Planar Bestiary
The fiends of the Lower Planes have had thousands of years to perfect torture techniques so vile that they leave wounds that never truly heal. A flayed messenger is a type of angel who survived and escaped this kind of torture. Forever scarred by their ordeal, they walk a fine line between good and evil, serenity and insanity, hunting the enemies of the divine planes and striking out with malice and painful intent unbecoming a celestial.
Flayed messengers wear bone-white armor that covers the worst of their torture-inflicted injuries, but their raw, red flesh is visible around it. Beneath the armor, their skin is covered in scars, or even stripped away to bare muscle and sinew.
Having cast aside their original lofty goals, flayed messengers pursue vengeance. They hunt fiends and other evil creatures, nothing else. Unlike other celestials who follow a code of honorable warfare, a messenger uses guerrilla tactics and ambushes to win, including deliberately inflicting debilitating and humiliating wounds on enemies to slow, distract, and demoralize them.
A flayed messenger's power and determination allows them to survive despite their permanent wounds, but they are in a constant state of pain.
Motive: Vengeance on fiends
Environment: Anywhere fiends can be hunted successfully, usually alone
Health: 27
Damage Inflicted: Moderate wound (7 points)
Armor: 4
Movement: Short; long when flying
Modifications: Speed defense as level 5 due to huge size; detecting falsehoods, perception, and seeing through illusions as level 8
Combat: A flayed messenger usually begins a fight by deploying their halo of pain, which they can do using the same action they make to attack twice with their greatsword. The strobing red and white illumination requires that creatures within immediate range succeed on an Intellect defense task or feel pain so intense that they are unable to take actions for about a minute, or until they succeed on an Intellect defense task on their turn to end the effect early. Once a creature defends successfully, they are immune to the pain halo for a day. The messenger can strobe their halo of pain about once each minute.
The flayed messenger attacks twice each round with their greatsword, inflicting a moderate wound (6 points) and 1 point of Intellect damage (ignores Armor) from radiant energy.
A flayed messenger can cast a variety of spells, including those that create the following effects: force a target to fight the flayed messenger, deal damage from a psychic incursion that frightens the target, grant themself freedom to move through difficult terrain, restore life to recently killed allies, and (once per day) release a destructive wave of divine energy that deals radiant damage in a large area.
Interaction: Flayed messengers are bitter but resolute. They mostly work alone but could be convinced to ally with others hunting fiends for a brief period, though good-aligned allies will eventually likely be shocked by what their new angel friend is willing to do to succeed.
Use: The head of a demon has been found stuck on a pike in the town square, along with a posted placard promising to pay a reward for news of other demons in the area.
Loot: A flayed messenger's massive sword is magical, and if claimed by another, changes size to suit its new wielder. The heavy weapon is an artifact that magically inflicts an additional 1 point of radiant damage with each strike (level 7; depletion: —).
GM Intrusion: To distract a fiendish foe, the flayed messenger does something to draw the fiend's attack onto a character, a minor act of betrayal for the "greater good" the angel pursues.