The people have spoken, and what a Voice they’ve spoken in!
If
you’ve ever needed a face to go with this blog, I think this one serves
the purpose rather well, or at least one close to it. I love the aesthetic this creature has, as well as its ominous name (which can be further shortened to simply “The Voice,” which is a powerful title
in itself), but it doesn’t 100% fit this blog’s tone; The Voice of the
Damned is just that, you see, the “librarian” or even the “face” of the Book of the Damned, a tome so hideously vile that Good-aligned folk can’t even look at the thing, and die instantly if they so much as brush their fingers along the cover. Don’t even get me started on what happens if you actually readit, either.
The great tome continuously cataloguesevery evil act both
great and small across the entire multiverse, constantly updating
itself to assure any being that can survive thumbing through the pages
has proper, accurate information regarding any and all evil entities,
artifacts, locations, acts, and ideas. Once per day, anyone in
possession of the Book of the Damned can enter a special demiplane
within the book, where they can access a true and proper library
protected from the ravages of the world and the passage of time… But
care should be taken in this accursed place, because the Voice dutifully
guards this hoard of knowledge from those who wouldn’t misuse it
Merely meeting the Voice’s gaze
is enough to slay weaker foes, anyone making eye contact with the
malevolent, swirling portal that serves as the page master’s face taking
8d10 untyped damage and 1d4 Strength damage. Success on a saving
throw only stops the Strength damage, but the corrosive effect of its
gaze cannot be resisted without averting one’s eyes. In a similar vein,
the Voice can utter a Blasphemy at will, potentially dazing,
weakening, paralyzing, or even killing foes too far below its own Hit
Dice to bother with and instantly banishing any Good-aligned Outsiders
back to their home planes if they fail their throw. It tends to begin
each battle with Blasphemy to hew out weaker enemies and
intruding angels instantly, but can use the spell at-will if
reinforcements are summoned later in the fight.
And speaking
of reinforcements… Once per day, the Voice can call in a favor that
many of the greater evils of the multiverse are compelled to respond to,
allowing it to summon a Pit Fiend Devil, a Balor Demon, or (not “and,”
thankfully) an Olethrodaemon to serve it, each of which are CR 20
threats and powerful, final-boss-esque adversaries in their own right.
AoE doesn’t work out as well within the demiplane of the Book due to all
the invincible shelves that can be hid behind, but each of those three
beasts have plenty of melee power and mobility tricks to distract the
enemy frontlines while the Voice itself uses either its at-will Dimension Door or Greater Teleport to get up close and personal with the squishy members of the team attempting to flee.
The
Voice possesses eight natural attacks it can make, each of which are
rather weak on their own: two claws (1d6+14), four slams (1d6+14), and finally two wings
(1d6+7). Seem underwhelming? It is, especially for CR 25, but the real
might of the Voice’s melee power is all the nasty things it can do once it has a victim grappled.
The Voice has no Grab on any of its natural attacks and no Improved
Grapple, but this exists to balance out the creature’s positively unfair +54 Grapple modifier (which it gets from its Tenacious ability) to assure that anyone not build to directly counter such a thing will fall into its grip.
Once it has someone clutched between its pages, the Voice can first make their life miserable with its Blasphemous Embrace. As a swift action once it has someone grappled, it can cause the pages comprising its body to loosen and flit around the target, flensing them for 8d6 slashing damage and potentially nauseating them if they fail a saving throw. Notably, the Voice does not have to keep grappling a target for Blasphemous Embrace to work, the pages swarming the target continuously so long as they remain within 5 feet of the Voice. The wording on this whole ability is somewhat ambiguous, but it seems that the victim remains grappled even while the Voice can move (somewhat) freely, which makes this ability more akin to painful paralysis than anything else. The Voice can only hold one victim in its embrace at a time, but if they remain trapped for an entire round, that exposes them to the next ability in line: Consume.
The Voice can Consume any creature trapped in its embrace, pulling them into the howling hell within its form, where the accumulated heresies are so thick and toxic that they become physically corrosive, tearing at targets for 8d6 untyped damage each round. Nonevil creatures exposed to this vile vacuum must make a Will save every round or be driven insane by this experience, and there’s no cutting your way out of this mess like you can with a normal beast’s belly; a successful Wisdom check vs a DC of 20 is needed, twice in a row, to escape. Failing to escape for long enough may see a victim exposed to the Voice’s Malevolence, an ability that traps the victim’s soul within the Voice’s inner hell but allows the Voice to possess their body, possessing them utterly for up to 25 hours. The Voice cannot leave the demiplane within the Book of the Damned unless it’s possessing a host via Malevolence, usually using this specific escape clause to protect its tome by using Greater Teleport to move it somewhere more… Interesting, than any prison it may be contained in. As written, there’s actually nothing stopping it from summoning one of its high-level devils and commanding them to submit for possession, then popping out of the book to confront whatever fool has taken hold of it.
You may be thinking: Yes, its grapple tricks are certainly nasty, but how does it deal with a whole team of adventurers at once? Allow me to count the ways: 1/day Weird, Greater Shadow Evocation
(which allows it to cast nearly any Evocation spell it desires)
and Mirage Arcana at will, and Symbol of Death as a swift action once a day. It can also use Symbol of Fear at will and both Symbol of Insanity and Symbol of Weakness three times per day. While Symbol of Death as a swift action will likely give the d6 hit-dice party members pause, the rest of those may not sound particularly dangerous, and usually aren’t while in the middle of battle… But the Voice is Master of Symbols, capable of using all of its Symbol spell-likes as standard actions and carving them in midair, bypassing every weakness the Symbol spells usually have: costly materials, lengthy casting times, and the need for setting fiddly triggers that basically require someone to trip and fall into them. The demiplane within the Book isn’t exactly a wide open battlefield, and the Voice can rig the air itself with its Symbols to shut off entire sections of its library for up to four hours. Symbol of Death is especially lethal in this regard, floating ominously as it awaits a victim to drop below its hitpoint threshold, but Symbol of Fear and Symbol of Insanity will also continue to ping everyone within their range until the victims finally fail their saving throw and leave themselves open for the Voice to deal with.
With the weak-willed and unlucky sent reeling from the Voice’s Blasphemy or its myriads of Symbols, the horror is free to close in on those who actually managed to succeed and begin peeling the flesh from their bones to use as new pages and covers for its library. And, by the way, yes: The Voice’s existence is intrinsically tied to the survival of the Book of the Damned, an artifact already so hard to destroy that ripping it into pieces just made four smaller, slightly less evil books; it will continue to resurrect itself every 24 hours until the actual tome is finally destroyed. Not that putting it down once is especially easy, since it can use Quickened Heal three times a day, instantly restoring 150 hitpoints and removing every negative condition from itself.
