Energon, Xer-Yib

Bestiary > Energons > Xer-Yib

Energon, Xer-Yib

DESCRIPTION: The xer-yib appears as a trembling, irregular globe of glowing, crackling energy that randomly shoots out waves of sickly light. Its shifting surface is mottled with flickers of unstable radiation, which case eerie shadows that suggest the slow unravelling of its form. The creature pulses with a faint clicking sound, reminiscent of a heartbeat—but too irregular to be comforting. It smells faintly metallic and sulfurous, like ionized air thick with ozone. Nearby matter seems to wither as the xer-yib’s strange energies seep into the environment, damaging living tissues and causing elemental instability.

PREFERRED HABITAT: Its thought that the xer-yib is native to the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance. Outside of their home plane, they prefer regions of raw energy like the Elemental Chaos, and the fringes of the Prime where unstable matter can be found—ancient planar battlegrounds, craters of crashed meteorites, deep and inexplicably deadly mines, and the fringes of dying stars in Wildspace. Their presence presages weird and untreatable sickness, and slow but inevitable disintegration of matter. Xer-yibs avoid highly ordered environments, being drawn instead to places where matter is unstable and energy is in flux. Occasionally, xer-yib are found wandering the toxic and ruined Negative Quasi-Elemental Inner Planes, surveying the effects of entropy’s work.

PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: Xer-yib embody the irresistible march of entropy, expressed as radioactive decay—the weird cosmic force that drives matter from order to disorder in gradual, inevitable stages. Their philosophy is that entropy is the true fate of all things, and their actions hasten the slow unmaking of existence. They view themselves as agents of inevitability, unbound by time, morals or mercy—simply seeking to cause the slow breakdown of material worlds and stars. Xer-yib do not have their own society but occasionally gather in deadly collectives called “roentgen hives,” drawn together for reasons unknown. Their energies reinforce one another, accelerating collective decay, and they become more excitable and unstable the more xer-yib join the group. Graybeards fear that there might be a certain critical number of xer-yib after which the hive spirals completely out of control—and that would surely be a cataclysmic event.

ECOLOGY: Xer-yib seem to both cause and consume the force of entropy itself, accelerating elemental instability in matter they contact. Minerals become worthless earth, earth becomes dust, and dust evaporates into deadly energy itself. While they feed, xer-yib release bursts of unstable radiation that cause biological and magical decay, disrupting healing and regeneration and even magical healing. Their “reproduction” is an apparently accidental process whereby areas of tumultuous decay, unintentionally growing new xer-yib over decades or centuries. They play a vital ecological role in balancing creation with destruction, a stark reminder that all life and matter eventually return to the cosmic matrix

COMBAT: Xer-yib move around the battlefield frenetically, attempting to catch opponents in their Sickening Aura to weaken them. They emit three kinds of radiation. Their Radiant Pulse is the most dangerous, but it is short range and blocked by a thin sheet of metal, and they can only perform this attack once per round. The Radiant Lash is their typical attack, for they can shoot these rays out rapidly as glowing tendrils with a 15 foot reach, potentially targeting different opponents in the same round. At range, they can use their third kind of attack to Irradiate an area for up to a minute. This radiation is the weakest in terms of raw damage, but has the greatest range and can be persistent, inflicting a mild form of radiation sickness on unlucky victims.

As with other kinds of energon, killing a xer-yib causes a dangerous explosion, causing all nearby creatures to be affected by its Radiant Pulse attack one final time. All that remains after such an explosion, apart from a smoking crater, is a glowing chunk of Abysium skymetal.

Sources

Full Statistics: [ Pathfinder 2e ]

Source: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. Nerdwatch: The physics geeks among you might be able spot which of the three attacks are each based on the properties of 𝛼-, β-, or ɣ-radiation.