Apocrisiarius

Apocrisiarius

(Creature)

Type

Outsider
(evil, extraplanar, kyton, lawful)

CR

7

Environment

Any (Shadow Plane)

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Source: Turn of the Torrent, pg(s). 84-85

Ⅰ

Apocrisiariuses are truth-obsessed velstracs that use pain and torture to cut away at their victims, both physically and metaphorically, in order to reduce them to a single truth.

Appearance

An apocrisiarius typically resembles a human with blank white eyes weeping tears of blood. Surgical lancets pierce an apocrisiarius' body in numerous locations, but only leave deep, bloodless, harmless wounds.

Abilities

An apocrisiarius is incapable of lying; it can withhold the truth by refusing to answer a question, but cannot speak or telepathically communicate a falsehood. So obsessed with truths are apocrisiariuses that they exude a supernatural aura that causes others nearby to be unable to lie as well. The gaze of an apocrisiarius causes an opponent to become overwhelmed with a painfully acute awareness of all the times that lies have hurt or complicated their life.

Ecology

Apocrisiariuses delight in speaking the truth, especially if the revelation causes those who hear it to suffer. Laying bare the most cutting secrets is like the completion of a masterpiece from the apocrisiarius' view. To the apocrisiarius, the wounds caused by such truths are the finest vintage of suffering. If denied the opportunity to extract a secret for too long, apocrisiariuses grow emotionally starved and might well agree to things they normally would never do (such as releasing a prisoner or revealing information they have been entrusted with) in return for someone admitting before them a truth that shames and hurts those who hear it.

Society

Seeing themselves as seekers of truth, apocrisiariuses have a haughty sense of superiority towards other velstracs. More powerful velstracs sometimes react to this with extreme punishments, but apocrisiariuses take them with equanimity, seeing them as jealousy and further justification of their pursuit of truth.

In the Universe, apocrisiariuses are most often hired as messengers and diplomats. Those aware of apocrisiariuses know that they are incapable of uttering falsehoods, and so messages delivered by them are beyond corruption or confusion. Others use them as lie detectors, by either capitalising on their truth auras when interrogating, or asking an apocrisiarius to repeat a phrase, which it cannot if the phrase contains a lie. Apocrisiariuses do not understand why such phrases are lies, and they have even been known to willfully ignore requests to repeat things they know to be true if doing so can further their own plans: withholding a truth can be far more potent than lying.

Apocrisiariuses have no interest in their prisoners' well-being after truths have been extracted, and have been known to delay acquiring the desired information in order to maximise the time to torment the victim: the truth only becomes pure when the victim has nothing to cling to. Their subjects rarely survive their first revelations, making apocrisiariuses a bad candidate to extract multiple secrets from a single victim.

On Golarion

Apocrisiariuses are often used as intermediaries between Nidalese politicians or between Nidal and Cheliax, when Nidalese diplomats wish to assure that their country poses no threat to Cheliax. The Chelaxian government believes everything that the apocrisiarius says, knowing that it can never lie even if tricked by the Nidalese.