Planar Bestiary
The essence of previously visited planes surrounds and protects the guide. Each round, sounds, images, and even physical objects appear out of nowhere and can afflict foes, or at least distract them. This accounts for the traveler guide's eased defenses.
Travelers bear a mysterious cosmic map stitched to their flesh, picked out in dimly glowing lines. As they grow into adults, the map becomes more and more important, and individuals feel a subtle but constant yearning to travel to the distant, enigmatic location depicted. But the map is incomplete, which means finding the depicted location requires a commitment to travel the dimensions. Some choose to ignore it. Others believe that the design is a promise or destiny and leave their families to seek out the source of their birthright.
Loners by nature, travelers usually prefer to avoid conflicts that might prevent them from ranging across the multiverse, searching for new experiences. All, however, seek to find a congruence with the map stitched to their skins and an actual location. Few are lucky enough to ever learn the truth. Most come to view their cosmic map as unknowable, a mystery lost to the multiverse. The best a traveler can do is try to understand themself.
Some travelers prefer the company of others. These can become indispensable companions for would-be planar explorers. Others use their penchant for planar travel to become planar bandits, preying on other dimension walkers. These travelers are not guides, but rather thieves, who leverage their power with the aid of allies gathered from across dimensions.
Even if acting as a guide rather than a thief, a traveler never misses an opportunity to loot planar riches they encounter. They also usually ask for a goodly sum if acting as a guide or, barring that, books on planar travel or a trophy from another dimension. All this wealth is usually socked away in a hidden lair in a dimension that only the guide knows about.
Motive: Exploration and discovery
Environment: Any planar location
Health: 15
Damage Inflicted: Moderate wound (5 points)
Armor: 2
Movement: Short
Modifications: All defenses and Might-based tasks as level 5
Combat: A traveler guide attacks with their whip or a long.range weapon such as a bow. A creature hit by the whip is entangled unless they succeed at a Might or Speed defense task. An entangled creature's physical tasks are hindered until they escape with a successful Might task as their action.
A traveler can use their action to travel into another dimension—usually one they have visited before. If they have a creature entangled with their whip, they can bring this creature with them if the creature fails an Intellect defense task.
The map etched in the guide's skin gives them knowledge of the shortest, most direct physical route to the nearest extraplanar portal, or to the nearest magic item that grants planar travel.
A traveler can make their skin map shine as bright as a torch or stifle this light at any time.
Interaction: Travelers usually pick up several planar languages, allowing them to converse and negotiate with other planar explorers. They're likely to make friends with people who may have clues about where their map leads or who are interested in exploring the planes.
Use: A traveler guide is heading where the PCs need to go and offers to lead them there. A greedy guide needs the PCs' help to pull off a heist. A team of warriors led by a guide ambushes the PCs just as they arrive at an unfamiliar plane.
Loot: A traveler guide usually has adventuring and exploration equipment suitable for many planes, plus a couple of magic cyphers, such as bread of nutrition and hydration or a radiation spike.
GM Intrusion: The traveler partially pulls a character into the traveler's dimensional portal, disorienting and nauseating the character. If the character fails a hindered Might defense task, they are stunned for a round and all their tasks are hindered until they use an action to get their bearings.