made flesh directly from its spiritual form rather than one who takes the features of a humanoid as its own. Any lawful evil 7th-level spellcaster who takes the Improved Familiar feat can gain a spirit oni as a familiar. The ritual to gain such a familiar requires the spellcaster to craft a particularly fiendish and fierce-looking oni mask—this does not require a Craft check or any additional expenditure of gold, and is assumed to be part of the overall ritual for securing the familiar. When the ritual is complete a raw oni spirit is lured into the mask, which immediately transforms it into the animate, living creature presented here. While the ritual binds the oni to its new master, it also robs the oni of its immediate chance to achieve a human form. As a result, spirit oni are foul-tempered and cantankerous creatures, even to their masters. They must be regularly reprimanded and disciplined, lest their jealousy and bitterness get the better of them. When a spirit oni’s master dies, the spirit oni gains free will and the ability to make its own choices—but the spirit oni’s innate cowardice and dishonor usually prevents it from taking its own life in hopes of returning to true spirit form and then returning as a proper oni. Rather than extinguishing themselves, such masterless spirit oni seek out more powerful oni and offer their services to their superiors, in hopes that they might someday be granted a promotion from their lowly state to something more befitting their egos and desires.

Doppelgangers are strange beings that can take on the shapes of those they encounter. In its natural form, the creature looks more or less humanoid, but slender and frail, with gangly limbs and half-formed facial features. Its flesh is pale and hairless, and its eyes are vacant and white. Doppelgangers prefer infiltrating societies where they can gather wealth and influence, and see little point in forming cities of their own kind. Younger doppelgangers practice their skills by taking over small orc or goblin tribes, then move to more complicated societies like dwarven, elven, and human communities. Rather than making themselves targets by taking positions of leadership, they prefer to be the power behind the throne, or use multiple identities to manipulate influential citizens or entire guilds. Doppelgangers make excellent use of their natural mimicry to stage ambushes, bait traps, and infiltrate humanoid society. Although not usually evil, they are interested only in themselves and regard all others as playthings to be manipulated and deceived. They are particularly fond of invading human societies in order to indulge in their desires—some enjoy the complex dance of politics while others seek constant change in the race and gender of both themselves and their romantic companions. While not standard, it is those doppelgangers use their gifts for cruel and sadistic purposes that are most notorious, and these shapeshifters are the primary cause of the race’s sinister reputation. Certainly, a creature capable of changing its shape has a handy way to avoid capture for its crimes, and some particularly malicious doppelgangers enjoy disrupting relationships by posing as unfaithful lovers. Rumors persist of even more powerful doppelgangers capable of not only shifting their appearance, but also skills, memories, and even the extraordinary and supernatural abilities of creatures whose forms they choose to mimic. These doppelgangers’ change shape ability functions like the spell polymorph rather than alter self.

While the majority of oni tend to be larger than life, and thus often end up having associations with giants and other enormous humanoids, not all of them are born into physical bodies that match their boundless appetites for cruelty. The kuwa are an example of this, for they are oni who clothe themselves in human flesh. While their true forms remain unmistakably fiendish, with golden skin, claws, and monstrous visages with short sharp horns, kuwa are most at home living in disguise among humans. As with most oni, they generally avoid their own kind, and instead seek positions of power in human cities, often as guard captains, guildmasters (particularly of thieves’ guilds), and aristocrats. Most kuwa avoid taking on the role of a spellcaster unless they possess class levels in an appropriate class. Likewise, all but the most ambitious kuwa avoid positions of true authority, such as king or mayor. Kuwa are most comfortable in the upper echelon of command, but avoid positions so important that they have too many eyes on them. To a kuwa, a position of leadership that doesn’t allow frequent abuse of that power is a waste, and by aiming for less publicly visible positions, the kuwa increases its opportunities for such abuse. Once a kuwa secures a position in a human society, the accumulation of wealth becomes its primary motivation. A kuwa wants to live a life of decadence and sensual pleasure, and like any oni, it wants to propagate its own kind. Its strength and magical powers enable it to easily dominate normal folk, allowing it to gather groups of thuggish, likeminded humans to lead in banditry and worse. A typical kuwa stands about 6 feet in height and weighs 190 pounds.

