Energon, Xap-Yaup

Bestiary > Energons > Xap-Yaup

Energon, Xap-Yaup

DESCRIPTION: The xap-yaup is a jellyfish-like creature of crackling electrical energy. Its translucent, insubstantial spherical body glows with sharp blue-white arcs of lightning that pulse and flicker within, casting shifting patterns of light. Thin, filament-like§ tentacles trail after it, sparking with sizzling currents that snap and fizz. The air around a xaap-yaup vibrates with static, occasionally buzzing sharply as electric arcs leap between conductive surfaces. It smells ozone-rich, like the air before a thunderstorm.

PREFERRED HABITAT: Xap-yaup can be found lingering wherever natural electrical phenomena crop up: storm fronts, the edges of the Elemental Plane of Air, and rifts between the Material Plane and the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Lightning. On the Prime, they are most commonly be seen accompanying violent thunderstorm cells, where they can gather in significant numbers. They avoid rubber, wood or insulated areas, moving sluggishly through such barriers, but slipping rapidly through conductive materials like metal or water.

PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: Xap-yaup sees themselves as beings of pure energetic disruption, living sparks embodying the chaotic flux of electrical power. Theirs is not a complex society, but they do gather in energetic squalls during great planar tempests, where individuals sync their electric pulses in inspirational, dazzling displays of power.

ECOLOGY: The xap-yaup feeds by tethering its lightning tentacles onto conductive targets, draining or discharging electrical energy from living creatures. They can move most quickly through metals, turning their incorporeal bodies into living currents. They reproduce by dancing in colossal lightning storms, teasing the clouds until they unleash thunderous fury. When a xap-yaup is struck by lightning it supercharges, exploding into multiple small, flickering orbs. Each orb then rapidly grows by absorbing ambient electrical energy until it becomes a new adult xap-yaup.

COMBAT: When threatened, xap-yaup will pursue any cutters clad in metal armour first, as if magnetically drawn to them. The speed at which they pass through objects varies as conductivity differs, making them formidable opponents in Mechanus, Avalas and battlefields where metal abounds.

Sources

Full Statistics: [ D&D3e / PF1e | PF2e ]

Canonical Source: Planar Handbook [3e] p121

Source: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt