Colour Out of Space

The deepest, strangest parts of space hold truly alien beings—and of those, few are more notorious than the colour out of space. The lack of a physical body does little to impede this deadly alien life form's ability to cause incredible devastation to other life it encounters. A colour out of space's life cycle requires periodic visits to the deepest reaches of space for the creature to gestate and grow in the vicinity of powerful gravitational fields (such as those created by planets), and this custom only increases the monster's opportunities to bring ruin to countless worlds.

The colour out of space is just that—a mobile radiance. Its glow is unlike any seen in nature. The few who encounter one of these creatures and survive sometimes describe the radiance or portrayed it in art as a sinister, green-gray illumination, but these depictions are flawed reproductions. To witness the colour out of space is to know there are things no humanoid mind can fully comprehend, describe, or explain.

Very little is known about the life cycle of a colour that dwells in the depths of space, for it is only when it comes to a planet to grow and reproduce that other life forms encounter it. A colour's arrival upon a world is typically via a small meteorite strike—the colour itself infuses a meteoroid, and shortly after the falling star's arrival, the rock crumbles away to expose the semisolid mass of a larval colour that seeps into the surrounding landscape. Although a colour is incorporeal, and thus able to move through solid objects, it can also exist as a free-floating, eerie radiance. Natural sunlight doesn't particularly harm colours out of space, but they prefer to dwell in darkened areas like deep caves or abandoned wells where their own radiance is the only light.

Over the course of several weeks, months, or even years, the colour feeds upon the surrounding plant and animal life—the act of being fed upon is weirdly addictive to its victims, who develop a self-destructive lassitude that prevents them from fleeing the region. When a colour has absorbed enough life to grow to full maturity (usually signified by reaching 25 to 30 Hit Dice), it gathers its strength and erupts from its den, coruscating into the sky as it launches the majority of itself back into space. Sometimes, enough remains of the parent colour to survive on its own, and in these cases the life cycle repeats again and again. Areas blighted by a colour out of space are singularly recognizable, not only for the eerie pallor of local plant life and large swaths of blasted, barren landscape, but also by the presence of those the colour has fed on. These unfortunate, deformed individuals, known as colour-blighted creatures, never live for long, but while they do, their madness often drives them to violent behavior, be they people or beasts.

A creature with the colour-blighted simple template appears hideously deformed and glows with the same unnamable color as the creature that blighted it. A colour-blighted creature's quick and rebuild rules are the same.

Feed — A colour can attempt to feed on any living creature or a region of plant life as a full-round action. If it feeds on a single creature, the colour must have line of sight and be within 300 feet of the target. If it feeds on a region of plant and animal life, it only needs to be within that region. It can attempt to feed on a region once per week, and upon a living creature at will (but only once per day per living creature). Feeding on a region of plant life is automatically successful, blighting that region of plant life as if by a diminish plants spell used to stunt growth.A creature can resist being fed upon by a colour out of space by succeeding at a DC 22 Will save, in which case the colour must wait 24 hours before attempting to feed on that creature again. If this saving throw fails, the victim takes 1d4 points of Charisma drain and Constitution drain. The save DC is Charisma-based.A creature whose Constitution score is drained to 0 by a colour out of space's feed attack immediately dies, crumbling into a mass of desiccated tissue.A creature whose Charisma score is drained to 0 by a colour out of space's feed attack gains the colour-blighted simple template (see the facing page). Every time a colour successfully feeds on a creature, it gains 1 growth point. A colour out of space can never have more than 100 growth points—it can expend 100 growth points after spending 24 hours concentrating on its growth, and in so doing gains 1 permanent Hit Die.

Dodge, Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Mobility, Spring Attack, Weapon Finesse

Fly +27, Knowledge (geography) +16, Knowledge (nature) +16, Knowledge (planes) +16, Perception +18, Stealth +12