Alzatho
The Alzatho is a nightmare creature spawned by dark magics, possibly as far back as the Cacogens before they left the Orbis.
Exhibiting a complex genetic parentage that merges dire hyenas, feral swine, and warhorses, these folkloric monsters have established themselves in wastes, sparse forests, and in abandoned spaces and ruins, but never very far from civilized areas. They prefer humans and humanoid races for their meals, and much like mind flayers, they require sentient food to survive. The similarity ends there, however; where the Illithids eat sentient brains for necessary psionic-physical nourishment, the Alzatho feeds directly on the soul energy of the beings they ingest, slowly dissolving the soul over the course of many months.
Alzatho are almost always solitary, though their proliferation throughout the temperate regions of the world suggests that they do mate and propagate in some way, at some point in their life cycle; caves filled with crushed bones have been attributed to the Alzatho, but their lairing habits likewise are unknown and presumed to be temporary; they may be entirely nomadic. Few accounts of encounters with more than one individual are known; the danger of getting anywhere near one has limited the amount of accurate information available.
The Alzatho's biology is disturbingly unnatural. The beast is a semi-sentient soul-eater that doesn't settle for merely devouring its prey; it can access their personalities, memories, and voice for months afterwards, as a particularly cruel and effective means of luring still more prey to their doom in its hungry maw. Eventually the soul is entirely absorbed, and barring a greater restoration or similar magic, permanently destroyed. This makes the Alzatho one of the only vectors for truly annihilating those undead and other beings that persist through their souls rather than a physical body, such as demiliches and theoretically, even celestials and greater demons and devils when they are physically present and not mere projections from other planes. Though lawful evil in terms of its cunning, the Alzatho is entirely content to devour other evil beings and would prefer an evil human to a good Dragonborn.
The process of actually digesting a soul is very little understood, understandably, as those who would have an interest in such power aren't sharing their results, and those of good heart who set off on to plumb such mysteries through close study generally end up eaten long before their conclusions can be published.
The Alzatho's usual, deadly effective hunting tactic is to hang back at the limits of shouts or cries, and use the voice of a person in distress, a child, or other similar voices when pursuing one or more victims. It will try these voices randomly if it has no stored souls known to the victims, but since it has access to the memories of its victims, it tries to find additional prey that its meals recognize, and uses their voices to lure these creatures to their death with cruel and calculating efficiency as well.
When it speaks with a known voice within 90' of an acquaintance of a digesting soul, the target must pass a DC15 Wisdom Save or find itself compelled to climb directly into the creature's mouth - even if it sees where the voice is coming from and consciously knows or rationally understands that it's hearing the Alzatho and not the person whose voice the creature is using. Once the victim is in the mouth, the Alzatho also has a short term paralytic saliva to keep its confused prey from getting too far away, and it munches contentedly until swallowing the victim.
The Alzatho can fight fiercely if things don't go so leisurely, and will also use the voices of the souls they have eaten to misdirect and confuse pursuers. For obvious reasons they prefer darkness, and they excel at ambushing confused prey who expect to see a small child they know, but instead are confronted by a massive, thick-necked hyena warthog horse monster with a mouth like a feral hippo. Moreover, though the beast is evidently merely a mimic, and not consciously aware of or integrated with the souls it possesses, it has an uncanny knack for persuading and deceiving others into its maw from simple discussion alone, not even needing to invoke its supernatural charms or paralysis - simply calling out in a child’s voice and suggesting a person should climb into the monster's mouth to pull him free will often do it.
Should things go seriously awry for the Alzatho, it will attempt to flee into nearby darkness and then backtrack to avoid detection, but will often linger just outside of detection range to continue to pursue 'known' prey. It may follow a person back home from the ruins without the person realizing it - or once it eats a child, it will use that information to go to their house and lure them out, one by one, until it's full.
The Alzatho’s pineal gland is greatly desired for magic designed to simulate life or to trap souls. It is said by the Carpocratian heretics that ritually eating an Alzatho’s pineal gland will embed the soul of its last victim into the person who eats it, and the two will forever after share one body, as multiple conscious personalities acting in tandem. The Carpocratians have asserted in their heresy trials that they keep domesticated versions of the creatures for use in these foul rituals, but surely those stories are exaggerated.
