Intellect Devourer Insinuator (Basic Lore)

Intellect Devourer Insinuator (CR 25)
Pure Evil - Medium - Aberration
Intellect Devourers look like a rounded fleshy mass, usually a glistening grey-pink, with four powerfully clawed legs holding it up. Savants who know such things claim that they look exactly like large human brains, torn from their skulls, with legs. They have no evident heads or eyes, no muscles or ribs or evidence of breath. It is obvious that they are very alien indeed. Intellect Devourers are suspected of being from another Plane, although which it might be is speculative at best. What is known, is that Intellect Devourers possess weird, eldritch abilities, able to shrink and grow in size, project shimmering attacks like heat-waves in the air, and they are known for crawling into the dead and 'wearing' their bodies in a manner most horrid. Intellect Devourers are inimical to all life, but they particularly target sentient beings. They greatly relish those with the Spark, but they will attack and inhabit anything intelligent. In a pinch, they have even been known to attack and wear animals, but such things are apparently rare. If an Intellect Devourer attacks, kill it with sword and fire, because if you are defeated, your flesh will become the property of the...thing. Intellect Devourer Insinuators are much larger and more dangerous than lesser Intellect Devourers, not least because of their ability to bind others to their awful alien will. Insinuators are especially awful for their powers to leave their victims alive enough to serve 'useful purposes' even after the Intellect Devourer has chosen another body to steal. This power endears them to slavers and other dealers in flesh, such as Hobgoblins, Aranea, and occasionally even Bandits. Insinuators, like lesser Devourers, haunt ruins and wildernesses, dungeons and caves and swamps, all manner of semi-deserted places, where intelligent creatures go, but not often, and often alone. Unlike lesser Devourers, Insinuators are sly and clever enough that they can actually be found acting right in the heart of Civilization. They are bad at mimicing the normal behavior of their victims, but they can be extremely effective at kidnapping those who draw their interest...to the extreme detriment of their victims. If Insinuators are suspected, getting powerful heroes to root them out is a very high priority, as an Insinuator infestation can easily 'core out' even sizeable communities very quickly indeed. Intellect Devourers are far more destructive to communities than other flesh-stealing monsters. Wise governors act immediately and vigorously to any suspicions. The size of a man, Insinuators can attack in a massive wave of eldritch rays, or they can sneakily cause all manner of havoc by forcing others to act. If they are victorious in battle, they wear the bodies of their victims like horrific trophies, and revel in them in ways most unwholesome, until they grow bored and sell them on, or murder them for sport. Like other Intellect Devourers, Insinuators delight in all manner of debauchery, and will frequently use their meat, when it is ending its useful fun, to attack settlements or outposts in search of more flesh to wear, although less frequently than lesser members of their vile ilk.