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The Ashen ManCreature 23


Rare​Large​Aberration​Mythic​Time​
Source Pathfinder #221: Into the Apocalypse Archive
Perception +40 (entropy sense (precise) 120 feet)
Languages Aklo, Chthonian, Protean, Telepathy 300 Feet, Truespeech
Skills Lore +40, Acrobatics +39, Arcana +38, Athletics +42, Deception +40, Intimidation +40, Nature +38, Occultism +40, Religion +40
Str +11, Dex +8, Con +9, Int +7, Wis +7, Cha +9

AC 49; Fort +40; Reflex +37; Will +40; mythic resilience
HP 575 (void healing)
Speed 60 feet (fly 60 feet)
Immunities auditory, cold, disease, emotion, inhaled, paralyzed, poison, aging
Resistances Mythic 23

Wretched Claw One Action +44 (+40, +36) to hit (agile, magical, reach 10, unarmed) 4d6+21 Slashing
Doomsday Scepter One Action +44 (+39, +34) to hit (backswing, magical, reach 10, shove) 4d10+21 Bludgeoning

Doomsday Scepter

When the Ashen Man turns his attention to a world, a projection of that planet manifests among the branches of the doomsday scepter he carries. He can wield this device in combat as a greatclub. If he releases his grip on the doomsday scepter or it's disarmed, it vanishes, after which the Ashen Man can cause it to appear in his hand again as a free action with the concentrate trait during his turn.

Entropy Sense (occult, prediction)

The ancient one can predict the presence of a creature through supernatural insight into chaotic probabilities and chance and builds a perception of reality from this information, allowing them to "see" as a precise sense in the listed range. Invisible creatures are visible to them, but veil of privacy prevents a creature from being detected via entropy sense automatically (without a counteract check).

Remove a Condition One Action (concentrate)

Cost 1 Mythic Point


Effect The Ashen Man ends one condition affecting him.

Constant Spells

A constant spell affects the monster without the monster needing to cast it, and its duration is unlimited. If a constant spell gets counteracted, the monster can reactivate it by spending the normal spellcasting actions the spell requires.

Cohesion Vulnerability

The Ashen Man is repulsed by an orderly reality. Whenever the Ashen Man sees a creature that was injured restored to its full Hit Points, he becomes obsessed with correcting the defiance of entropy. He takes 8d6 mental damage and can't use actions with the concentrate trait until he's dealt damage to that creature that reduces their Hit Point total from its maximum value.

Feast on Destruction (aura, death)

120 feet. Wait long enough and reality always proves that all things begin so they can end. The Ashen Man is empowered whenever this belief is vindicated. When a creature in the aura gains the Dying condition or increases its dying value, the Ashen Man becomes Quickened for 1 round. He can use the extra action only to Stride or Strike.

Multiple Reactions

The Ashen Man's untethered relationship with time gives him an additional reaction each round, though he still can't use more than one reaction on the same triggering action.

Mutually Assured Reaction

Trigger A creature within 10 feet deals damage to the Ashen Man


Effect Reality hurtles toward destruction. The Ashen Man makes a wretched claw Strike against the triggering creature.

Mythic Resilience (Fortitude and Will)

The creature treats its saving throws with the associated save as one degree of success better than it rolled. This is not cumulative with other effects that change their degree of success, like the incapacitation trait (except for rolling a natural 1 or 20). Each time the monster gains mythic resilience, choose one save. The ability should apply to the creature's highest saves first.

No Breath

An ancient one doesn't breathe and is immune to effects that require breathing (such as inhaled poisons).

Otherworldly Mind (mental, occult)

Whenever a creature targets the ancient one with a mental effect, that creature takes 8d8 mental damage (DC 43 will save). On a critical failure, the creature also becomes Confused for 1d4 rounds.

