Breeyark.org
"It's OK — Gary sent us."
An otherworldly visitor with an odd sense of timing
Armour Class: 8 (6)
Hit Dice: 2+1**** (M)
Move: 90' (30')
THAC0: 17
Attacks: 1 weapon (2 claws, 1 bite + paralysis )
Damage: by weapon (1d6 (x2), 1d8)
No. Appearing: 0 (1d2)
Save As: F1
Morale: 9
Treasure Type: H (R)
Intelligence: 8+
Alignment: Neutral to Chaotic
XP Value: 65
Monster Type: Humanoid (Very Rare)
Terrain: Any
Erroneously nicknamed "holy slaves" by the few who know them, hierodules are off-world creatures, native to the campaign world's moon, a nearby planet, or another star system. In their natural form, hierodules resemble bipedal, crab-like humanoids with two claws, a mouth filled with stinging tendrils, and bodies encased in a grey-green carapace; in this form, their natural AC is 6, and they may attack with 2 claws and a bite (save vs. paralysis or freeze for 1d6 rounds).
The hierodules' native civilisation is quite advanced, through the application of science and magic. Their cities are great sprawling masses of stone, intermixed with streams, parks, and broad sanctuaries. Within their cities, wondrous devices exist: energy weapons, infallible scrying devices, voidships capable of travelling between stars, advanced medical facilities, mechanical golem servants, and non-magical means of transport across vast distances in little or no time.
The Hierodules' greatest talent, however, is their ability to transcend the limitations of linear time. Instead, hierodules live in "spherical" time. A close analogy might be a thread (linear time) crumpled into a ball (spherical time) so that all points on the continuum touch countless other points along its own length. Living in spherical time allows hierodules to traverse the boundaries between past, present, and future.
Living in spherical time grants a sort of omniscience with almost limitless possibilities. However, because hierodules "skip" across linear time, not all of what they see is real. Their insight into the potential reality along a given continuum's past or future is tempered with the certainty that nothing is actually bound to reality. The unfortunate consequence is that most hierodules are perpetually confused: They have great difficulty distinguishing the present from the past or future, and because they realise this limitation, they harbour an innate expectation that reality is mutable and not, by any means, absolutely consequential.
To combat the mild insanity caused by their chronological observations, hierodules have developed a keen interest in the affairs and events of other civilisations. Travelling on their voidships, hierodules have made sporadic (and nondescript) contact with worldly civilisations.
When meeting with other races, hierodules makes use of their innate polymorph self ability to appear as normal denizens of the world they're visiting. Polymorphed forms are permanent for as long as the hierodule wishes, and the power can be used at will. Despite their mutable form, however, hierodules cannot escape their proclivity for spherical time. After a short amount of time with a hierodule, it becomes apparent that the being makes no boundary between past, present, or future. This limitation reveals itself through the hierodule's habit of speaking in the third person, using cryptic phrases, and evoking enigmatic speech. Frequently, hierodules seem to speak prophetically (and sometimes sycophantically), though what they speak of may have already happened, will happen later, or (because of their perceptive lacking) may not ever happen at all.
A hierdodule's "time travelling" abilities grant significant linguistic talent, and hierodules need only pass an INT check to understand and speak any tongue to which they're exposed. Hierodules also possess the ability to teleport at will, though they appear able to invoke this ability only during certain phases of the local solar cycle.
Hierodule voidships are invisible within the atmosphere of most populated worlds, and they always land at or near sites dominated by ancient stone henges. Encountered hierodules carry "rune-rings" as treasure. Each individual ring resembles an octagonal gold coin, pierced with a central hole and inscribed with unrecognisable runes (though the pattern of these runes invariably mimics the arrangement of stones at the henge site at which the voidship landed). Although rune-rings retain an intrinsic mineral value, hierodules seldom use them to purchase goods. Instead, they are left with seemingly careless abandon wherever hierodules have passed. Some sages posit that rune-rings are left as "markers" along a given continuum, serving as chronological references to a hierodule's presence in a given place and time. If this is true, the fact that they are sometimes found and plucked by lucky travellers must be a considerable inconvenience to the unfortunate hierodule who left them.