Famous examples of blink beasts include the blink bunny, blink dog, and blink mammoth.
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| ©2018 AzuleanLupus |
The blink dogs, despite the name, are intelligent fey that call themselves thoa. They come in a range of diverse appearances that may loosely resemble mundane canines. They blink across the preternatural planes of faerie for their own esoteric purposes. Rarely blink dogs will become trapped between the planes and transform into the grotesque warpwolves, who are now driven by a jealous hatred of all other planar travelers who did not suffer this fate. (I suspect the warpwolves are actually an alias for the Hounds of Tindalos. Their stated backstory is all kinds of silly.)
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| From S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors, art by Loïc Muzy |
The blink bunny, known in poetry as al-mi'raj, is a vicious predator native to the Cave of Caerbannog on the island of Jezîrat al-Tennyn ("Dragon's Isle"). Despite their comical appearance, a yellow rabbit with a spiral horn like a unicorn, they are able to kill other creatures many times their size. Some varieties have psychokinetic powers or petrify with their horn. Their only weakness is witchcraft, but even so the witches of the Dragon's Isle are only able to make the beasts docile long enough to transport them away from populated areas. Some sages speculate that the al-mi'raj is related to fearsome critters like the jackalope, skvader and wolpertinger.
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| ©1998 Jonathan Hunt |
The temporal filcher of the otyugh-kin is able to "blink" not only through space, but a few minutes forward through time as well. Not only that, they are able to levitate and scale sheer surfaces. Unlike typical otyughs, they are ambush predators that camouflage themselves before striking. It is a cousin to (or variant of) the ethereal filcher.
Dupli-cats and phase spiders prefer hunting blink beasts because such prey is rich in the "id" that they subsist on. (The "id" is possibly an alias for phosphorus or something. It is weird like that.)
The blinkling or blickish are a subrace of halflings. The two names originally appeared in separate books but since the end concept is the same I am treating them as aliases of the same race. They are planetouched with the heritage of blink dogs or hound archons (possibly lupinal guardinals?); various other origins were offered in later sourcebooks. They have some limited power to teleport that may be enhanced with racial feats or racial classes. Their appearance ranges from sexy athletic halflings with hirsute and vaguely wolfish features to circus freaks with the ears, tails and claws of dogs.
Sourcebooks
- The almiraj appears in Pathfinder Bestiary 4.
- The temporal filcher appears in Psionic Bestiary.
- The blink creature template appears in Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary.
- The al-mi'raj and psionic al-mi'raj appear in Tome of Horrors Complete.
- The warpwolf appears in Mythic Monsters: Magical Beasts.
- The blickish appears in Legends & Lairs: Mythic Races.
- The blinkling appears in Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Half-Breeds and Bloodforge.
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