Mephit, Vacuum

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

If you suspect you have received an flower mephit from an enemy,
please consult this guide to the Lower Planar Mephit Code.

Vacuum Mephit

Nothing Mephit

For a long time no-one thought that vacuum mephits existed. After all, the Plane of Vacuum was not thought to sustain any sort of life at all. However, very rarely something large (such as the Doomguard Citadel Exhalus) enters the Plane of Nothing. Because something has come into the plane full of emptiness, the same amount of nothing is pushed out, (don’t ask me to explain this, just chalk up another one to the Mysteries of the Multiverse.) This null-stuff forms itself into vacuum mephits.

Much larger, stronger and more powerful than other sorts of mephits, vacuum mephits appear as large imps or abishai, with completely black, but somehow also transparent (you’d know what I mean if you saw one) fiendish bodies. In fact, they are only called mephits because they are created from their home plane in the same way that other mephits are. Because they are made in this strange manner, vacuum mephits only exist off the Plane of Vacuum…should they try and return to the plane they instantly merge with it an disappear forever. Perhaps it’s this enforced exile from their home that makes them such nasty pieces of work.

COMBAT: Vacuum mephits do not have as much stupid pride as other mephits do and they work in small groups. They often attack at night because due to their insubstantial, shadowy form they are much harder to hit at night, (Armour Class of 0). They hide in the shadows, (85% chance) around their victim(s) and leap on them when they least expect it, automatically gaining surprise. Vacuum mephits attack using their sharp claws and their spiked tails, which cause extra damage due to the fact that they are made of nothingness, and they cause painful pulling on the flesh which tries to draw itself into the Nothing. When a vacuum mephit has landed on a victim, it can automatically strike with all its three attacks each round, unless the victim can break free by rolling a strength check to beat the mephit’s strength of 17.

A vacuum mephit’s very nature causes parts of its enemy’s flesh to be sucked into it. Therefore, it can cast the equivalent of a weakness or a feeblemind spell every 4 rounds. Also, by having no heat the mephit emits an aura of extreme cold, which it can focus into any version of an Otiluke’s freezing sphere spell once per day.

A vacuum mephit has no definite shape, (although they seem to prefer the one above) and they can therefore reshape their bodies to fit trough the smallest holes or gaps. They also have complete resistance to many types of magic, because magic can’t hit something which isn’t really anything. Area effect spells aimed at a vacuum mephit’s general location can have the normal consequences, however. By another strange trick of the Multiverse vacuum mephits are affected by normal weapons or natural weapons like claws, although magical weapons have no extra effect.

HABITAT/SOCIETY: Vacuum mephits are sometimes hired as assassins by high-up fiends. It helps that they are thoroughly evil and can live in any habitat, no matter how inhospitable. However, they are hated by other mephits, who do not consider them their own brethren, and probably because they are secretly afraid of them—although you’d never get a mephit to admit this. Other mephits attack vacuum mephits on sight. Obviously, vacuum mephits cannot gate in other mephits to help them.

ECOLOGY: Vacuum mephits will not do anything to help any local ecology they come into. They need to consume five cubic feet of any sort of matter every day by drawing it into their bodies by touch. They usually ‘eat’ their enemies but they will try anything at a pinch. If they are deprived of food for one month (not an easy feat by any means!) then they will disappear with an audible ‘pop’, the magic holding their non-existent body together breaking up and the surrounding air filling the nothing where they had been.

Source: David Whitley and Jon Winter-Holt