Adherer

This pallid humanoid creature is wrapped in wispy strips of skin, with bits of detritus and a sour stink clinging to it.

Adherer CR 3

XP 800

LE Medium monstrous humanoid

Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +5

Defense

AC 17, touch 13, flat-footed 14 (+3 Dex, +4 natural)

hp 30 (4d10+8)

Fort +3, Ref +7, Will +5

DR 5/—; SR 14

Offense

Speed 30 ft., climb 10 ft.

Melee 2 slams +6 (1d6+2 plus grab)

Special Attacks grab (Large)

Statistics

Str 14, Dex 16, Con 15, Int 4, Wis 13, Cha 11

Base Atk +4; CMB +7 (+19 grapple); CMD 19

Feats Agile Maneuvers, Combat Reflexes

Skills Climb +10, Craft (cloth) +3, Craft (traps) +1, Perception +5, Stealth +11; Racial Modifiers +2 Craft (cloth), +4 Stealth

Languages Aklo

SQ adhesive

Ecology

Environment any temperate or underground

Organization solitary, gang (2–5), or nest (6–12)

Treasure standard

Special Abilities

Adhesive (Su) A weapon that strikes an adherer becomes stuck fast to the creature's adhesive flesh unless the wielder succeeds at a DC 14 Reflex save. A creature adjacent to the adherer can attempt to pry off a stuck weapon with a DC 17 Strength check, but doing so provokes an attack of opportunity from the adherer. The adherer's adhesive flesh gives it a +8 racial bonus on grapple checks. It can attempt to grapple a foe without spending an action whenever a creature successfully hits it with a natural attack or an unarmed strike. An adherer does not gain the grappled condition when it grapples a foe, nor does it provoke attacks of opportunity when it attempts to do so. Fire can temporarily burn away an adherer's adhesive coating—whenever an adherer takes at least 10 points of fire damage, it loses its adhesive special quality for 1d4 rounds. Universal solvent, alchemical solvent, or a similar fluid removes an adherer's adhesive quality for 1 hour if it fails a DC 15 Reflex save, or for 1d4 rounds if it makes the save. The adherer's skin loses its adhesive quality 1 hour after the adherer dies. An adherer can release anything stuck to it as a free action. The save DCs are Constitution-based.

Adherers look vaguely like embalmed and mummified corpses wrapped in dirty linen, but they are in fact otherworldly beings of an entirely different nature. Transformed by hideous processes on the Ethereal Plane, their bodies are riddled with tiny, adhesive strands that can stick to anything, allowing adherers to bind their enemies' weapons and capture living creatures for their depraved rituals.

Though once human, adherers have forgotten all traces of humanity, and now hunt their former kindred with gleeful abandon. Adherers digest food unusually slowly, and as such can feed on a single creature (humans are their favorite meal) for days or even weeks, taking only one or two bites a day and forcing their living captives to endure a hellish, drawn-out death.