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Ioton

Ioton Creature0

N Tiny Astral Incorporeal

Senses Perception +3; thoughtsense (imprecise) 60 feet

Languages absorbed language

Skills Acrobatics +6, Stealth +6

Str -5, Dex +2, Con +3, Int +0, Wis -1, Cha -3

Absorbed Language While a creature is taking persistent damage from the ioton, the ioton gains the ability to speak and understand one of that creature’s languages, selected at random.

Thoughtsense (divination, mental, occult) The ioton senses all non-mindless creatures at the listed range.


AC 14; Fort +7, Ref +6, Will +3

HP 14; Immunities disease, poison, precision; Weaknesses mental 3; Resistances all damage 2 (except force, ghost touch, or mental; double resistance vs. non-magical)


Speed fly 30 feet

Melee [one-action] touch +6 (agile, magical, mental), Effect 1d4 persistent mental damage and leech thought

Occult Innate Spells DC 14; Cantrips (1st) daze, detect magic

Leech Thought (healing, occult, polymorph, transmutation) While a creature is taking persistent mental damage from the ioton, the ioton takes the shape of a creature familiar to the target, such as an acquaintance, pet, or common animal, though the appearance is imperfect and grants no benefit to Impersonate an individual.

About

The Astral Plane is a planar nexus, connecting the planes of the Inner Sphere to those of the Outer Sphere, a realm of timeless silver substance charged with mental essence drawn from throughout the Great Beyond. Most creatures on the Astral Plane are visitors-predators seeking to poach from the River of Souls, psychopomps guarding against such incursions, and aeons monitoring the flow of raw quintessence through the Antipode. Yet, this plane has spawned creatures native to its strange currents and eddies, foremost of which is the family of thought-spawned creatures known as ennosites.

An ennosite’s form physically embodies of its thought and purpose. As some ideals and goals are shared, so are certain forms.

Periodically, stray thoughts colliding on the Astral Plane become entangled, forming a knot of rudimentary intellect. Known as iotons, these beings lack the willpower to manifest physical bodies, much less the self-awareness and vision to know what form these physical bodies might take. Instead, they manifest as ghostly, cloudlike wisps, each intermittently forming ephemeral features like alien eyes, unspeaking mouths, and shimmering symbols as iotons instinctively process their surroundings. Left alone, they might drift for ages amidst the Silver Sea.

Gregariously parasitic, iotons sense and congregate around thinking beings, eagerly tearing off stray thoughts and using the harvested psychic energy to think clearly and form physical bodies. An ioton might understand that this process inflicts painful headaches in its victims, but it typically doesn’t care. Not only do most of these ennosites become drunk on their newfound mental power and cling to their captured thoughts, but returning what they stole also robs an ioton of the mental bandwidth necessary to parse right from wrong. This sometimes causes a painful cycle where it repeatedly steals thoughts, apologetically surrenders them, and then blithely steals the thoughts anew.

Iotons that gradually accumulate and consolidate enough mental potential form a permanent body, transforming into another type of ennosite.

Immortal Observers

Sometimes an ioton is the sole witness to a crime or retains some other key intelligence, and their guileless minds make them trustworthy. However, actually extracting that information can prove nearly impossible, and even an ioton can misinterpret what it sees.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Pathfinder Bestiary 3 (Second Edition) © 2021, Paizo Inc.; Authors: Logan Bonner, James Case, Jessica Catalan, John Compton, Paris Crenshaw, Adam Daigle, Katina Davis, Erik Scott de Bie, Jesse Decker, Brian Duckwitz, Hexe Fey, Keith Garrett, Matthew Goodall, Violet Gray, Alice Grizzle, Steven Hammond, Sasha Laranoa Harving, Joan Hong, James Jacobs, Michelle Jones, Virginia Jordan, Tj Kahn, Mikko Kallio, Jason Keeley, Joshua Kim, Avi Kool, Jeff Lee, Lyz Liddell, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Philippe-Antoine Menard, Patchen Mortimer, Dennis Muldoon, Andrew Mullen, Quinn Murphy, Dave Nelson, Jason Nelson, Samantha Phelan, Stephen Radney-Macfarland, Danita Rambo, Shiv Ramdas, Bj Recio, Jessica Redekop, Mikhail Rekun, Patrick Renie, Alex Riggs, David N. Ross, Simone D. Sallé, Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, Sen.H.H.S, Abigail Slater, Rodney Sloan, Shay Snow, Pidj Sorensen, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Tan Shao Han, William Thompson, Jason Tondro, Clark Valentine, Ruvaid Virk, Skylar Wall, Andrew White, and Landon Winkler.

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