A ghostly figure, only faintly visible as a ripple in the skin of reality. A sphere of multicolored, fleshy lobes orbits around it, sometimes breaking from its steady circle to examine a foreign object; as it draws nearer, feather-toothed fangs push out between the folds and begin to chirr.
As the creature gains purchase in our world, its form becomes clearer, but it is alien, impossible to talk about except by breaking it down into parts and even then only in terms of what those parts remind you of. It exists somewhere in the middle ground between a high-end television aerial, a dead willow with branches full of plastic bags, a starfish, and a denuded beehive full of mummified larvae. All around it, pockmarks bloom across the surface of every unliving thing; they weep strange humors that scab over in unfamiliar colors.
Look up at the sky. The clouds run too fast and the bite marks on the sun are self-inflicted.
HD base 2 MV 120’ AC nil/as chain/unarmored AT servitor sphere 1d4 (imploding; reroll and add until you produce a result higher than the roll before) Special pollute spell, planar insinuation, planar breach
pollute spell—For every round spent within 360’ of a Nholm, spellcasters must save; on a failure, their next spell grants the Nholm an extra hit die in addition to all its other effects. Unless intelligent in their own right, magical items that expend charges or otherwise have discrete “uses” are automatically polluted; otherwise they get their own save.
planar insinuation—While its HD are less than or equal to 4, a Nholm is intangible and cannot be harmed except by magic (magic weapons can strike it in this state, treating its AC as equivalent to chain and shield; such weapons are automatically polluted and will grant the Nholm an HD on any successful attack made in its area of effect). It may pass through matter freely and is not subject to gravity. From HD 5 to HD 7, the membrane of reality is thin around it. It can be damaged by mundane weapons in this state. From HD 8 upwards, it manifests entirely in this universe.
planar breach—upon reaching HD 8, a Nholm exerts constant, horrible strain on localized spacetime as it beckons more of its world through with it. A new servitor sphere arrives every round until it reaches a maximum of four, and the radius of pollute spell doubles. Additionally, any spell cast in the Nholm’s presence has a 1 in 4 chance of instead producing a thaumic ooze loyal to the Nholm (stats below).
HD =spell level MV 60’ AC unarmored AT questing tendril 1d6 Special living spell, agglomerate
living spell—the thaumic ooze may take 8 damage once per round to cast the spell that gave it life, at the level of the original caster.
agglomerate—two adjacent thaumic oozes may use a full round to combine HD totals and spellcasting abilities. The resulting ooze gains an additional tendril attack for every three hit dice it has.
The Nholm belong to an order of existence that is not compatible with our own. Their world is more material, more visceral than ours, more deeply embedded in the principles of things that eat and fuck. You would think that our world had a fair bit of those things, but you have to consider the cosmic-scale proportions involved. There’s a whole lot of Not Those Things in our universe’s MO, and for the most part that works for us.
In the land of the Nholm, thoughts and feelings are parasites, and discourse and reasoning are just other forms of reproduction. There are certain philosophers who would say the same is true for us, but for the Nholm it’s true without any faffing about. A Nholm’s servitor spheres are, to translate into our terms, carefully thought-out life philosophies and theological precepts. They are also incredibly swift, murderous hunter-killer drones that stalk and process food for their progenitor.
Nholm also practice magic, although it’s scarcely recognizable from where we’re standing. Most of it has to do with facilitating the spread of their plane of reality into the rest of existence, because their whole deal is mapped onto the underlying philosophy of a cancer. All they really want to do is eat and grow.
They eat potential. Intangibles. They metastasize our ideas and relationships, manifest our nightmares, take our magic; they turn it all inside out and give it teeth. Magic, given its prior nature as a bridge between intangible intent and reality, is a critical resource in their strategy. They exploit it at every possible opportunity.
Eventually one of them is going to figure out how we work well enough to start operating a cult.