The Connection Cuts Both Ways

Creatures the ancient one affected with a mental effect or communicated with telepathically within the last round can hijack the ancient one's telepathic connection; they automatically ignore the ancient one's immunity to auditory, emotion, and visual effects until the end of their current turn. They can additionally spend 1 Mythic Point as a free action to reach through the connection to manipulate the ancient one's mind, ignoring the ancient one's mythic resilience on Will saving throws.

Undying Myth Free Action

Cost all of the Ancient One's Mythic Points

Trigger The Ashen Man would die and has at least 1 Mythic Point


Effect The Ashen Man remains standing and conscious, and recovers 50% of his maximum Hit Points.

Unified Timeline Reaction (occult, teleportation)

Trigger A creature ends its movement within 10 feet of the ancient one


Effect Ancient ones exist spread out across infinite times and places simultaneously and can shift themselves through their catalog of potentialities. The ancient one teleports themself and the triggering creature into empty squares within 10 feet of their respective positions, though the triggering creature can't be moved into hazardous terrain or to a place it can't stand. An unwilling creature can resist the teleportation with a successful DC 46 will save.

Void Healing

A creature with void healing draws health from void energy rather than vitality energy. It is damaged by vitality damage and is not healed by vitality healing effects. It does not take void damage, and it is healed by void effects that heal undead.

Curse of Destiny (curse, death)

When the Ashen Man hits a creature with a doomsday scepter Strike, he inflicts the cursed destiny held in trust for all creatures who live: a promise of future death. The target must succeed at a DC 46 fortitude save or become Drained 2. On a critical failure, the target additionally becomes Doomed 1 or increases its current doomed value by 1.

Dismantle All Life (occult, time, vitality, void)

Time and entropy end all things, even the undead. When the ancient one's Strikes hit a creature with void healing, they deal vitality damage instead of void damage. The ancient one can't use their Strikes to restore Hit Points to living or undead creatures.

Recharge One Action (concentrate)

Cost 1 Mythic Point


Effect The Ashen Man regains an expended spell.

Reroll Free Action (fortune)

Cost 1 Mythic Point

Trigger The Ashen Man fails a check


Effect The Ashen Man rerolls the check.

Slither Between Realities Free Action (concentrate, occult, teleportation)

Frequency once per round

Trigger The Ashen Man begins or ends his turn


Effect The Great Beyond loses track of the Ashen Man, and he slips between reality's cracks, instantly transporting himself and any items he's wearing and holding from his current space to an unoccupied space within 100 feet that he can see.

Unravel Reality Two Actions (concentrate, occult)

The Ashen Man holds aloft his doomsday scepter then swings it violently downward as he rips the quintessence of the planes apart in a 60-foot line, creating difficult terrain and dealing 24d6 spirit damage to each creature in the area (DC 46 fortitude save). The Ashen Man can't Unravel Reality again for 1d4 rounds.

Visions of the Forever One Action (concentrate, emotion, fear, mental, occult)

Cost 1 Mythic Point

Frequency once per round


Effect The Ashen Man shrinks the distance separating all creatures in a 120-foot emanation, brushing up against their minds and granting them vivid, waking dreams. All who share the hallucination experience entire millennia in an instant, rushed into a bleak future where they alone are stranded as the last living person in a destroyed world of ash and ruin. There, as the sole survivor of an empty reality where even the gods have fallen, they hear the Ashen Man's voice ring through their minds a final time, demanding an explanation that justifies their fate. Each affected creature attempts a DC 46 will save.


Critical Success The creature is unaffected and can break the telepathic contact, dismissing the vision.

Success The creature becomes Frightened 1 and Slowed 1 for 1 round by the unnerving vision.

Failure The creature is filled with dread and compelled to answer the Ashen Man's question, becoming Frightened 2 and slowed 1 for 1 minute. It can't reduce its frightened value below 1 for as long as it remains slowed.

Critical Failure As failure, but Frightened 4 and Slowed 2. In addition, the creature is Fleeing for 1 round.