According to legend, when a house cat lives beyond its normally allotted years, it changes. The cat’s tail splits and the beast becomes a malevolent spirit capable of casting evil spells and taking on humanoid form. It uses these abilities to prey upon mortals, starting with the family that once cared for the cat. Nekomatas are cruel, vindictive spirit-creatures that seek to destroy households from within by sowing fear and discord, breaking bonds of love and friendship, and spreading mental and physical illness. A nekomata often starts its campaign of destruction by secretly killing and eating a household servant and then taking on the servant’s appearance. In such a guise, the creature can infiltrate the home and begin working all kinds of mischief, using its innate magical abilities to terrorize the home’s residents, often while enjoying all the comforts that home provides. Ultimately, the nekomata’s goal is to ruin the health and reputation of the head of the house before killing every member of the family. Once its vile work is done, the creature moves on to find another home to destroy. In its true form, a nekomata appears as a two-tailed house cat about 7 feet long and weighing 200 pounds.

Blood hags, known to some as soucouyants, prefer to live near isolated human communities or on the edge of civilized lands. A blood hag takes the appearance of a young woman by day. At night, she assumes her true form, as her skin peels back and sloughs off to reveal the monstrosity beneath. A hunting blood hag preys on unsuspecting neighbors during the night, sneaking into their homes and feeding off their blood or burning them alive. When a blood hag finds a particularly choice victim, she forgoes simply feeding on her, and instead abducts her, spiriting her away to the hag’s hidden lair, where she’ll be tortured and drained dry of blood over the course of days or weeks. Once the hag has properly prepared the victim’s skin, she wears it. Bold and particularly clever blood hags attempt to masquerade as their victims for a time. Blood hags of exceptional talent typically gain levels in the witch class.

BLOOD HAG COVENS
A hag coven containing a blood hag loses access to the control weather and speak with dead spell-like abilities. Instead, the coven gains access to death ward, fire storm, and nightmare. When all three hags of the coven are within 10 feet of one another, the other hags gain the fire immunity and spell resistance of the blood hag. Blood hags absolutely loathe submitting to the authority of others, and rarely form covens with other blood hags or with any hags of power comparable to or greater than their own.

The queens of a race consumed by bitterness and predatory instinct, lamia matriarchs mastermind all manner of foul plots in hopes of breaking the bestial curse that afflicts their race. They move with shocking ease from silken-tongued temptresses to dervishes, striking with all the deadly precision of vipers. Quick to covet, enslave, and overindulge, lamia matriarchs luxuriate in gory feasts, violent trysts, and bloody entertainments, reveling until their playthings are broken or until they tire and move on.

Regal and proud, royal nagas haunt lost cities and forgotten kingdoms, guarding ancient treasures for their own inscrutable reasons. A royal naga’s five faces are sharp and fierce, taking on a terrifying countenance when it becomes angered. Bespeaking their innate pride and vanity, royal nagas adorn their serpentine hoods and faces with elaborate and valuable piercings, crowns, or other precious accessories. Royal nagas are 18 feet long, and often weigh more than 750 pounds. Royal nagas tend to be stern in nature and commanding in speech. Although naturally sociable, they are distrustful of strangers and seem to have great difficulty speaking to other creatures as equals.

Built by ancient arcanists and engineers to serve as spies and elite troops, units of mezlans were deployed to engage in extractions, infiltrations, and quick strikes on well-protected locations. Scholars believe that at the height of those ancient civilizations, close to 1,500 mezlans were created. The difficulty of destroying mezlans leads scholars to believe that at least half of them still exist to this day.
Mezlans blur the lines between constructs and oozes, a mixture made even more strange by the fact that they have unique, previously human personalities. Each mezlan was once an exemplary living soldier graced with superior skills and intelligence. Upon being chosen for this new duty, these soldiers were given a full explanation of the changes they would undergo and signed a contract agreeing to serve as mezlans. Each was then subjected to numerous magical and technological procedures to extract her consciousness, preserve it, and inject it into her new form. Sometimes the process didn’t take, resulting in an incomplete and flawed mezlan. Indications of these flaws didn’t always reveal themselves before the creatures were deployed, and many such mezlans abandoned their missions to pursue their own mysterious agendas.
Most mezlans were recruited from the ranks of the military, and thus most of them had martial-related or skill-related class levels; however, a few of these creatures were once wizards who traded their magical talent for an amorphous form and near immortality.  Without the need to eat, sleep, or breathe, mezlans are practically immortal. When they are defeated in battle, they simply discorporate and begin seeping down into the soil or cracks in the ground. If the material making up a mezlan isn’t contained in some way or destroyed by subjecting it to continued energy damage, the creature lies dormant for 10 years before reforming. When a mezlan reincorporates, it is treated as if it had 16 negative levels. These negative levels are removed at a rate of 1 per month.
Mezlans retain a portion of their previous memories and experiences, but the extent of those memories varies from individual to individual. Some mezlans slowly regain their memories, some immediately remember everything from their previous incorporation, and others never fully recall their previous selves. A mezlan that retains its living memories typically has several class levels, although it should be noted that not all skills and abilities humanoids have in life translate directly to life as a shapeshifting ooze. One notable exception is a mezlan’s morphic weapons. While these attacks are natural weapons and a mezlan thus cannot gain iterative attacks, a mezlan who has feats or class abilities that bolster specific weapons can apply the effects of those feats or abilities to its morphic weapons, provided the weapons are of the right shape. For example, a mezlan with Weapon Focus (longsword) would gain a +1 bonus on attack rolls with its morphic weapon attacks when they are in the shape of a longsword. This limits the damage type dealt by the morphic weapon to a damage type appropriate to the weapon being duplicated.
From all appearances, mezlans seem to get along well with each other; however, to normal, living creatures, they often appear strange and unnatural in both form and behavior. They are very observant creatures that study everything they encounter, especially animals and humanoids—a frequent use of their skill pool ability. Some mezlans become accustomed to a particular form or body and use it as a default. Others keep dozens of regular guises and take on the ones most appropriate for particular duties they need to complete, using appearances and personalities as tools throughout their day-to-day activities. A few purists keep an amorphous, bloblike form unless they need to resemble something else. Strange mezlans who have gone mad over the years constantly shift their forms, flickering between hundreds of different shapes.

