Breathdrinker
| TRAITS: | Elemental | Incorporeal | Vacuum |
| PLANE / LAYER: | Quasi-Elemental Vacuum |
| ACTIVITY CYCLE: | Any |
| DIET: | Breath |
| INTELLIGENCE: | Moderate |
| ALIGNMENT: | Chaotic Evil |
| SIZE: | Medium |
| CHALLENGE RATING: | 5 |
DESCRIPTION: Breathdrinkers are ghostly aberrations that invisibly stalk their prey, appearing only at the moment they strike. They manifest as huge translucent almost skeletal heads with hollowed-out cheeks, lidless eyes and a mouth that opens far wider than it should. They ignore elementals, undead, and cutters who don’t need to breathe, targeting instead planewalkers and local humanoids. Breathdrinkers can smell the breath of potential prey across many miles, especially in Vacuum, and can track it instinctively. Scholars believe that the breathdrinker do not perceive solid bodies themselves but purely the quantity of breath they exhale, and that creatures outside their narrow perceptual pattern simply fail to exist for them. This means that invisibility, stealth and concealment do not fool them, but they are unable to detect or even comprehend the idea of constructs, for example.
HABITAT / ECOLOGY: Breathdrinkers lurk out in the darkness of Vacuum, waiting for careless locals or, even better, clueless planewalkers, to stumble by. While they might appear to be ghosts or some other kind of undead, graybeards reckon that breathdrinkers might in fact be a form of necromental, where a vacuum quasi-elemental has been further corrupted towards darkness. How they reproduce is unknown, and it is possible they have been created deliberately by a Death Cult—who were quite likely slain by their own creations.
COMBAT: Once a breathdrinker has fixated upon the scent of its quarry it will track it relentlessly. It seeks to get close to its target and consume the breath of its victim, effectively asphyxiating them. They have the sinister ability grab a creature by its breath, and then drag them closer to themselves. Once they are adjacent, their ability to suck the life out of their victim is far stronger. All the while, the victim is unable to breathe and as well as being immobilised they also risk asphyxiation as the breathdrinker’s attack crushes their lungs from the inside.
Stats: [ PF 2e ] Homebrew, inspired by Kerzanadh ‡
