VIII Great Old Ones and Outer Gods Ubbo-Sathla, The Tome Keeper CR 24; XP 1,228,800 CN Outer God of ancient secrets, primeval life, protecting knowledge Primary Source Clark Ashton Smith, “Ubbo-Sathla” C U LT Domains Chaos, Knowledge, Madness, Protection, Rune Subdomains Defense, Entropy, Insanity, Language, Memory, Wards Favored Weapon heavy pick Symbol partially shattered stone tablet covered with illegible runes Temple caverns, glacial rifts Worshipers antiquarians, historians, librarians, those who seek the meaning of life at all cost Servitors oozes (particularly shoggoths) I N F L U E N C E S TA G E DC 30 Area 1,000-foot radius; Nucleus 15-foot radius AC 42; Saves +25; hp 520 Effects fast healing, protect lore, spawn ooze, Tablets of the Gods (2), tentacles (10d6), undulant terrain Escalation Every time Ubbo-Sathla absorbs a living creature with its tentacle attack, it has a 25% chance to escalate to stage I N F L U E N C E S TA G E D C 32 CR 27; XP 3,276,800 Area 2,500-foot radius; Nucleus 15-foot-radius AC 45; Saves +28; hp 640 Effects fast healing, protect lore, spawn ooze, Tablets of the Gods (4), tentacles (20d6), undulant terrain Escalation Every time Ubbo-Sathla absorbs a living creature with its tentacle attack, it has a 50% chance to escalate to stage I N F L U E N C E S TA G E D C 35 CR 30; XP 9,830,400 Area mile radius; Nucleus 15-foot-radius AC 48; Saves +31; hp 760 Effects fast healing, protect lore, spawn ooze, Tablets of the Gods (6), tentacles (30d6), undulant terrain D E F E AT Combat Ubbo-Sathla’s influence may be defeated by damage Doing so once it has escalated to stage influence is the only way to study the Tablets of the Gods Destruction of Lore If the Tablets of the Gods are destroyed, there is a cumulative 10% chance per round that Ubbo-Sathla’s influence is destroyed as well INFLUENCE EFFEC TS Protect Lore Ubbo-Sathla was originally created to guard the Tablets of the Gods, but in its mindless obsession with protecting lore, it will protect any object containing written information of any sort Any such object (books, carved tablets, notes scribbled on scraps of parchment, and so on) that are left untended within Ubbo-Sathla’s influence are transported by long tendrils of protoplasm at the start of any round on which they are untended to merge with Ubbo-Sathla’s nucleus Once merged, they cannot be utilized or studied as long as Ubbo-Sathla’s influence remains active, but they may be targeted by attacks to damage or destroy them For the purposes of resolving saving throws, all sources of knowledge protected by Ubbo-Sathla are considered to be equipped by Uboo-Sathla’s nucleus, and use the influence’s saving throw bonus to resist effects Fast Healing Ubbo-Sathla’s nucleus heals damage inflicted to it equal to 10 points per current Tablet of the Gods in its possession per round Spawn Ooze At the start of each round, Ubbo-Sathla spawns a number of oozes at random points throughout its influence The total CR of oozes created cannot exceed Ubbo-Sathla’s current influence stage times 20 Shoggoths are a favorite ooze for Ubbo-Sathla to spawn in this way Tablets of the Gods A number of Tablets of the Gods equal to twice Ubbo-Sathla’s current influence exist within the god’s nucleus These tablets may be destroyed only via damage inflicted by artifacts or creatures of demigod status or greater; each has hardness 30 and 500 hit points, and use Ubbo-Sathla’s influence’s AC and save modifiers Destroying all of the Tablets of the Gods is one way to potentially banish Ubbo-Sathla, but if Ubbo-Sathla’s influence can be removed without destroying the Tablets of the Gods, these potent artifacts remain behind and can be studied Each Tablet of the Gods contains one potent item of lore, but to successfully learn from a tablet, a character must spend 2d4 days in contemplation studying a single tablet, taking breaks for only a few hours at a time each day Each day the study progresses, the character must make a successful Fortitude save equal to the highest influence DC Ubbo-Sathla reached to resist suffering 3d6 points of ability drain to a randomly determined ability score as the otherworldly strain of studying secrets meant only for the gods takes its toll If the character survives to the end of the 2d4 days of study, the tablet he was studying crumbles to dust and the character gains a potent boon The nature of this boon should be determined by the GM—examples include learning a fundamental secret of life or reality or the multiverse, a permanent +1 increase to an ability score, the ability to cast a single 4th-level or lower spell as a spell-like ability times a day, the ability to cast a single spell of 7th level 283