Charnel God

This porphyry statue depicts a three-headed goddess with draconic wings, a long tail, and a deadly looking longbow in her hands.

Charnel God CR 23

Speed 60 ft., fly 60 ft. (good)
Melee 2 bites +37 (2d6+12), gore +37 (1d8+6), 2 slams +37 (1d6+12)
Ranged +5 unholy composite longbow +42/+37/+32/+27 (2d6+17/19–20/×3)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks severance
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 23rd; concentration +35)

Constant—true seeing
At will—align weapon (chaos only), animate dead, cause fear (DC 23), chaos hammer (DC 26), death knell, death ward, dispel law, magic circle against law, protection from law, slay living (DC 27)
3/day—animate objects, cloak of chaos (DC 30), create greater undead, create undead, destruction (DC 29), word of chaos (DC 29)
1/day—summon monster IX (chaotic creatures only), wail of the banshee (DC 31)

Divine Antithesis (Ex)

Divine Sense (Su)

Divinity Lost (Su)

A charnel god gains, as spell-like abilities, the domain spells of two domains granted by the deity from which it formed. It can use domain spells of 5th level or lower as at-will spell-like abilities, spells of 6th to 8th level three times per day as spell-like abilities, and 9th level spells once per day as spell-like abilities. The caster level for these abilities equals the charnel god’s CR (23 for most charnel gods), and the save DCs are Charisma-based. The charnel god does not gain any of these domains’ granted powers. The charnel god presented above has the Death and Chaos domains, and these spell-like abilities are included in its stat block.

Favored Weapon (Su)

Melee weapons created in this way are treated as if they were made of adamantine for the purposes of determining their resistance to damage and their ability to bypass hardness.

Ranged weapons created in this way do not provoke attacks of opportunity when the charnel god uses them.

Hideous Will (Ex)

Severance (Su)

Atonement can remove this effect, but only if the caster succeeds at a DC 35 caster level check. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Environment any
Organization solitary
Treasure triple

The gods are no less strange and terrifying in death than in life. Though the death of any god is staggeringly rare, some do meet violent ends, often at the hands of other deities.

When this happens, the deity’s death casts fragments of the god’s power out among the planes. These fragments are sometimes drawn to places where the god was worshiped in its life, where they can produce miraculous effects, such as striking the god’s devout followers deaf or blind, or granting visions of the god’s demise. Sometimes these shards of power go unnoticed and boil away into nothing over time. But sometimes, something far more terrible occurs—such fragments can find a new home within a graven image of the former deity, forming a new creature: a charnel god.

Regardless of the deceased god’s alignment or nature, all charnel gods are beings of sublime wickedness fueled by bitter anger. The memory of being killed and cast into the void leaves charnel gods utterly and cruelly insane.

Further, they feel the pain of being incomplete, of being only a small portion of what they once were, and this torments them. Charnel gods have some memories of their time as gods, but any recollections are fragmented and muddled. A charnel god might be able to share a hidden secret it knew in its former life, but it could just as easily confuse the details or call forth a false memory, making it an unreliable source of wisdom. Charnel gods resent such questions anyway, as remembering their former lives only reminds them of their pitiful current state.

To a charnel god, all worshipers are false and deserve to be punished for their lack of loyalty and devotion.

At the same time, charnel gods long for mortals’ worship. Truly, that is a charnel god’s greatest wish—to once again be venerated, offered sacrifices, and loved and feared above all else in the world. Charnel gods cannot grant spells like a true deity, and so must rely on their own terrible powers and fearsome demeanor to cow and bully others into worshiping them. Their cults rarely last long, for the charnel god is an easily angered and fickle deity.

The example charnel god presented here was once a demon lord of the hunt who was slain by a vengeful goddess. When creating a charnel god of a different deity, GMs should replace some or all of the charnel god’s feats and skills to better support that deity’s favored weapon and fighting style. Likewise, the charnel god’s melee attacks should be altered as needed, but the end result should approximate the average damage a CR 23 creature might deal in a round. Note that charnel gods like the one detailed above can attack with their natural attacks as secondary attacks when attacking with ranged weapons.

A charnel god stands 15 feet tall and weighs 12 tons.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 6 © 2017, Paizo Inc.; Authors: Robert Brookes, Benjamin Bruck, John Compton, Paris Crenshaw, Adam Daigle, Crystal Frasier, James Jacobs, Thurston Hillman, Tim Hitchcock, Brandon Hodge, Jason Keeley, Isabelle Lee, Jason Nelson, Tim Nightengale, F. Wesley Schneider, David Schwartz, Mark Seifter, Todd Stewart, Josh Vogt, and Linda Zayas-Palmer.