Monster: Stygian Chorus

Stygian Chorus

A swarm of heads, mummified, rotting, and bare skulls flies around murmuring obscenities and forbidden lore in a mixture of fiendish tongues.

CR 6; XP 2,400
NE Tiny Undead (swarm)
Init +8; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +20
Aura stygian song (30 ft.)

Defense
AC 19, touch 17, flat-footed 14 (+4 Dex, +1 dodge, +2 natural, +2 size)
hp 66 (12d8+12)
Fort +4, Ref +8, Will +9
Defensive Abilities swarm traits; Immune undead traits
Weakness swayed by song

Offense
Speed fly 30 ft. (perfect)
Melee swarm (3d6)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Special Attacks distraction (DC 16), fiendish chatter, stygian command

Statistics
Str 10, Dex 18, Con —, Int 13, Wis 13, Cha 11
Base Atk +8; CMB —; CMD —
Feats Alertness, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Skill Focus (Perform [sing]), Toughness
Skills Fly +31, Knowledge (arcana) +16, Knowledge (religion) +16, Perception +20, Perform (sing) +18, Sense Motive +5
Languages Understand Abyssal, Celestial, and Infernal, speak (and sing) a maddening mixture of all of those

Ecology
Environment any
Organization solitary, pair, or choir (3–6)
Treasure incidental

Special Abilities

Fiendish Chatter (Su) Stygian chorus swarm attack is composed of baleful utterances in fiendish languages. Half of its damage is sonic and half is inflicted by raw unholy power.

Stygian Command (Su) Stygian chorus can take a standard action to command a single corpse within 30 feet to rise and perform one claw or slam attack as if was a skeleton or a zombie. Corpses that could not be animated as undead cannot be affected by this ability. This is a sonic necromancy effect.

Stygian Song (Su) Stygian chorus constantly sings a blasphemous verses in its many voices bestowing +1 profane bonus to caster level of spells and spell-like abilities with evil descriptor, +1 profane bonus to saving throws against effects with good descriptor or created by creatures with good subtype, –1 penalty to caster level of spell and spell-like abilities with good descriptor, and a –1 penalty to saving throws against effects with evil descriptor or created by creatures with evil subtype, doubled for sonic and language-dependent effects. This is a sonic effect.

Swayed By Song Stygian chorus has weak spot for songs. When a stygian chorus hears someone sing, it joins the song with a choir of ghastly, unnerving voices spending its standard action to sing and acting as fascinated. Any hostile action breaks the effects and renders the stygian chorus immune to the effects of song until the end of the encounter.

Stygian chorus is a swarm of skulls and severed heads of people who were versed in dark arts. The forbidden lore once bound in their brains now animates the shells that contained it, forcing them to recite and sing blasphemous praises to unholy powers. Stygian choruses arise particularly often when a cult or a band of scholars that dabbled in the forbidden lore but held little actual power gets slaughtered, either by champions of good, or by evil they unwittingly unleashed.