Seemer

Seemers are creatures who play upon the fears of those they encounter, making themselves appear to be whatever their observers most dread.

A seemer is a manifestation of the Seeming itself, a coalescence of the illusory energies in a given area. A seemer can take on the appearance and properties of any living entity, from a flea to a dragon to specific individuals. Seemers can even take on the forms of plants; multiple seemers, for example, together could form an entire “forest.”

Seemers appear as their observers' worst fears. In an encounter with several viewers, a single seemer may focus on the anxieties of only one character—appearing the same to all foes—or appear different to each individual, so that each must face his or her own worst enemy.

Seemers enable the Dungeon Master to really mess with the player characters' minds. They are one's biggest nightmares come to life, and nearly any cause of anxiety is fair game. PCs can suddenly find themselves face to face with their worst enemies (dead or alive): individuals they met in combat, neighboring regents who make their lives difficult, awnsheghlien who strike fear in the hearts of all Cerilians.

Or the seemer can take the form of other fears. For example, an arachnophobic character can be apparently faced with a giant spider (or a swarm of small ones); a pyrophobic, a fire elemental; a hemophobic, a tidal wave of blood.

Combat: A seemer can detect a character's psychic energy from a range of 500 yards, enabling it to transform before it is seen by a PC.

Seemers automatically attack any intelligent being they encounter who is not native to the Shadow World.

Because the seemer embodies something personally fearful to the character, it automatically gains surprise unless the viewer succeeds at a saving throw vs. paralyzation

The seemer fights with the weapons and abilities normally associated with the entity it appears to be. Thus, a seemer in the form of a fire elemental attacks with flaming limbs; one in the shape of a giant python has a constriction attack.

A “spellcaster” seemer uses the Seeming to create spell-like effects; these exclude abjuration and divination spells. “Fighters” use weapons fashioned from the Seeming. However, because the Seeming is not as hard as steel, as hot as flame, and so on, each attack inflicts a maximum of 2d6 points of damage—less if the real form of attack inflicts less. Thus a seemer in the form of a huge spider could inflict only 1d6 points of damage; one in the form of an orog with a long sword inflicts 1d8+2 points of damage

Poisons, aging, level drains, and other “indirect” attacks have a placebo effect— the victims and their companions think they suffer the effect, but it wears off in 2d4 hours.

Seemers are corporeal and suffer normal damage. They are sensitive to sunlight, suffering a -2 penalty to all attack and damage rolls in such conditions.

Noncombative encounters between a seemer and a visitor to the Shadow World are extremely rare. Native cre atures with at least a greater Seeming score can converse with seemers. Those with an extraord inary Seeming score stand a chance (5% per 10 Seeming points) of winning a seemer's cooperation for a brief period.

As children of the Seeming itself, seemers have extraordinary control over it. They have trouble seeing past it, however, and therefore have limited perception.

Habitat/Society: At the dawn of the Shadow World, seemers were very rare creatures of neutral alignment. The shapes they took were based on observers' psyches, but not necessarily their fears. As the Seeming grew more powerful, seemers became more plentiful. Unfortunately, during this evolution Azrai's influence increasingly permeated the Shadow World, corrupting parts of the Seeming and most of its manifestations. Though neutral seemers still exist, the majority of the seemers alive today are evil in nature. Born of the Shadow World itself, they seek to eradicate intruders.

Ecology: A seemer springs into existence when the Seeming in a certain area becomes so concentrated that its energies spontaneously generate into life. The new creature takes on the image of whatever living entity it first sees, then quickly looks about for nourishment.

Seemers feed off the psychic energy of their observers, using this sustenance to shape themselves accordingly. Because deep-rooted fears occupy a proportionally high amount of a character's subconscious, seemers seize upon those images and adopt them.