Avolakia

Avolakia were disgusting, nauseating aberrations that lived deep underground in small tribal units.

Description
In their natural form, an avolakia resembled a disgusting mixture of the worst aspects of an octopus, a worm, and an insect: the wormlike body was pallid grey and coated in pale yellow slime, but it supported itself and moved around using six suckered tentacles, each of which was tipped with a single, yellow, multifaceted eye. Half-way up the body, eight long, spider-like arms tipped in small insectile claws in an almost hand-like shape protruded from a set of ridges. And lastly, the "head" consisted on a fleshy sheath concealing a set of three hooked mandibles. Avolakias were tall on average, and reeked like a dead body.

Personality
Avolakias were evil, but were also highly intelligent and glib. They were fully capably of both cooperation (with other members of their tribe and with allies) and subtlety. They enjoyed creating and modifying undead.

Abilities
Like other things called aberrations, avolakias possessed some form of darkvision. They also carried mind-clouding venom in their mandibles, their slime made them adept at escaping traps and restraints, and had minor regeneration (which could be negated by fire, acid, and electricity). Their long association with undead meant they were immune to cold, disease, energy drain, and paralysis; they were also resistant to fire because of their slime, which was a natural fire retardant.

Their more magical abilities included a defensive aura to deter attackers from touching them, and a number of spell-like abilities: they could replicate the effects of chill touch, cause fear, detect magic, disrupt undead, gentle repose, ghoul touch, halt undead, mage hand, read magic, and spectral hand at will; and animate dead, create undead, enervation, and vampiric touch each thrice per day.

Also at will, an avolakia could polymorph itself into a humanoid form, and in a humanoid form it had a naturally hypnotic voice. Thus, when speaking soothingly to a creature that could understand it, the avolakia could create an effect similar to a quickened suggestion. Eye contact with the avolakia during the suggestion enhanced its influence. Most avolakias could use their suggestion power six times each day; more charismatic individuals could potentially use it more often.

Combat
Avolakias preferred to use their spell-like abilities and spells from a distance, sending undead minions into melee to keep enemies away and themselves safe. If an avolakia was forced into melee, they resorted to their venomous bite and flailing their eight clawed arms. Sometimes, they risked using their venom on one or two foes, then assuming an humanoid form to suggestion them once their minds were clouded.

Society
The avolakia lived in small tribal units of up to twenty-four individuals, making their nests deep in the Lowerdark. They used undead as both protection and food: while avolakias could eat living or dead flesh, they vastly preferred undead flesh. Their clerics made use of create greater undead to raise vampires, mummies, specters, and ghosts, which they sometimes armed with magic or wondrous items, weaponry, and armor to make them better defenders of the tribe's territory.

Avolakias had a natural talent for sorcery, though clerics were not uncommon among them, and their tribal leaders were always clerics. Avolakia spellcasters of any kind focused on necromantic magic.

The most insidious practice of the avolakias was their habit of using their polymorph ability to infilitrate humanoid settlements, for the purposes of both recruiting more members to the cult of Kyuss, and assuming control over the funerary rites of the settlement, thus providing them with a steady supply of fresh corpses with which to create undead. They were known to infilitrate communities of both surface peoples and Underdark peoples such as the drow.

With certain other Underdark species, such as mind flayers, avolakias would enter into a more honest alliance. For instance, with mind flayers, the two groups would work together to capture intelligent beings; the mind flayers then ate the brains of the victims before handing the rest of the corpse over to the avolakias to be raised as an undead. Such alliances eventually fell apart either when the mind flayers kept the captives as slaves for long periods before killing them, or when the avolakias killed a few mind flayers to make undead out of them.

Language
The avolakias had their own language, which sounded gutteral and slobbering. They also typically knew Undercommon and other languages, but in their natural form lacked the vocal structures to speak more normal languages. When polymorphed into a humanoid, an avolakia was fully capable of speaking other languages.

Religion
Avolakias were known to devote themselves to deities of death and decay, such as Ghaunadaur and Velsharoon. Many avolakias took up the worship of Kyuss; they frequently were so dedicated to that deity that they used their infiltrated positions in humanoid communities to recruit and indoctrinate humanoids into cults of Kyuss. Avolakia clerics typically were of either the Death or Evil domains.

Notable avolakias

 * Briarbones
 * Xrq'nkvzk

Appearances

 * Novels
 * Circle of Skulls