Energon, Xoc-Yot

Bestiary > Energons > Xoc-Yot

Energon, Xoc-Yot

Have you ever wondered where all your time just went? You were doing something, got really absorbed into it, and suddenly it was an hour later? The good news, is it’s not just you, cutter. The bad news, you might be being fed upon by a xoc-yot.

DESCRIPTION: The xoc-yot embody the relentless flow of time. They appear as enigmatic spheres of roiling black force that looks almost like a tunnel into space itself, with tendrils of temporal energy lashing continuously around the void. Their filaments pulse with flowing sparks of indigo, violet, and silver, keeping a perfect rhythm which never changes tempo, no matter how the xoc-yot reacts. They emit a sound that some have likened to the ticking of a cosmic clock, although it’s felt more than heard. They smell of ancient rust, and leave trails of sparkling dust motes behind them. Around a xoc-yot, time seems simultaneously fluid and cracked—individual moments fold, glitch and even repeat. Their presence can make seconds feel like an eternity, or hours jump by abruptly. Cutters who survived a combat encounter with a xoc-yot report seeing fleeting scenes from their past, and possible futures flicker from the darkness inside the xoc-yot like ghostly echoes.

PREFERRED HABITAT: Xoc-yot dwell primarily in Temporal Prime, but when encountered elsewhere, it is usually along the shores of the Astral Plane, where the linear flow of time is also fractured. In rare cases, xoc-yot are drawn to events on the Prime or Outer Planes where temporal anomalies or paradoxes swirl, events that the bythos aeons—those cosmic monitors who govern temporal order—might also be attracted to. When temporal anomalies occur, it’s not uncommon for xoc-yot to suddenly converge, working together to repair, isolate, or perhaps just feed upon the fracture, before the attention of a bythos aeon is drawn. In fact, should a significant breach bring one of those temporal guardians, xoc-yot usually scatter before they even arrived in the first place. The extra ripples this kind of paradox causes in the time stream is yet another thing for the bythos to fix.

PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: Apparently neither benevolent nor malevolent, the xoc-yot at least adhere to the laws of cause and effect. The nature of the xoc-yot is paradoxical though: it guards the flow of time with implacable neutrality, while simultaneously possessing the uncanny ability to speed, slow, and even reverse localised time streams. It does not seek to rewrite fate, but rather to smooth time’s jagged edges, and resolve minor paradoxes. Xoc-yot society is a silent web of branches in the timestream, interconnected yet dispersed across the past and future. Each xoc-yot appears to claim a specific temporal strand as its territory. Whether they aim to force history to flow in a particular direction by controlling the events which occur at each of its branches, or whether they simply seek to ensure events progress without interference, the graybeards haven’t yet decided. But perhaps we are assuming too much. It could be that xoc-yot are simply what passes for ‘animals’ on Temporal Prime and their inexplicable ways are just them seeking out moments to feed upon.

Time flies when you are having fun

—Misinformation spread by hungry xoc-yots (probably)

ECOLOGY: Xoc-yot subsist by feeding on moments, consuming time’s potential energy and the unstable ripple zones created by temporal disturbances. It’s thought they reproduce by un-consuming all of the raw moments they have stolen, and using the energy to create a recursive loop in time which collapses into a new xoc-yot. It’s a slow, cyclical process that takes centuries or millennia—not that time is a concern for the xoc-yot.

COMBAT: Xoc-yot rarely interact with material beings directly, but when they do, they use their temporal distortion abilities to manipulate events subtly or halt threats before they even unfold. They are able to speed up or slow down time dfor themselves or their opponents, and slip through the time stream to rapidly escape threats. However, they are also able to steal time from opponents and use it to heal themselves or even give themselves additional moments to act. As will all energons, upon their death they explode, damaging all non-temporal beings within 30 feet.

Full Statistics: [ PF2e ]

Source: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. This energon is homebrew.