Escorite

Large fey, chaotic evil

Armor Class 16 (fuzz and glitter)
Hit Points 165 (22d10 + 44)
Speed 30 ft., fly 60 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
12 (+1)	19 (+4)	14 (+2)	9 (-1)	20 (+5)	15 (+2)

Saves Int +3, Wis +9, Cha +6
Skills Arcana +3, Nature +9, Perception +9
Damage Resistances acid, cold, fire; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks that aren’t silvered
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 19
Languages Sylvan, telepathy 100 ft.
Challenge 9 (5,000 XP)

SPECIAL TRAITS

• Aura of Inevitability. Any creature within 30 feet of the escorite must succeed at a DC 14 Constitution saving throw each round or become frightened for that round as it wrestles with the inevitability of its own eventual nonexistence. This affect also suppresses all magic items of less than legendary rarity.
• Innate Spellcasting: The escorite’s innate spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 17). The escorite can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
  • At will: faerie fire, druidcraft, dimension door, luna ray (as scorching ray but it does radiant damage, lycanthropes have disadvantage on this saving throw)
  • 3/day each: dispel magic, entangle, plant growth, spike growth
  • 1/day each: moonbeam, grasping vine, wall of moonlight (treat as a wall of thorns but it does radiant damage, lycanthropes have disadvantage on this saving throw)
• Magic Resistance. The escorite has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

ACTIONS

• Multiattack. The escorite makes four tentacle attacks.
• Lepidopteran Tentacles. Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6 + 5) bludgeoning damage and 1d4 Constitution damage. If a target is reduced to 0 Constitution, they turn into a hollow husk as their life energy is fully drained from them and die.
• Hollow Eyes (Recharge 4–6). The escorite can focus its eyeless stare on a target creature within 60 feet, dealing 35 (10d6) radiant damage, or half as much on a successful DC 14 Constitution saving throw. Lycanthropes have disadvantage on this saving throw. Any creature slain in this manner immediately falls to dust.

ABOUT

No one knows exactly what causes a remacera (see page 245) to pupate—whether it’s witnessing some mind-shattering evil, undergoing a specific number of resurrections, or random hormonal and instinctual triggers. Regardless, on rare occasions, a remacera may begin producing dark silk, sealing itself inside a black cocoon. A week later, it emerges in the form of a winged and skull-headed escorite. The average escorite has a wingspan of 15 feet and weighs 800 pounds.

Living Death. Where remaceras embody rebirth, escorites represent the inevitability of entropy. Even the boundless multiverse is slowly winding down, losing steam as the millennia roll by, and escorites seek to help this along, teaching the careless immortals of the Plane of Faerie to fear cessation. Even standing in an escorite’s presence claws at the mind, and to be the subject of one’s full focus is to risk disintegration. Escorites themselves are not immune to this constant decay; in fact, they embrace their decomposition, using the clouds of magical scales that slough off their wings to reveal invisible opponents.

Left to themselves, escorites live just a few years, making no effort to reproduce. Yet in that time, they can destroy tremendous numbers of creatures and their works. Remaceras view escorites as abominations, and do everything they can to facilitate their destruction, yet have a strong racial taboo against attacking them directly, instead preferring to recruit members of other races to the cause. Escorites, for their part, have no compunctions about destroying their former brethren.