Entrofex CR 5
This raw-skinned creature’s head seems to be encased in dark metal, baleful yellow light emanating from the gaps where its eyes should be.
CN Medium monstrous humanoid
Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +11
Aura ruinous (30 ft., DC 15)
DEFENSE HP 65
EAC 17; KAC 18
Fort +4; Ref +6; Will +10
Defensive Abilities undying life
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft.
Melee claw +12 (1d6+6 P)
Ranged entropic bolt +12 (1d4+7 A)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 5th)
At will—detect magic
1/day—fear (DC 13, level 2), inflict pain (DC 13), spider climb
STATISTICS
Str +2; Dex +0; Con +0; Int +5; Wis +3; Cha +0
Skills Bluff +11, Culture +16, Intimidate +16, Mysticism +16, Physical Science +11
Languages Common, Aklo
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Ruinous Aura (Su)
An entrofex is drenched in entropic energies, bringing ruin to all things around them. Every inanimate object within 30 feet of an entrofex must make a Fortitude save every round against this effect. A creature holding, carrying, or wearing items makes a single save which is applied to all of its items. On a failed save, the item takes 1d12 damage that penetrates all hardness. An entrofex can suppress or resume this aura as a free action. This aura has no effect on animate creatures, whether living, undead, or constructs. It will, however, affect their bodies should they be killed. When an entrofex dies this aura remains active on its body for one hour or until the aura breaks down its own body, even if it had been suppressing the aura when it died.
Undying Life (Su)
An entrofex can alter its biology, moving between life and undeath. At any given time an entrofex is treated as either an undead or a living creature for purposes of how spells, conditions, and positive/negative energy affects it. An entrofex can take a reaction to change what kind of creature it counts as.
ECOLOGY
Environment Any inhabited area, ruins of civilization, barren environments
Organization solitary, pair, group (3-10)
Planets can vary wildly, from toxic gas giants large enough that their moons trail through the atmosphere to easily habitable parents with no real hostile features to speak of to masses of ice flying free of any star. But in all their infinite variety, there are those whose sheer lethality still makes them stand out. Most of these don’t get any more than a numerical designation in a survey report, written off for habitation. One such planet exists near a major solar system, a small rocky thing sitting close enough to the center for the sun to always dominate the daytime sky. Or at least it would if there was a star. Sometime in the unknown past, a portal to the Plane of Negative Energy was torn open in the heart of the star, consuming most of it and leaving the remnant a swirling corona of plasma around a sphere of darkness. Looking at it one could easily mistake it as a constant eclipse, save for the occasional shadow that can be seen slipping through the ring of light as something crawls out into the Material Plane.
It was on this world that the entrofexes developed. An entrofex typically stands between five and seven feet tall, with their arms reaching down to their knees and their long fingers nearly trailing on the ground. Those who are encountered on their homeworld have red-pink skin, blasted and burned by both the radiation and the negative energy pouring from the sky. Those who are found on other worlds or have received treatment to repair their skin typically have skin in some hue of brown or grey. Across their backs, on their shoulders and outer thighs, and over both of their hearts, their skin is broken up by chitinous plates, the remnants of their ancestor’s exoskeletons. These plates are rarely fully encompassing, usually only a few fragments ranging from the size of a coin to a palm. But by far their most recognizable feature is their heads. Their heads are encased in masks or helmets composed of some dark metal, though in shape it appears that they are merely made of more of their exoskeleton. No two entrofexes have the same mask, and they can vary wildly in presentation. All have a jagged opening resembling a fanged mouth, though the shape and arrangement of this opening is not consistent enough to determine exactly where their mouths actually are. Most have openings for eyes, which can vary in size, shape, and distribution, frequently in asymmetrical arrangements. Those who do have eyeholes have pale yellow light emanating from them, giving them an ominous appearance. Rarer but still quite frequent are various decorative features, which can range from thorny spikes to horns to strange growths resembling a halo. An entrofex never removes this helmet even to eat or sleep and their bodies rot away after their death too quickly to easily remove them.
Their menacing appearance is backed up by the supernatural powers the entrofexes developed in order to survive on such a blighted world. The most unsettling is their ability to bring their bodies into a state close to undeath. In order to survive the constant bombardment of negative energy, they developed this power in order to sustain themselves off of it rather than allow it to blight them. Regardless of its origins, many find it unsettling and liken it to certain experiments by mad necromancers. It isn’t entirely inaccurate, as several necromancers prize entrofexes as test subjects in order to study this phenomenon, while yet others prize their bodies for intelligent undead minions who can perfectly pass as living entrofexes. But as strange as that is, their more dangerous power is their aura of ruin. When active an entrofex can cause walls to crumble and blades to shatter without raising a finger, creating an area where things seem to age years in seconds.
The fear entrofexes receives is not entirely unjustified. As their attempts to develop a society were hampered by the constant corrosion from their portal sun and incursions by entities from the Negative Energy Plane, they were forced to remain in a primitive society. They barely scrabbled by for uncounted centuries, forming a complex, ever-evolving religion revering their dark sun and praising the occasional invaders from it as demigods bearing its will. Their inability to develop technology caused them to focus entirely on the spiritual, causing the religions to fragment into many thousands of subvariants with ever-shifting and complex rites and commandments that only the most dedicated scholar could comprehend. While many broke away from this when they managed to escape into the greater galaxy aboard heavily reinforced exploration shuttles that were sent to them to make contact, many still hold these views. They spread the teaching of entropy and ruin, reading the patterns of destruction within their ruinous auras like an oracle would an animals entrails, heading up cults and spreading ruin. Some of these destructive preachers have long since lost their faith in their supposed god, but keep up their work anyways in a jealous sense of revenge against the civilizations who thrived while the entrofexes scrabbled in the dirt just for survival.