Egarhowl
Level 17Attacks
Abilities
When a palinthanos vocalizes, the sounds it creates are reversed. For the egarhowl, this only results in unnerving backwards sounds of angry roars and bestial noises, but for those who can speak, it makes understanding them difficult. A palinthanos has no difficulty understanding any language it can speak, but when it speaks, listeners must succeed at a DC 30 perception check made as a free action with the concentrate trait each round to quickly decipher the reversed conversation. This prevents a palinthanos from being able to easily utilize linguistic actions.
A creature with void healing draws health from void energy rather than vitality energy. It is damaged by vitality damage and is not healed by vitality healing effects. It does not take void damage, and it is healed by void effects that heal undead.
Trigger The egarhowl rolls initiative Frequency once per day Effect At the start of combat, an inverted, reversed explosion of spiritual and void energy implodes in a 30-foot emanation centered on the egarhowl—a reversal of the creature's spiritually explosive death. All creatures in the area take 6d8 spirit damage (DC 35 fortitude save); creatures that fail this save are also Slowed 1 for 1 round as time seems to distort around them.
An egarhowl's bite transmits its supernatural fury. A creature bitten by an egarhowl must attempt a DC 36 will save. They then become temporarily immune to rabid rage for 24 hours. Critical Success The creature suffers no ill effects. Success The creature is filled with anger and becomes Slowed 1 for 1 round as they waste some of their time shrieking and raving on their turn. Failure As success, but slowed 1 for 1 minute. Critical Failure As failure, but the creature is also Confused for as long as it is slowed.
Since an egarhowl appears to move backwards in time and the results of its actions manifest slightly out of sync, its manipulate or move actions and Strikes don't trigger reactions normally. Whenever a reaction would be triggered by an egarhowl in this way, the reacting creature must attempt a DC 11 flat. On a failure, their reaction does not trigger.
Description
Souls of beasts and animals that return as palinthanos manifest as ghostly, bestial undead of pure hunger and instinct. They appear as somewhat indistinct monstrous creatures, regardless of what they were in life.
When a cosmic event like Godsrain disturbs all that exists, the River of Souls sometimes flows backward for a brief moment, literally, from the shockwave. Unwilling and confused souls that are forced back far enough can have the agonizing experience of enduring death in reversed time. Some of these souls manage to re-enter the river once the flow returns to normal, but those who are stranded on the metaphorical shores of the living can become palinthanos: powerful undead born from their reversed demise who struggle futilely until their predestined banishment back to the River.
Backward Time
Palinthanos movements often feel counterintuitive to the senses, as if there is some invisible force from the unseen future acting upon them. For example, wounds created by palinthanos attacks tend to appear on bodies out of sync with the inflicting strike, manifesting a fraction of a section before the attack lands. Wherever they appear, it's as though two streams of time collide and flow opposite of one another, which the Universe does its best to make sense of.