Faceless stalker

Faceless stalker
Ugothol

(Creature)

Common

CE

Medium

Aberration

Level

4

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Images of faceless stalkers

Source: Bestiary, pg(s). 13

Type

Aberration
(shapechanger)

CR

4

Environment

Any swamps or underground

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Images of faceless stalkers

Source: Bestiary 2, pg(s). 122

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Ⅱ

This article covers the shapechanging aberration. For the fey humanoids also known as faceless people, see choxani.

Shapechanging aberrations, faceless stalkers are not creatures of the natural world, but were crafted by alghollthus as weapons in ancient days before Earthfall. Also known as ugothol in the Alghollthu language, their purpose was nothing less than the infiltration and destruction of ancient human civilizations.

Appearances

Faceless stalkers are dark crimson masses of pliant flesh and scaly skin. Their bodies, while humanoid in shape, completely lack facial features. The entire body is covered in the same crimson skin with no variations in colouration. The pliancy of its flesh is also completely inhuman, as no humanoid creature should be able to move the way faceless stalkers move. They do, however, possess vicious claws.

Habitat

Faceless stalkers tend to dwell in swamps. The earliest faceless stalkers tried to return to the water where their aquatic masters, the alghollthus, dwell; however, they are not aquatic so, instead, they settled in the coastal swamps as close to their masters as possible. Faceless stalkers are also often found in the villages of other humanoids. Faceless stalkers lurk within the sewers of the city of Vyre, where they menace the criminals who use it as a buried road network.

Alghollthus originally created them as weapons against burgeoning humanoid empires and used them to infiltrate societies and cause them to collapse from within. Much of this original mission still remains within faceless stalkers' primal instincts, and they often infiltrate small villages, gradually kill and replace all of the original residents, squander the community's resources to exhaustion, and move on. Faceless stalker tribes rarely number more than a dozen, as any larger tribes tend to collapse from in-fighting. Ironically, as creations of the atheist alghollthus, many faceless stalkers are themselves religious, often worshiping the parasite deity Ghlaunder.

Ecology

As creations of the alghollthus, the ecology of faceless stalkers is unique and wholly unnatural. Their bodies have no bone, as bones would hinder their elasticity and thus their role as infiltrators. As they have no mouths, they feed on the bodily fluids of their victims by sucking it through proboscis-like feeding tubes, with a preference for living victims. The sight of a faceless stalker feeding on a bound victim is enough to turn even the most heroic warrior's stomach.

Abilities

A faceless stalker can change its appearance to mimic any human-sized humanoid, and since the body of a faceless stalker is elastic, it can easily move through tight spaces.

References

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