Blast shadow
Blast shadows are undead creatures born of intense, fiery conflagrations. They rise from the ashes filled with a burning hatred for all living things and seek to spread the pain they experienced during their demise.1
Appearance
Blast shadows resemble hellishly burnt versions of whatever creature they once were, normally blackened skeletal humanoid creatures with many chunks of scorched flesh still clinging to them. They are covered with tiny cracks that exude a fiery glow and smoke as if a furnace burned within, while what remains of their clothing or armour is fused to their bodies. Their eyes glow with unholy fire and seep smoke into the air. Due to their emaciated frames, blast shadows normally weigh around 60 pounds.1
Habitat and ecology
Blast shadows are created when a creature is killed in a magical, fiery conflagration, most often from spells of wizards and sorcerers. The magical fire must be one of great power to create a monster like the blast shadow; no mere burning hands or fireball spell will suffice. A natural event can sometimes create blast shadows as long as it is preceded by a great act of magic, such as a spell that pulls a flaming meteor from the sky.
Blast shadows typically linger near where they were created. They are most commonly found around wastelands scorched by some fiery apocalypse.
When they remain in such an area, they sometimes try to recreate it as it was before the fiery disaster that birthed them. As they use only the materials available, these recreations are invariably creepy, with buildings rebuilt in blackened timbers and scorched stone and corpses arranged in the way they looked at the moment of their death.
Blast shadows are sometimes found in the service of evil magic-users, from pyromaniac arcanists to priests devoted to dark fire deities.2
On Golarion
The impact of Earthfall created blast shadows in ancient Azlant.3
Related creatures
Similar shadows are also created by other potent elemental magic, namely acid shadows, lightning shadows, and freezing shadows.24
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 . “Bestiary” in The Armageddon Echo, 82. Paizo Inc., 2008
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 . “Bestiary” in The Armageddon Echo, 83. Paizo Inc., 2008
- ↑ . “Into the Shattered Continent” in Into the Shattered Continent, 19. Paizo Inc., 2017
- ↑ . The Sky Key Solution, 31. Paizo Inc., 2015
External links
- Human Shadow Etched in Stone (real-world phenomenon) on Wikipedia