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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

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PFS StandardBythos

The bythos is a guardian of space and time, and at all times seeks out those who misuse planar and temporal magic. A bythos is a roughly humanoid creature with four arms and a body made of swirling clouds and mist. Despite its appearance, its body feels like dry stone. A bythos seeks out paradoxes caused by irresponsible planar or dimensional travelers and repairs breaches where the barriers between planes have become thin or damaged. If the mortals responsible remain in the area and cannot be convinced to cease their activities, the bythos has no qualms about removing them. Using its ability to manipulate time, a bythos might cause an opponent to quickly die of old age as time speeds up around them, or cause a target to disappear from time and space.

Recall Knowledge - Monitor (Religion): DC 37
Unspecific Lore: DC 35
Specific Lore: DC 32

Elite | Normal | Weak
Proficiency without Level

Changes from being Elite are marked in red below.
NOTE: The +2 damage bonus to non-strike offensive abilities (+4 if the ability is limited, such as spells) is NOT factored in.

Elite BythosCreature 17

Legacy Content

Uncommon LN Large Aeon Monitor 
Source Bestiary 2 pg. 10 2.0
Perception +32; darkvision
Languages envisioning
Skills Arcana +31, Athletics +34, Deception +27, Intimidation +27, Nature +32, Occultism +31, Religion +32, Stealth +28
Str +8, Dex +4, Con +5, Int +7, Wis +8, Cha +5
Envisioning When a bythos conveys information, it does so wordlessly through psychic projections. This acts as telepathy with a range of 100 feet but is understandable to all creatures regardless of whether they have a language. The meaning to non-aeons can be vague and is often mysterious. A bythos can use this ability to communicate flawlessly with any other aeon on the same plane.
AC 41; Fort +27, Ref +28, Will +32; +1 status to all saves vs. magic
HP 265, regeneration 15 (deactivated by chaotic); Weaknesses chaotic 15
Confusing Gaze (aura, divine, enchantment, emotion, incapacitation, mental, visual) 30 feet. A creature that ends its turn in the aura must attempt a DC 36 Will save. If it fails, it's confused for 1 round (or 1d4 rounds on a critical failure).Temporal Reversion [free-action] (fortune) Trigger The bythos fails or critically fails a check; Frequency once per day; Effect The bythos rerolls the triggering check and takes the better result.
Speed fly 35 feet
Melee [one-action] fist +34 [+29/+24] (lawful, magical, reach 10 feet), Damage 2d8+2+16 bludgeoning plus 2d8+2 cold and 2d8+2 lawfulDivine Innate Spells DC 39 (+4 dmg); 8th augury (at will), teleport; 7th dimensional anchor, dimensional lock, haste, plane shift; 6th slow; 4th dimensional anchor (at will)
Rituals DC 39 (+4 dmg); 8th imprisonment (temporal stasis only)
Aging Strikes [two-actions] (divine, necromancy) The bythos make two fist Strikes against a single target. If both Strikes hit, the target attempts a DC 39 Fortitude save. Creatures that don't get weaker with age or don't age are immune (GM's discretion). If a creature becomes clumsy 4, drained 4, and enfeebled 4 due to Aging Strikes, it dies of old age.
Success The creature is unaffected.
Failure The creature becomes clumsy 1, drained 1, and enfeebled 1, or increases each of these conditions by 1. This effect is cumulative with other aging strikes from bythoses, to a maximum of clumsy 4, drained 4, and enfeebled 4.
Critical Failure As failure, but the creature becomes clumsy 2, drained 2, and enfeebled 2, or increases these conditions by 2.Focused Gaze [one-action] (concentrate) The bythos focuses its gaze on a creature it can see within 30 feet. The target must attempt a save against the bythos's confusing gaze. A bythos can't use this ability against the same creature more than once per turn.Temporal Flurry [two-actions] The bythos makes four fist Strikes. Its multiple attack penalty increases normally with each attack.Temporal Strike [two-actions] (divine, conjuration, incapacitation, teleportation) The bythos touches a creature or object to displace it from time. The target attempts a DC 39 Fortitude save.
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success Time flows around the target; the target is slowed 1 for 1 round.
Failure The target disappears from the present moment and reappears in the same location 1d4 rounds later as if no time had passed for it. If a creature or object occupies that space when the target returns, the target appears in the closest available space to its original location.
Critical Failure As failure, but the target is slowed 1 for an extra 1d4 rounds after it returns.

