Regeneration. If it has at least 1 hit point remaining, the aspect of Atropus regains 20 hit points at the start of its turn. It dies when it reaches 0 hit points.
Negative Energy Aura. All undead creatures that start their turns within 30 feet of the aspect of Atropus have advantage on attack rolls against any non-undead and regeneration of 5 hp for every turn that they stay within the range of the aura, and have at least 1 hp remaining. All non-undead creatures within 30 feet of the aspect of Atropus, who do not have protection against negative energy effects, have disadvantage against any undead creatures for as long as they stay within the aura. Any living creature slain here, who is not revived in some way, will rise as a specter after 1d4 rounds.
Create Spawn. A living creature of size Huge or smaller slain by the aspect of Atropus (unless the creature died within its aura) becomes an angel of decay in 1d4 rounds. Spawn are under the command of the aspect of Atropus and remain enslaved until its death. They do not possess any of the abilities they had in life.
Anathematic Secrecy. The aspect of Atropus is immune to all divine divination spell effects.
Innate Spellcasting. The aspect of Atropus' spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 15). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components.
At will: blight, circle of death, create undead
3/day: meteor swarm
Multiattack. The aspect of Atropus can make two slam attacks on its turn.
Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +19 to hit, reach 20 ft., one target. Hit: (4d8+10) bludgeoning damage plus (1d6) necrotic damage. The target must succeed on a DC 19 Constitution save, or its hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the necrotic damage taken. This reduction lasts until the creature finishes a long rest. The target dies if this effect reduces its hit point maximum to 0. The aspect of Atropus gains a total of 5 temporary hit points if the target fails the save.
Call Meteor Shower. The aspect of Atropus can sacrifice 50 hit points to call down a torrent of meteors. All creatures (including the aspect of Atropus) within a 100-foot radius take (10d6) points of bludgeoning damage and (10d6) points of fire damage. A DC 11 Dexterity save halves this damage. After the meteor shower, the affected area becomes difficult terrain and costs 10 feet of movement to enter from the outside.
Divine Scourge (1/day). As a bonus action, the aspect of Atropus can cause all Clerics, Paladins, Aasimar, and Tieflings within a 1,000-mile radius to become poisoned for 1d4 hours. An affected creature must succeed on a DC 19 Constitution save or take 66 points of necrotic damage.
Description
"Behold the death of your world. There, cresting the horizon. Yes, that faint body is he, and he comes for me...for us all. Rejoice, for the end is near, and all life, all pain, all suffering shall be silenced in the perfect eternity of undeath.” - Caira Xasten, Mad Astronomer and Ur-Priest
Atropus, the World Born Dead, drifts through the gulfs of space, searching for worlds to consume and, when it finds them, erasing all life with its gruesome touch. As the afterbirth of creation, it is committed to unmaking all things. Nothing, not even the gods, can halt its relentless progress.
Background
Every sentient mortal race and culture has some explanation for its existence, some story or myth to describe the creation of the world and the birth of the ancestors. Since it is a rare case when two myths are identical, scholars of the subject sift through the rhetoric for commonalities believed to be present in all legends. Complications arise due to regional variations, translation errors, and the simple scarcity of reliable sources, all making the process of divining the roots of creation a daunting task.
Certain scholars have made breakthroughs by comparing dwarf creation myths, the oral tradition of the gray elves, and the collected writings of the lich Acererak, recovered from a strange tower deep in the Plane of Shadow. The findings have been disturbing, pointing to some primeval mishap—a horrible divine accident leading to the creation of something called the World Born Dead.
According to the writings, creation was the result of a “prime mover.” This being’s identity varies with the particular story. Most scholars agree this entity must be the force behind the gods springing forth into existence from the primeval void. This force, idea, or being is called Atropus.
Some theologians believe the appearance of these divine agencies came with a dreadful price. In order for them to take shape, there must have been a sacrifice: For life to exist, there must be death. Atropus must have caused its own death and in that sense became the afterbirth of creation, the wasted materials left over from the formation of the gods. Furthermore, since the gods are living beings, and since life relies upon energy gained from the Positive Energy Plane, Atropus must be their inversion: death incarnate, drawing its own power, such as it is, from the Negative Energy Plane.
Little remains of the prime mover that made the supreme sacrifice, nothing more than a decaying, disembodied head, leaving in its wake cast-off necromantic detritus that floats through the void. Perhaps atropals—the stillborn gods—take their shape from these cast-off bits. Atropus is bound to unmake living things, to absorb their souls in an orgy of violence. Its touch is terrifying to witness, as countless barren worlds crawling with restless dead mutely testify.
Goals
Atropus saps life from worlds it encounters, draining away energy as it draws ever closer to a planet. Once it comes near enough to a planet’s gravity, the celestial body that is the elder evil enters a descending orbit, sweeping closer and closer and looming larger and larger in the night skies. The effects are terrifying. As the moonlet nears a planet’s surface, the dead rise from their graves and, as Atropus fills the night sky, the twitching undead spread like a stain until nothing living remains.
Atropus is self-aware, but not as mortals can conceive. Its memory extends back to the one moment when it brought forth the gods, and it has lamented this decision for all time. Stripped of its incredible power, it would undo its sacrifice.
To this end, Atropus devours life energy to replace what it gave. Into this sucking vacuum, it draws positive energy from those planets it encounters, but the negative energy constituting its existence instantly negates any life energy it takes.
Atropus knows this. It suspects that the instant all life is swept from the Material Plane, the gods must cease to be and, with their annihilation, so too will it find its own end.
Description
Atropus is as much a place as it is a being. It is a small moonlet spinning through the void, waiting to be ensnared by the pull of the planets it nears. To those on the surface of the chosen world, the elder evil appears as a speck in the sky. At night it is almost invisible, blending in with the darkness, but during twilight and dawn, it looks like a moving pinhole of darkness.
As it draws closer and its sign intensifies, it grows, expand- ing from a tiny dot to a small disk until it dominates the sky. Pitted and slick with the black slime of the putrid amniotic fluid of its birth, it hangs above, always drifting away from the light of the sun and lurking overhead when the sun has fled. It has the appearance of a huge chunk of black stone, but from certain angles, it looks like a great hairless head, black eyes glassy and soulless.
Atropus has no understandable personality and no inclinations other than craving the destruction of all living things. This rock is not uninhabited: Undead conjured from the darkest nightmares infest it. These horrors claim the craters for themselves, flitting through the shadows, ravenous for the energy of the living. The master of them all is the focus, an extension of Atropus’s will.
The focus is a headless, human-shaped creature with flesh fossilized during Atropus’s endless roaming through the cosmos. Closer inspection reveals that its foul body shares the same hideous coating that wells up from the rents and fissures on the moonlet’s surface.
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