Avolakia

The avolakia is a nauseating creature that combines the worst aspects of a worm, an octopus, and an insect. It has exceptional intelligence and is incredibly wise and glib. Avolakias are experts at infiltrating humanoid societies for a variety of nefarious purposes.

An avolakia stands 10 feet tall. Its wormlike body is pallid and gray, shimmering with a pale yellow slime. The creature supports itself and moves about on a set of six suckered tentacles, each of which is tipped with a multifaceted yellow eye. Its “head” consists of a fleshy sheath that houses a set of three cruelly hooked mandibles. Eight long, spidery arms tipped with tiny insectoid claws that almost look like human hands protrude from a set of ridges about halfway up the creature’s body. An avolakia reeks of mold and decay.

Although they can digest dead or living flesh, avolakias find both disgusting and resort to such sustenance only under dire circumstances. They prefer to eat undead flesh⁠—​“fresh” off a zombie’s flank is best.

Avolakias speak their own language (a guttural, slobbering tongue). Many of them also understand Undercommon and other languages, though they do not have the vocal apparatus to speak them. With its change shape ability, however, an avolakia can assume a form that is capable of speaking any language it desires. This ability also enhances its disguise capabilities and aids it in laying ambushes for unwary opponents.

Combat

An avolakia prefers to cast spells or use its spell-like abilities from a distance while its undead minions close to melee with the enemy. If forced into melee, an avolakia uses its poisonous bite and flails with its eight claws. Occasionally, the creature may choose to use poison against one or more foes, then assume humanoid form and use its suggestion ability to bend them to its will.

Poison (Ex): An avolakia delivers its poison (Fortitude save DC 18) with each successful bite attack. The initial damage is 1d6 points of Wisdom damage, and the secondary damage is 2d6 points of Wisdom damage.

Spell-Like Abilities: At will⁠—​chill touch, cause fear, detect magic, disrupt undead, gentle repose, ghoul touch, halt undead, mage hand, read magic, spectral hand; 3/day⁠—​animate dead, create undead, enervation, vampiric touch. Caster level 14th; save DC 16 + spell level.

Suggestion (Sp): When in humanoid form, an avolakia has a melodious and hypnotic voice. By speaking soothingly to any one creature in range that understands its spoken words, the avolakia can create an effect identical to that of a quickened suggestion spell (caster level 10th; Will save DC 19). An opponent in eye contact with the creature while it makes its suggestion takes a –⁠2 penalty on the saving throw. The avolakia can use this ability a number of times per day equal to its Charisma modifier (usually six times per day).

Defensive Aura (Sp): An avolakia has a +6 deflection bonus to Armor Class. This ability is always in effect.

Fire Resistance (Ex): The slime that an avolakia constantly exudes grants it resistance to fire 10. It also helps the creature escape more easily (see Skills).

Immunities (Su): Because of its close association with undead, the avolakia has developed immunity to cold, disease, energy drain, and paralysis.

Regeneration (Ex): An avolakia takes normal damage from acid, fire, and electricity. See Regeneration.

Skills: Because of the slime it constantly exudes, an avolakia gains a +10 competence bonus on Escape Artist checks.

Avolakia Society

Avolakias band together in small tribes deep in the recesses of the earth. They delight in creating and modifying undead of all sorts, which they use for both food and defense. Avolakia clerics make good use of the create greater undead spell to create mummies, spectres, vampires, and ghosts. They often arm these greater undead with magic weapons, armor, and wondrous items to aid them in defending the avolakias’ territory.

The majority of avolakias have taken to worshiping Kyuss, a little-known quasi-deity. Despite the fact that their deity’s divine status does not enable him to grant spells, many avolakia clerics are quite powerful, drawing their spells from some unknown source. So eager are the avolakias to elevate Kyuss to full deity status that they actively recruit new worshipers for his cult. The creatures typically establish settlements beneath the communities of surface races, then use their alternate form and suggestion abilities to infiltrate their target areas. Often a group of avolakias infiltrates a local religious institution and attempts to assume control of the funerary rites for the community. Should the avolakias succeed, they have access to plenty of corpses that they can use to create more undead. In addition, the disguised avolakias are in a perfect position to corrupt selected members of the community and slowly indoctrinate them into the cult of Kyuss.

Avolakias also interact with various Underdark races. Some, such as the drow, they infiltrate in much the same way as they do surface races. With others, such as mind flayers, they openly propose alliances for the two groups’ mutual benefit. A typical agreement between mind flayers and avolakias stipulates that both groups hunt down and capture intelligent beings. The mind flayers consume the unfortunate victims’ brains, then hand the bodies over to the avolakias, who use them to create undead. But such alliances tend to fall apart eventually, either when the mind flayers enslave captives for long periods before consuming their brains, or when the avolakias kill a few mind flayers to make more powerful undead creatures.

Avolakia Characters

An avolakia’s favored class is sorcerer, but avolakia clerics are also quite common, and tribal leaders are always clerics of Kyuss. Avolakia spellcasters of any sort tend to focus on necromantic magic. Though they may choose from any of Kyuss’s domains (Death, Evil, Magic, or Trickery), the majority choose Death and Evil.

An avolakia PC’s effective character level (ECL) is equal to its class level + 15; thus, a 1st-level avolakia sorcerer has an ECL of 16 and is the equivalent of a 16th-level character.

Source: Monster Manual II, page 28. This creature’s statistics block has been updated to version 3.5 as given in the D&D® V.3.5 Accessory Update for Monster Manual II.