Calecor

Source: Alien Archive 2

CR: 17 XP: 102,400

CN Large fey

Init.: +5 Senses: darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision Perception: +29

Defense

HP: 300 RP: 6

EAC: 30 KAC: 31

Fort: +17 Ref: +17 Will: +20

Offense

Speed: 60 ft., fly 120 ft. (Su, perfect)

Melee: slam +25 (8d6+21 B plus ruined mind)

Offensive Abilities: ruined mind, sympathetic ruin

Statistics

Str: +4 Dex: +5 Con: +4 Wis: +8 Int: +2 Cha: +11

Skills: Acrobatics +29 (+37 to fly), Life Science +34, Survival +34

Languages: truespeech

Ecology

Environment: any

Organization: solitary

Special Abilities

<p><b>Planetary Bond (Su)</b> A calecor is bonded to a planet devastated by cataclysm. The creature is dimly aware of everything happening on that world. However, this deluge of information is difficult for it to process. The calecor has a 33% chance to become aware of anything occurring on the planet that might affect the fey, its goals, or the world itself. Once aware of an event, the calecor can take a full action to observe that occurrence as if using <i>clairaudience/clairvoyance</i>, but without any restrictions on range and duration. This ability functions even when the calecor is not on the bonded planet, and the entire planet is considered to be familiar to the calecor.<br/><br/> <b>Ruined Mind (Su)</b> A calecor’s traumatized and divided mind makes the fey dangerous to interact with on a mental level. Any creature that touches a calecor (or is touched by one), uses mind-affecting or mind-reading magic on the fey, or attempts to communicate with it telepathically must attempt a DC 24 Will save. On a failure, the creature takes 4d10 damage and becomes confused for 1 round. The calecor can suppress this ability at will. This is a mind-affecting effect.<br/><br/> <b>Sympathetic Ruin (Su)</b> As a standard action, the calecor can project the mental torment of its ruined mind into the mind of a creature within 250 feet. If the target fails the save against ruined mined, it suffers the effects of that ability.</p>

Description

When a world suffers a global calamity—a tremendous loss of resident life-forms due to asteroid impact, rapid climate change, war, or other apocalyptic scenario—the ramifications can ripple far beyond that planet. In some cases, as the torrent of souls leaves the planet, bound for Pharasma’s Boneyard, some of the life energy from dying fey creatures and nonsentient organisms ripples back to the First World, tearing a hole in the fabric of the Material Plane. The essence of the First World surrounds and contains this blast of anguished energy, waves of planar force wrapping around it like an oyster making a pearl, until the two elements combine and solidify into a new entity, a calecor.

A calecor is the fey embodiment of the planetary disaster that birthed it—nature’s violent reaction to the cycle of birth, growth, evolution, and death being catastrophically and irreparably interrupted. Biologists and mystics are unsure why some disasters result in the creation of a calecor while others do not. After all, most planets suffer events that were disastrous for some and beneficial for others, and evolution itself kills off existing species through natural processes, such as when newly evolved trees absorb enough carbon dioxide from an atmosphere to cause global cooling. To date, the best theory is that the dying fey associated with a world’s biome have an innate sense of a planet’s natural order, a sort of racial memory for the planet as a whole. Therefore, only extinctions that this aggregate fey consciousness deems the work of outside actors trigger enough resentment to coalesce into a calecor.

Calecors not only take forms suiting their planet’s primary environments, but also have sphinx-like shapes, with the body of a hunting cat and great wings of overlapping leaves. A calecor’s body is formed not of flesh, but rather vines that wrap and twist around pieces of broken stone, such as rubble from a native civilization destroyed by the calamity. Instead of a head, the vines of the creature’s neck writhe up and cradle a holographic globe split down the middle into two pieces: a perfect, real-time representation of the calecor’s bonded world. A calecor is 10 feet tall and can weigh more than 6 tons.

Always encountered singly, calecors have little culture and might not even be aware of the existence of other calecors. As soon as a calecor emerges into consciousness, its first action is to leave the First World and travel back through the planar breach to the world whose death spawned it. Once there, it does everything in its power to undo the damage and reset the ecosystem to a stable state, magically tearing down the structures of those it deems responsible for the tragedy and terraforming regions too blasted to support life. So deep is the calecor’s bond to its planet that it instinctively knows everything happening on or within it, and it is able to see and hear events on the other side of the world just by thinking about it.

Instinctively able to speak any language, a calecor’s mind is nevertheless as broken as the globe that forms its head, its mind split between painful visions of the past and the overwhelming desire to heal and nurture. Those who attempt to make psychic contact with the creatures report a devastating, disorienting whirlwind of different thoughts—the death cries of a billion organisms—and such contact can seriously harm those who lack superior mental fortitude.

Although not inherently bellicose, and in fact gentle toward organisms it deems in need of recovery or repopulation, a calecor has no patience for those who would despoil its world or oppose its mission. In such situations, interlopers might be warned off with painful visions of the terrifying apocalypse that led to the calecor’s birth. If that tactic doesn’t work, a calecor shifts gravity to keep foes off-kilter while it picks them off, breaking minds and disintegrating bodies until the threat is neutralized. Those who can convince the calecor that their goals align, however, might find themselves with the most powerful ally on the planet.