#zomok

One of my favourite PF2 changes? The Zomok has both the plant and dragon types! Not something that’s strictly necessary, but it feels right. 

Zomoks are either plant-themed dragons or dragon-themed forests depending on your point of view. They are also extraplanar beings, although this bit usually gets overlooked. The assumption is that they come from the First World, having originated in Kingmaker, but crucially they aren’t fey, so they could come from other planes as well. That fey but is also metaphysically important because it means Zomoks who die on the First World won’t reincarnate like most of that plane’s inhabitants. Once they die, they stay dead and their souls move on to the Boneyard. 

Also keep in mind that a Zomok’s demeanour changes with the season. While the exemplars are given as the four western seasons, not every climate and culture recognizes the same patterns. How do Zomoks change in a environment with monsoon and dry seasons? And then what does this mean on a plane where seasons are vastly different from the mortal world? The First World definitely has seasons, but they are likely to follow storybook logic, transitioning suddenly. On other planes, seasons may be more abstract — perhaps  Heaven has a Penance Season and a Hunting Season (Erastil’s doing). What influence would those seasons have?

On last interesting planar note is that Zomoks speak Terran in addition to the more “woodlandy” languages of Arboreal and Sylvan. This makes thematic sense — the zomok’s breath attack is soiled based and dirt it part of the forest — but it also suggests deeper ties to the Elemental Plane of Earth. Consider what allies of grit and loam a zomok’s woodland realm are tied to, even if they forgo typical trade relations. 

When the Whispering Tyrant annihilated Lastwall, he took a Zomok down with it. The spirit of the forest died and awoke as a lost soul on the Boneyard, like so many others. Too many others. The psychopomps quarantined off massive parts of Pharasma’s spire to give them time to sort through the influx of soul, but this also gave the Zomok and opportunity to escape. Now the the powerful but dead dragon is growing an ossified, hanging forest of edge of the spire, daring any psychopomp to try to reclaim it. 

The fey don’t understand death well. They are capable of coming back, their souls reincarnating into another body, but not all residents of the First World are capable of such feats. When the Great Old Dragon, an impossibly ancient Zomok dies, the die decide they are going to have a wake in the Faerie Realms. In their benevolence, they invite everyone to it including several mortal villages from across Golarion. It is a rare opportunity for mass planer travel, the only problem is that the fey’s vision of a wake is very different from a mortal one. 

 The disguise skill has many different aspects, from pretending to be someone unremarkable to avoid detection or adopting someone else’s identity to gain access to certain things, but there is a darker side. Imagine a master of disguise who takes over your entire life, pretending to be you, establishing connections, adopting or destroying your relationships, and generally violating the sanctity of you being you.

This is why monsters like doppelgangers, as well as others that can change appearance to look like anyone can be absolutely nightmarish in the right hands, including today’s subject, the thought eater!

Thought eaters, whether they mean to or not, seem to emulate doppelgangers in many ways, reading the minds of others to better pretend to be them. They tend to be less focused on the classic modus operandi of mesmerists, focusing more upon telepathy than mind control, but they still have access to that sort of magic, which can be useful for smoothing over encounters that might lead to discovery.

These occult mystics might be spies that use a cover identity they’ve stolen to perform their deeds, or they might be social saboteurs, ruining lives for a price. Others might be unstable and maladjusted individuals that have a need to steal lives.

 By reading a target through their hypnotic stare, these mesmerists can glean useful information about their behavior, making it that much easier for them to mimic their mannerisms for a whole day.

This isn’t just a matter of personality either, as they also quickly learn to adopt their mannerisms so thoroughly that they even fool magics that detect moral alignment.

While they cannot glean specific information, they also can temporarily absorb the target’s knowledge on a broad subject, using that to their benefit in either masquerading as them or for other purposes.

At the zenith of this path, thought eaters can perform a truly insidious act, absorbing the mind, body and soul of their target upon killing them. They body disintegrates away, and while they still must use magical or mundane means to appear to be them, almost all magic detects them as if they were the absorbed person. This absorption continues indefinitely, ending only when the soul is released by powerful magic or another soul is absorbed, freeing the first.

While this archetype certainly works best as a unique ability set for a villain, it might be useful for a player seeking to play a spy. The fact that they have to keep absorbing information from the same target regularly to use the disguise long-term does mean that it can lead to creepy situations where the real person is imprisoned by the mesmerist, so keep that in mind.

As far as builds go, this archetype works well for a utility and control build, gathering information with magical spy work and manipulating foes, plus some knowledge skill utility too if you can find the right targets to absorb the knowledge skill from.

 Even if they are not malicious, the mindset required to become a thought eater is certainly not a healthy one. There is a certain subversion of one’s own identity when you adopt another, and even more so when you’re using magic to literally absorb parts of one.

  Many reptoids are mesmerists or other enchantment-based casters, but only a rare few become thought eaters, able to almost perfectly become their targets. While most believe this the product of some rare capability, a few theorists believe that such thought eaters are a potential risk to reptoid operations, able to dive too deeply into a role.

 The local guardian druid has had a strange change in personality, ordering the zomok spirit living within the trees to assault travelers, tearing their wagons asunder. If the party accepts the job to discover the cause, they might discover the real druid’s body and ghost.

Zomok ref

Zomok a decade later...

Titan file:Zomok

Name:Zomok

Titanus lindworm

Gender:Male

First appearance:Swimming next to Godzilla around Norway.

Last Appearance:Unknown

“Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach”. It’s a well-known, if unfair adage, since history is full of the greatest minds in their field turning around and teaching others, both directly and through their great works.

It is true, however, that a great many who learn an academic subject do turn around and spend their careers teaching others, rather than going out and making great innovations in said field, and the same could be said of mystical academia in a fantasy setting.

Whether they are employed teachers or wandering instructors, today’s archetype studies wizardry from the angle of one who wishes to teach others, seeing the spark of magic in others and cultivating it.

 As such, these instructors take an apprentice from among those with the spark. At first, these apprentices know little in the way of actual spells, but as the instructor progresses in their own understanding, so to do their apprentices, training in the same wizarding specialization as their master. Individual apprentices may come and go, graduating as the instructor deems them ready to move on, but they always find a bright mind to teach soon afterwards. They might even gain a following of other students, but their apprentice is always their star pupil.

As teachers, these wizards are well-versed in working with their students, and can often guide students through tandem exercises that let them combine their magical might.

Interested in a wizard that has another, novice wizard at their beck and call? This archetype might be for you. Having a low-level wizard of the same specialization as you might not seem that useful, but if your GM allows them to take a different subschool, that increases the diversity available. Since you effectively have two wizards, consider loading up your apprentice with various utility spells or other magic that you don’t want to run on your own character for whatever reason. Don’t forget to also try out various spellcasting teamwork feats with them!

 It should be noted that these wizards don’t get an ordinary arcane bond, which might imply that they are simply too busy to establish one, or that they are forming their bond with their favored student. Of course with the familiar feat from familiar folio, they can establish one anyway.

  An odd pair indeed, Madam Bripora and her apprentice, Kesid travel the countryside together. The ratfolk diviner has been teaching her wyvaren student all she knows of divination, showing her that magic need not be flashy to be successful. Her prognostications, however, have revealed that her student’s greatest test fast approaches.

 Eager to prove themselves, a student of Becuras school of magic goes into the wild to practice their evocations against woodland creatures. However, this act of foolishness escalates when their flames awaken a zomok spirit, who begins a rampage against the surrounding settlements.