Bestiary > Energons > Xor-Yost
Energon, Xor-Yost
DESCRIPTION: The xor-yost is an energon of pure cold energy*. A snow-white sphere surrounded by a halo of hoarfrost, when they manifest in warmer climes they trail whip-like tendrils that hiss with sublimating ice. The incorporeal xor-yost floats effortlessly, and writhes these tentacles propel itself through the air. Coming too close to a xor-yost draws heat from flesh and bone, frosts your eyelashes, freezes your breath vapour, and turns your sweat to brittle rime in seconds. Their mere presence sharpens sound into thin, crystalline clarity, shifts colours towards blue, and causes cloth or hair to stiffens into frost-feathered filaments.
*There’s an ongoing debate whether or not “cold” can even be energy. Some graybeards posit that cold is merely an absence of heat, and as such, xor-yost should rather be called an anti-energon. Of course this calls into question every existing theory of energons and implies that other anti-energons could theoretically exist too. How can there be an energon opposite to say, the electrical xap-yaup, is anyone’s guess. Other sages, particularly those of the Para-Elemental inclination, claim that cold is in fact a new kind of energy, possibly brought about by Cryonax. After all, the Plane of Ice always seemed somehow different from its para-elemental cousins.
HABITAT: Xor-yost dwell in places of profound cold: glacial caverns, wind-scoured tundra, frigid demiplanes, the arctic reaches of Prime worlds, and frigid planes like Cania, Krangath or Agathys. When encountered or summoned outside such environments—on hot or even temperate planes—xor-yost are usually agitated and seeking immediate escape to colder climes. Planewalkers who can provide passage back to chilling realms may earn a reward or a temporary escort before the xor-yost slips away.
Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly
—Xor-yost maxim
PHILOSOPHY / SOCIETY: Among the energons, xor-yost are unusually social, gathering in clusters around frozen spectacles—frost storms, whiteout squalls—then melting back to solitude when the event fades. They “speak” in pulses of temperature and patterns of jack frost across their surface, pale blue and silver that rise and fall like breath. Their ethic is conservation through glaciation: freezing preserves, clarifies and crystallises ideas, and allows transient shapes to persist. Xor-yost want to slow the multiverse down, to keep things as they are, and to halt change, so that they have the time to study things and think carefully and clearly. They do not hate heat, but they lament its destructive nature, burning and thawing and making everything too fast. While xor-yost are too laid back to do anything as gauche as hating, they themselves are nonetheless despised by the fractions of the Doomguard who seek to speed up entropy, while being admired by those Sinkers who want to slow it down.
ECOLOGY: Xor-yost are unusually far-travelled compared with many energons; they are certainly not restricted to the Para-Elemental Plane of Ice. Graybeards reckon they see the Great Ice as a solved question—it is safely frozen and can be studied at leisure. The rest of the multiverse however, is still moving much too quickly. Xor-yost are not malevolent or aggressive in their desire to chill the remaining planes, for sparking violence would achieve the opposite of their goals. Nevertheless, their actions to spread cold and ice often riles locals, and the energons are able to defend themselves. Xor-yost do not appear to eat or drink. Perhaps their metabolism has slowed so greatly that the simply do not need to. As for their reproductive cycle, little is known—some sages even suggest there is a finite number of these energons and they are unable to create more of themselves.
COMBAT: While appearing solid, xor-yost are in fact incorporeal; they themselves are the cold, and the solid that appears to be their body is in fact just frozen condensation around them like a brittle shell. Cracking it does not harm them at all, and weapons must be enchanted with a ghost touch rune or equivalent to affect them. They are able to phase through solid objects, leaving behind their ice shell on the surface. Their passage can be traced by the chilling effect they have on the substance they are passing through.
In combat, xor-yost can lash out with chilling tendrils or fire a ray of pure cold energy that freezes flesh, snuffs out flames and solidifies liquids. They prefer to attack lightly-dressed and unarmoured targets first, before those with heavy armour or thick protection from the cold. Unsurprisingly, they are immune to cold themselves, and vulnerable to heat-based attacks. Upon their death, the xor-yost collapses in a dangerous implosion of absolute zero cold energy in a 20-foot burst.
Sources
Full Statistics: [ D&D3e / PF1e ]
Canonical Source: Planar Handbook [3e] p122
Source: Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. The slow quote was originally accredited to Mae West.