Chaos Beast (Basic Lore)

Chaos Beast (CR 17)
True Chaotic - Large - Aberration (Outsider)
A chaos beast is a blubbery mass of shifting tentacles, claws, eyes, mouths, and other... bits. The creature constantly shifts through forms and shapes, in a never-ceasing, highly-disturbing ballet of senseless ataxia. Despite these many limbs, organs, and features, the chaos beast is effectively formless, while seeming to be trying to hold every form at once. It has no true internal structure, nor does it breathe, eat, or sleep. Chaos beasts are tiny fragments of elemental chaos, injected into the Prime Material. Chaos beasts, as their name suggest, behave unpredictably. It is unclear if they are motivated by anything, or if they are driven by any instincts or needs. Indeed, it is easy to assume that chaos beasts are mindless, operating randomly within their environments, but this isn't actually true. While chaos beasts aren't known for making sound tactical decisions in combat, or even consistently distinguishing friends from foes (if they can be said to have friends, or foes), there is a cold, albeit alien, intelligence lurking within them. Chaos beasts seem drawn to others of their kind, as though they can sense the disruption to time and space caused by their brethren. Given enough time, a chaos beast will always congregate with other chaos beasts. Of course, due to the hazards of observing chaos beasts in their natural environment, it is possible that, rather than gathering with other chaos beasts already in the Prime Material, the chaos beast is actually summoning or creating more chaos beasts. In any case, they are rarely encountered by themselves. Where there is one chaos beast, there are almost certainly more. In combat, chaos beasts are dangerous, not only for their unpredictability, but also because they can corrupt the flesh of Prime Material creatures they come into contact with. While a corrupted creature isn't turned into a chaos beast themselves, they are turned into shuddering blobs of flesh, making wielding weapons or casting spells quite difficult, if not impossible.