Occult Innate Spells (DC 46, +38 to hit)

1st Level: Harm
4th Level: Confusion
5th Level: Truespeech (Constant)
6th Level: Disintegrate
7th Level: Interplanar Teleport (At Will)
9th Level: Detonate Magic
10th Level: Fabricated Truth


In the Dimension of Time, creatures clad in tattered robes float between encapsulated bubbles of still, captured moments, untethered to any other place, unspeaking and unseeing. The few mortals to meet these enigmatic, faceless creatures have never known them to identify by any name other than the ancient ones, seemingly holding no identity (or no identity they wish to share) beyond their relationship with time.

The ancients profess to have always existed in the Dimension of Time, and for time to have always existed in the Great Beyond. Most reside in Stethelos, the storied city at the center of time, though they're also found wandering the Void, crossing the strangest corners of the Maelstrom where it lies between other planes, and occasionally, venturing into dark corners of the Universe. They serve at the will of Tawil at'Umr, the All in One and the One in All, an avatar of Yog-Sothoth lurking deep within time as Stethelos's caretaker. Though the ancient ones resemble their master in stature and attire, and though none would describe Tawil at'Umr as anything other than ancient in origin, most scholars consider "ancient one" a classification of its own separate from that of Great Old One, and Tawil at'Umr is definitively counted among the Great Old Ones by all who know it.

Where Yog-Sothoth is an embodiment of all space and time, an entity who concerns himself with guarding cosmic secrets, the ancient ones are philosophers and mystics seeking ever more enlightenment. They search, have searched, and will search across time indefinitely and, having found entropy and disorder, conclude this to be the Great Beyond's ultimate purpose. When a new creature dawns, it's pristine and whole—perfectly ordered—for but a single moment before it can be eroded by Pharasma's poison, accumulating decay, change, and chaos, until finally it reaches its ending, when time leaves a twilight creature broken and gone. Law and chaos, the ancient ones believe, aren't opposing or even separate forces, but a single expression of reality viewed from two angles, different from each other only in time.

How Old is Time?

Lying in parallel with the Great Beyond with a presence felt on nearly every plane, from the Inner Sphere to the Outer Rifts, the Dimension of Time holds too many secrets for a reality so seemingly omnipresent. Can a world truly be said to begin before time is there to start? Scholars say Pharasma is the oldest being in the Great Beyond, a survivor of some previous multiverse's collapse, but does the Lady of Graves predate time, or did she bring the Dimension of Time with her so history could begin everything anew?

Into the Dimension of Time

The Dimension of Time is one of the most difficult and complex realms in the Great Beyond to travel to, with restrictions on its access limiting all but the most powerful of planar travelers from visiting it. At the GM's discretion, though, items looted from an ancient one, or even just fragments torn from their robes, could function as the planar key needed to allow a PC to use interplanar teleport to access the Dimension of Time.


Traits

Rare

This rarity indicates that a rules element is very difficult to find in the game world. A rare feat, spell, item or the like is available to players only if the GM decides to include it in the game, typically through discovery during play. Creatures with this trait are rare. They typically can't be summoned. The DC of Recall Knowledge checks related to these creatures is increased by 5.

Aberration

Aberrations are creatures from beyond the planes or corruptions of the natural order.

Mythic

Options with this trait grant or utilize mythic power. Feats with the mythic trait can only be taken by mythic characters, who are typically characters with a mythic Calling.

Monsters with the mythic trait have access to a pool of Mythic Points and are particularly strong for creatures of their level. Many mythic monsters are either resistant or entirely immune to attacks from non-mythic creatures and weapons.

Spells with the mythic trait require the expenditure of a Mythic Point in order to be cast, and items with the mythic trait require the expenditure of a Mythic Point in order to use their activated abilities.

Weapons with the mythic trait overcome the resistances and immunities of mythic monsters.

Time

Time creatures are natives of the Dimension of Time. They don't age, and while some might be driven by supernatural hungers, they don't need to eat or drink to survive. They can survive the basic environmental effects of the Dimension of Time.