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Psychopomp, Morbai
Habitat: Underlands, places of healing and medicine across the planes
Alignment: Neutral
Challenge Rating: 6
Imagine a figure no taller than one of Sigil’s lightboys, hunched and shrouded like an old crone from a tiefling’s bedtime story. But here’s the dark of it: this ain’t no ordinary hag. The morbai, barely three feet tall, embody the essence of life’s precarious balance. Their forms shifts to match the race of whoever’s unlucky, or lucky, enough to lay eyes on them. Each morbai sports not one, but two plague masks, front and back, like some macabre Janus. It’s a right creepy sight, it is. You can never quite tell where they’re looking, or thinking, for that matter. Perhaps they’re looking both directions at once, cutter—it’s not even clear whether they have two faces or just the one. These masks, they’re a symbol of a dual nature—healer and harbinger, life-giver and life-taker. Underneath a tattered shawl, hidden from careless eyes, lie two pairs of small, unassuming wings, feathered in the dullest of greys. Don’t let their size fool ya, though. These wings bear the weight of life and death.
Now, these morbai, they’re the masters of a deadly dance, where one step heals, and the next one harms. They’re the guardians against epidemics, preventing the cogs of the death bureaucracy from jamming under a glut of souls. Yet, in the same breath, they’re the crafters of new diseases, a grim reminder to the living that life is a fleeting thing, always to be treasured, never to be taken for granted.
Most morbai, mind you, aren’t ones for direct confrontation. They’d rather pull strings from the shadows, inspiring and manipulating mortal medics like puppeteers. You might find them disguised as crotchety advisors or as demanding patients, always testing, always judging the mettle of their earthly proxies. But despite their double-edged duty, most morbais do have a streak of good nature, even if it is laced with a biting sarcasm. Charm one with witty retorts, or impress them with your knowledge of disease, and you’ll probably make yourself a rather unusual friend.
Sources and Stats:
- Concordance of Rivals [PF1e] p59 here
- Origin: Morbai is the Latin name for the Greek mythological nosoi, harbingers of pestilence and disease from Pandora’s Pithos. This creature is closer to the original myth than the nosoi psychopomps.
