Ostovite

Ostovite
(Creature)
Common CE Small Fiend Level 1 Alignment LG NG CG LN N CN LE NE CE Images of ostovites Source: Bestiary 3, pg(s). 193 Type Magical beast✝ (extraplanar) CR 1 Environment Any (Outer Rifts) Alignment LG NG CG LN N CN LE NE CE Images of ostovites Source: Bestiary 5, pg(s). 187

Ostovites are tiny scavengers from the Outer Rifts who build and wear exoskeletal bone shells known as bone chariots.

Appearance

Without its bone chariot, an ostovite resembles a silverfish made of fish bones with an array of glowing red eyes. Adult ostovites are two feet long and weigh three pounds.

Ecology

Ostovites are neither demonic nor qlippoth in nature despite their origins in the Outer Rifts.

Possessing a slight intelligence and self-awareness, ostovites skitter across battlefields in search of flesh and digest it with acidic saliva, then repurpose the bones into exoskeletal shells that they call bone chariots. An ostovite's social standing among its own kind correlates to the size of its bone chariot, and larger bone chariots also assuage their innate sense of inferiority to larger creatures.

Ostovites' shallow understanding of anatomy results in bone chariots that resemble twisted artistic reconstructions of a being more than reality, and bone chariots have a community of collectors among fiends and their followers. Collectors either bribe ostovites with bones or carefully kill them to claim their chariots.

Society

Ostovites often squabble over skeletons, but in rare instances can band together to form and pilot a gigantic bone chariot from a sufficiently massive corpse.

Ostovites survive the Outer Rifts by hiding from its fiends in the plane's nooks and corners. The tendency of planar rifts to open into other planes affords a few of these ostovites the otherwise inaccessible opportunity of planar travel, and those who leave are often happy to be free from their demonic abusers.

Groups of ostovites who find a suitable location near corpses can form sustained colonies.

On Golarion

Ostovites in the Universe stalk crypts and battlefields, where they have few predators or threats beyond undead creatures, Pharasmin clerics, and the families of the dead.

References

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.