Planar Bestiary
To observers, dimensionally askew victims of a distransit attack glow with flickering, incoherent illumination.
It's hard to determine exactly what a distransit looks like, as they constantly shift their texture and shape to take on the context of the dimension they currently inhabit. The creature might not have a base shape, but instead be in constant flux.
Most crossplanar trips are unremarkable. Rarely, planar travel is interrupted, and the travelers in question are never seen again. Under some circumstances, the energy of the transfer and the life lost in the disrupted transit emerges elsewhere, becoming a living aberration of unrecalled loss and constant hunger: a distransit.
A distransit's continued existence relies on feeding on areas of unstable spacetime. Their preferred food source, dimensionally speaking, is prey knocked askew from its proper frame of existence. This misalignment produces transdimensional nutrition for the distransit, at the prey's expense. If a target of this feeding perishes, nothing remains of them but dust.
A distransit, having no shape to call their own, can appear as a tree, a boulder, a wardrobe, a stalagmite, a living creature, or even a section of a wall or ground—whatever allows them to seamlessly blend in. When they move, they flicker between all these forms and more (possibly even briefly recalling the humanoid shape from which they were born), making them hard to look at for those prone to dizziness.
Motive: Hungers for unstable planar boundaries
Environment: Anywhere in the multiverse lurking near out-of-the-way planar portal exits
Health: 25
Damage Inflicted: Moderate wound (5 points)
Movement: Short
Modifications: Speed defense as level 4 due to large size; perceives invisible creatures as level 7; stealth as level 9 (when motionless, they resemble an ordinary part of the environment)
Combat: The distransit bludgeons a foe, inflicting damage and rendering them "dimensionally askew" for up to one minute. Dimensionally askew victims are blinded by a cascade of crossplanar images and sensations and suffer 5 points of Intellect damage (ignores Armor) each round. Each subsequent round, the victim can attempt an Intellect task to end the effect. Once returned to normal, a victim is immune for one day.
A distransit regains 1 point of health each round that at least one target within 30 feet of them is dimensionally askew.
Interaction: A distransit doesn't speak or understand language; they are an aberration that exists only to feed on the planar instability they can induce in living prey.
Use: The characters need to use a specific portal, and so must first deal with or escape from the distransit that uses the area around the portal as hunting territory.
GM Intrusion (Group): The distransit stops moving, and they take on the visual and textural context of their surrounding environment; the characters lose track of the creature's specific location. Treat the distransit as invisible until they attack again.