Residents of an enigmatic and unknown world that is believed to exist out of phase with the Material Plane, anunnaki are mysterious, god-like beings that shape the very direction of civilizations. Little is known about the anunnaki homeworld, but fragmented information collected by scholars indicates that it comes into contact with the Material Plane only once every few thousand years. During this time, anunnaki travel to other worlds in order to manipulate the course of evolution, creating civilizations and uplifting primitive creatures using their esoteric technology, which includes external power sources called “lanterns of civilization.” The anunnaki do not typically remain to guide these societies, and are often remembered as deities by the civilizations they leave behind. Because the anunnaki can take on various forms, piecing together which civilizations have or haven’t been visited by anunnaki is exceedingly difficult. The creatures could have arrived to guide one civilization in the guise of powerful, glowing creatures and secretly assimilated into another society by adopting the appearance of members of that society and subtly making changes over the course of decades. Each anunnaki calibrates its form to fit the mores and prejudices of the specific society it means to advance.  Anunnaki’s role as manipulators of civilization and natural order often puts them into direct confrontation with elohim. The source of the enmity between these mighty creatures is unknown, but the aftershocks of their conflicts can be felt for millennia after the fighting has ended. Some sages believe that the anunnaki and elohim are both working to circumvent some future calamity, but differ along ideological or philosophical lines as to how to prevent this event from coming to pass. Ancient records from cultures that were shaped by the anunnaki reference divine visions of great, devouring rifts in the darkness between the stars and the terrible, unimaginable entities that dwell within them.  For all the knowledge and power anunnaki possess, the civilizations they create do not always see them as benevolent saviors. Some anunnaki might have more sinister agendas not shared by the rest of their people. These rogue anunnaki have free rein over the societies they manipulate as long as they can avoid the notice of their fellow anunnaki—and since it is difficult for other creatures to find or contact any of their race, the renegade anunnaki can often do whatever they please. Some of these renegades use their civilizations for large-scale experiments, creating bizarre hybrid creatures. Others advance their subjects too rapidly by the standards of the other anunnaki, attempting to create creatures as advanced as the anunnaki themselves rather than simply giving cultures the means to advance themselves. In many of these cases, the uplifted society isn’t truly equipped to handle such vast changes. Rather than advancing in a surge of scientific and creative thought, its members become absorbed with existential doubt or fall into madness as they recognize the gulf between their lofty ambitions and the materials and means they have at their disposal.  Anunnaki prefer to interact with most humanoids without being recognized for what they are, and an anunnaki may depart a conversation abruptly if a non-anunnaki reveals that she knows it is not the god or mortal it pretends to be.

A julunggali is a semidivine entity. It watches over sacred and mystical places of the world, as well as the remote tribes that respect these locations. Young tribal warriors present themselves to the julunggali for its blessing, a vision quest, or other rite of passage necessary to become an adult in the community. A julunggali is wise and can be entreated to perform helpful tasks, such as carving new river channels or pulling water into dry wells. But it is also vengeful, and has been known to punish those who break social taboos or intrude upon sacred places without permission. Those who have undergone rites of passage chosen for them by the julunggali face the harshest repercussions if they act wrongly.