Ashullian

Ashullian

(Creature)

Type

Outsider
(native, water)

CR

11

Environment

Any water (Kaer Maga)

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

Ashullian

Source: Runeplague, pg(s). 86

Ashullians are a species of alien, blind, contemplative artists dwelling in the sunken depths beneath Kaer Maga, descended from ancestors from the Plane of Water.

Appearance

An ashullian looks like an enormous, eyeless eel-like humanoid. It has a long neck; a round head; a small, lipless mouth full of human-like teeth; a thick torso; four tentacles ending in hands; and two long tails. Colourful fluids can be seen rippling within its transparent, leathery skin. Ciliated clefts and sensory organs, which resemble soft, flexible spines, run along an ashullian's back and arms. A typical ashullian measures 16 feet from its head to its tails and weighs 200 pounds.

Ecology

Ashullians seek objects that fit their eccentric sense of 'art', and wear them in their flesh or display them in magical bowers. Since coming to the Material Plane, their artistic abilities have degraded, being limited to their bowers, where they can create and move objects by thought alone, and can even suspend the laws of physics. The ashullians' sensory output mixes with that of the bower's diverse contents, creating a synesthetic experience that they revel in, but others can find overwhelming. Each bower takes an hour to create and dissipates if the ashullian moves more than 200 feet away from it.

Ashullians reproduce by parthenogenesis, have no parental care, and live for up to 300 years. Ashullian corpses are almost always incorporated by others into their bowers as an artistic statement about ageing or the transience of life.

History

In ages past, a powerful humanoid race dwelling beneath Kaer Maga opened a planar portal to the dark depths of the Plane of Water, home of the ashullians' ancestors. As the ancient ashullians came to Golarion, the humanoids' tunnels were flooded and they vanished, leaving their home (which came to be called the Drowned Levels) to be inhabited by the ashullians.

Habitat

Although their ancestors swam in the Plane of Water, modern ashullians are native outsiders. The ancient magic that brought them to the Material Plane has also trapped them in the Drowned Levels. Only a few have escaped via purloined magic, or disappeared without a trace; the latter are rumoured to have transcended existence through ultimate artistic mastery, something which other ashullians seek to imitate. When not tending to their bowers, ashullians search for inspiration and a way to escape the Drowned Levels. It is possible that some of their ancestors still construct miles-wide galleries in the freezing currents of the Plane of Water's endless ocean.

Society

Ashullians share their home with water elementals and other aquatic creatures, and generally leave familiar neighbours to themselves but often pester visitors, demanding curios from them. Their idea of curio is utterly alien, considering strips of flayed skin to be about the same as scarves. Ashullians do not take well to being denied, and will eventually capture and strip visitors layer by layer to experience their full sensory measure. Presenting a novel experience to an ashullian might occupy it, allowing one to escape. Each ashullian considers itself a superior artist compared to its kin, at whom it looks with a caustically critical eye, so ashullians are unwelcome within others' bowers.