Spellcasting Alzathos are theoretically possible, as they would know any verbal spell components that a victim knew. However, even the brightest Alzatho has no more than average intelligence on its own, and it's unlikely to defeat and eat a spellcaster with powers superior to its own suggestions.
The Alzatho is entirely immune to any charm, as well as to soul-stealing or other attacks of that nature, as it literally has no single 'self' that can be charmed or dominated; however clairvoyance, message, and other spells of that nature will work inasmuch as the captured souls continue to exist in a transitional state for about a year after the person is eaten. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether or not contact is being controlled by the dead person, or by the Alzatho perfectly mimicking that person. At the DM's discretion, a person restored from an Alzatho after a long period of ingestion may suffer ability score loss, level loss, or other damage representing the partial digestion of the soul.
Basic Information
Anatomy
The creature is built tall and powerful, on slender legs ending in sharp hooves. The hair is blacker than black, light-absorbing, and quite bristly along the spine and around the shoulders. The neck is thick, the head is distinctly bony and warthog-like, with an enormous gaping mouth that can open nearly 90 degrees to ingest even medium-sized prey in a bite or two, and small prey whole. A good analog of the animal physically is the Pleistocene Daeodon, which is what the pictures in this article are originally of.
Ecology and Habitats
The Alzatho enjoys lingering on the outskirts of civilization in dark places such as old cemeteries, abandoned homes, or the sites of natural disasters; it can be found in a range of climates from the alpine to the tropical, but seems more common in temperate, moderate zones. They may be migratory.
Dietary Needs and Habits
While the Alzatho's metabolism certainly requires meat to build muscle and bone, like any carnivore, the creature uses soul energy rather than the breakdown of proteins and fats into metabolic glucose to power its cells. This process is thought to be controlled by its pineal gland, which retains the soul energy the creature has imbibed in recent months even after the Alzatho has been killed.
Additional Information
Domestication
The Carpocratians have claimed to keep Alzathos in a semi-domesticated state to be used in their rituals. It is said that ingesting the pineal gland of a freshly killed Alzatho will embed the soul of its last meal into the person ingesting the gland, and the two will share one body from then on. This would grant the elders of the cult a degree of immortality, though of a decidedly inconvenient and transient nature compared to undeath.
Uses, Products & Exploitation
The Alzatho is a dreadful creature, but its fuligin, blacker-than-black fur is used extensively by high-end thieves, Imperial torturers and assassins, and other people who have use of light-absorbing blackness in their clothing that is caused by a mundane rather than magical source - and who have the gold to afford it. Alzatho-fur coats can cost well over two years of an average salary to purchase from a reputable source, and the people who specialize in hunting for the material can become enormously rich, at least until they at some point succumb to the Alzatho's charms and find themselves the victims rather than the hunter.
Additionally, the cult of Carpocrates occasionally claims to keep the creatures for use in their degenerate, corpse-defiling religious rites.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Worldwide except for the most extreme cold or desert climates.
Average Intelligence
It is not known how intelligent the Alzatho is, or if it is even fair to describe it as sentient at all; it uses the memories and voices of its victims to attract more prey with a certain heartless cunning, but it is not able to, for instance, cast verbal-only spells that its victims knew, or to philosophically evolve anything it says in another person's voice to suggest that that person is somehow alive in the Alzatho and learning from its circumstances, or even aware of its circumstances. The souls are lost, and the Alzatho is merely a cruel puppeteer using them as bait for more souls.
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
The Alzatho has an exceptional sense of smell, and excellent eyesight in darkness, for which it is optimized; it is at some disadvantage in bright light.
Origin/Ancestry
Created by magic, possibly Cacogen magic, deep in the Pronoan ages
Conservation Status
The positive identification of an Alzatho is cause for alarm and immediate extermination. Often these countryside posses go horribly awry as a member is devoured and his or her memories and voice are used to lure the rest of the group to their doom.
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
With its eyes and mouth closed, the Alzatho borders on total invisibility in darkness, even to those with darksight, though its body does still give off heat in the infrared spectrum; indeed, it seems to have the ability to manipulate its heat signature into the shape of whatever person it's masquerading as for the sake of luring prey. The massive monster can appear, in infrared, to be a small lost child while using her voice to lure her family into the graveyard at night.
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