Vasuthant

A vasuthant was a monstrous and evil undead thing that resembled an orb of dark shadow with strange powers to drain light, life, and strength and to manipulate time, gravity, and reality itself. The most mighty and terrible of them was known as a horrific vasuthant. They were sentient gashes in the fabric of time, a condition that granted them their powers.

Description
A vasuthant took the form of an orb of darkness or shadow, growing bigger and blacker and more powerful as it absorbed more and more life energy from its victims. A vasuthant began only 2 feet (0.6 meters) wide and was but a shadowy cloud with an opaque core. These could grow to 15 feet (4.5 meters) in diameter. After this, they became horrific vasuthants, and could keep growing to 30 feet (9.1 meters) wide, appearing as utterly black spheres of nothingness. At all sizes, they were completely weightless. From the ball emerged black tendrils with which they grasped their victims. These were ragged in form and described as writhing and coiling. The vasuthant had no head, eyes, bones, or any internal structure at all; it was insubstantial yet still corporeal.

A vasuthant could fly with perfect maneuverability.

Ecology
A vasuthant wanted nothing more than to devour the positive energy of any living creature unfortunate enough to come across it. After centuries of this, they swelled into larger forms and even became horrific vasuthants, with greater powers. They operated alone, collected no treasure, and spoke no languages.

Combat
A vasuthant would always try to whack a living creature with one of its tendrils. If it hit, it could easily grab hold and then try to drag its victim into its center, where it could then crush and enervate it. It could grab one creature of its size, or multiple creatures of smaller sizes, and horrific vasuthants could strike with two tendrils at a time. They would fly past their targets as they attacked.

Abilities
Any living creature caught inside a vasuthant would over time be physically crushed and enervated, its strength sapped by negative energy. In turn, the vasuthant would be healed of any damage suffered, or even bolstered for ten minutes if it was already whole. Those trapped within would be crushed or enervated until slain. Up to four creatures could be assaulted in this way at a time. Even undead would inevitably be crushed by the physical force.

With some control of the forces of time and reality, a vasuthant could distort reality to alter the outcomes of events, potentially turning its failure into a success or an enemy's success into a failure. They could do this thrice a day, and a horrific vasuthant as often as it liked, but no more than once every several seconds. Furthermore, a horrific vasuthant could even open a rift in time to alter the past: time unwound for several seconds, all events were undone, and the vasuthant acted again, able to try a different course of action to get a more desirable outcome.

In addition, a horrific vasuthant had magical powers to levitate or slow opponents, use telekinesis or reverse gravity, and emit waves of fatigue and waves of exhaustion, each a few times a day. It could even, once a day each, briefly stop time for itself or place a foe into a permanent temporal stasis.

A vasuthant absorbed and trapped light, whether magical or natural, creating a dim, shadowy emanation to 60 feet (18 meters) from it, and twice this for a horrific vasuthant. This suppressed local light sources but it was not impenetrable to low-light vision and darkvision. Thanks to this, unlike most undead, all vasuthants were immune to harmful light; spells of light and the Sun domain didn't bother them.

With an unholy toughness, a vasuthant was more robust than an equivalent undead creature and withstood efforts to turn undead and the like more stubbornly. It was also increasingly resistant to fire and electricity and utterly impervious to acid and cold. Horrific vasuthants shrugged off all but the most devastating damage inflicted by mundane weaponry.

Being what they were, vasuthants hid easily in dim places and moved quietly. They had keen senses and could see with darkvision and blindsight.

History
Vasuthants arose from the spirits of sun elf sorcerers of Aryvandaar. These ambitious, power-seeking mages who'd given in to complete darkness fell with their empire at the end of the Fifth Crown War in. They still haunted its ancient ruins in the 14 century DR.

A pair of great drow sorcerers in Undermountain were slain as a result of the death of Halaster and the destruction of the Citadel of Belkram's Fall in the. They rose again as larger-than-normal vasuthants and roamed the Citadel's ruins individually thereafter.

In the, in the caves beneath the Citadel on the Thaymount in Thay, the undead heroes Bareris and Mirror encountered a horrific vasuthant. While Bareris knew a few very old stories in which vasuthants appeared, Mirror had encountered a lesser one previously. Unwinding time to protect itself, the vasuthant caused the pair to experience flashbacks of their lives, even to appear young and alive again. Ultimately, while it trapped Mirror in temporal stasis, Bareris overwhelmed it with conjured past selves the vasuthant itself had inspired. Surviving, they went on to confront Szass Tam in the Citadel.

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Expedition to Undermountain
 * Novels
 * Unholy