Faceless Stalkers

Faceless stalkers are aberration shapechangers.

An aberration has a bizarre anatomy, strange abilities, an alien mindset, or any combination of the three.

Abberations have darkvision.

Aberrations breathe, eat, and sleep.

A shapechanger has the supernatural ability to assume one or more alternate forms. Many magical effects allow some kind of shapeshifting, and not every creature that can change shapes is a shapechanger.

Ugoloths (as faceless stalkers call themselves) are one of the many tools created and then discarded by the aboleths in their long war against the surface dwellers. Scorned by their former masters when the scheme for which they were designed unraveled, the faceless stalkers fled into swamps, marshes, or any other dark, wet places they could find – the closest they could come to the aquatic cities they once considered home.

Faceless stalkers can move through an area as small as one-quarter their space without squeezing or one-eighth their space when squeezing.

In its natural form, a faceless stalker has no discernible facial features. It is resistant to attacks or effects that target the senses. This includes gaze attacks, odor-based attacks, sonic attacks and similar attacks. This does not apply to illusions.

Originally designed to serve as spies that could walk uncontested among the air-breathing races, faceless stalkers adopt new forms by reshaping their skins and contorting their rubbery bodies. This painful process takes approximately 10 uninterrupted minutes – an ugoloth typically seeks a private place to do it, avoiding even others of its own kind. The sensation of returning to its true form is quite exhilarating and results in a momentary burst of euphoria.

Faceless stalkers have spell-like abilities. Spell-like abilities are magical and work just like spells (though they are not spells and thus have no verbal, somatic, focus, or material components). They go away in an antimagic field and are subject to spell resistance if the spell the ability is based on would be subject to spell resistance.

A spell-like ability usually has a limit on how often it can be used. A spell-like ability that can be used at will has no use limit. Using all spell-like abilities is a standard action, and doing so provokes attacks of opportunity. It is possible to use a spell-like ability defensively and avoid an attack of opportunity, just as when casting a spell. A spell-like ability can be disrupted just as a spell can be. Spell-like abilities cannot be used to counterspell, nor can they be counterspelled.

Faceless stalkers ignore damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly. They can take normal damage from energy attacks (even nonmagical ones), spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. Piercing or slashing weapons can damage faceless stalkers normally.

Faceless stalkers cannot digest solid food even in the form of a creature with a mouth. Instead, they subsist on liquids, including blood. In their natural forms, they have three hollow tongues which they use to penetrate and lap blood from their victims. Since they have no particular skill at grappling foes, most ugoloths wait until a victim is helpless or asleep before attempting to drink its blood – although the best is when a victim is helpless but conscious during the process, so that the faceless stalker can “play with its food” by having grisly and cruel conversations with it.