Sidebar - Related Creatures Guardians of Time

Bythos aeons have no innate ability to directly enter the mysterious Dimension of Time, but many know of the hidden routes in the Great Beyond one can use to travel to this strange realm. A bythos prefers to destroy those who seek entrance to the Dimension of Time rather than risk the knowledge of how to reach it spreading too far.

All Monsters in "Aeon"

NameLevel
Akhana12
Arbiter1
Axiomite8
Bythos16
Kolyarut12
Marut15
Pleroma20
Theletos7
Zelekhut9

Aeon

Source Bestiary pg. 8
Aeons have always been the caretakers of reality and defenders of the natural order of balance. Each type of aeon takes on some form of duality in its manifestation and works either to shape the multiverse within the aspects of this duality in some way, or to correct imbalances to the perfect order of existence. Aeons can bring weal or woe when they appear in a region, and their machinations can raise a nation, raze it, or restore it from ruin. Their reasons are their own, and they rarely share their motivations with others— they simply create the results they insist through their strange envisioning communication are necessary to maintain the balance of the multiverse.

As a result of recent shifts in reality, aeons have begun to reassert a presence in the perfect planar city of Axis. To the aeons, this is merely the latest in a recurring cycle, albeit one that mortals have not yet borne witness to. Once regarded as an independent faction, the living machines known as inevitables are now revealed as having been agents of the aeons all along, and while inevitables have their own shared themes and features, they are very much living but constructed manifestations of the aeons’ war against imbalance—particularly with regard to how this war is waged against the forces of chaos.

Aeons have a name for this cyclic return, in which they welcome the industrious axiomites back to their fold and bring the inevitables once again under their control: the “Convergence.” At the onset of the Convergence, a council of pleroma aeons appeared in the Eternal City of Axis, where they revealed that axiomites were wayward aeons, split off long ago to pursue the act of creation. With the latest cycle of change it was time for the axiomites and their creations, the inevitables, to rejoin the aeon cause. While most axiomites and inevitables fell in line, realizing perhaps on a fundamental level of reality that what the aeons said was the truth, some refused to heed the call and waited for the wrath of the aeons — but that wrath has yet to come. The dual-natured aeons have responded to those who have declined in confusing ways. With some they treat and even bargain, while a handful of others they have destroyed, and a few have been exterminated by the axiomites and allied inevitables. But most of these quiet insurgents they leave alone, allowing these axiomites to continue to create in peace and the inevitables to continue with their duties. How—or if—this Convergence will end is as little understood as the aeons themselves.

Sidebar - Additional Lore Aeon Divinities

Whether the aeons serve an actual divinity, a philosophical concept, or merely a “supreme oneness” is a topic hotly debated by planar scholars. The aeons themselves are silent, referring to this being or concept as the Monad, a “condition of all.” Regardless of what the Monad actually is, there certainly exists another category of powerful aeons—the primal inevitables, each a unique demigod with its own powers and goals. Relatively few primal inevitables remain today, for nearly three-quarters of their irreplaceable kind have fallen in the endless battle with the inexorable forces of entropy.

Sidebar - Related Creatures Other Aeons

Aeons are among the least understood of the Great Beyond’s immortal creatures, and they have a wide range of powers and abilities. Far more aeons exist than those presented here, including guardians of time like the four-armed bythos and the weirdly symmetrical theletos, which moderates the duality between freedom and fate.

Sidebar - Additional Lore Paradox and Unity

To mortals, aeons sometimes seem to combine elements that are fundamentally incompatible, whether it's an aeon combining opposing concepts, or axiomites and inevitables mixing the organic with the mathematical or mechanical. Aeons see no paradox in this, but rather claim it is an expression of the underlying unity of all things.