Ethereal marauder

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, an ethereal marauder is a magical beast with abilities similar to ethereal filchers and phase spiders.

Publication history

The ethereal marauder appeared in the third edition Monster Manual (2000), and in the 3.5 revised Monster Manual (2003).

Description

An ethereal marauder has a muscular, velociraptor-like body that is a bluish-violet in color, with darker markings along the spine. It has a barbed tail, and feet with thick claws. The ethereal marauder's head is triangular, extending from the body into a large, triangular mouth with a single, hook-like claw at each point and rows of teeth going back down the throat also going down each point.

Like the ethereal filcher and phase spider, the ethereal marauder is an expert at traveling between the Ethereal Plane and the Material Plane. Unlike the filcher, whose purpose for doing this is to steal, the marauder is more like the spider and does it for the purpose of hunting. It looks in the ethereal plane for a place where it suspects a victim will be, and then goes to the material plane, hoping to catch its prey unaware. It bites them, kills them, and then shifts back to the ethereal plane. Due to its fearsome mouth and raptor-like body, it is somewhat better at this than the phase spider. If an ethereal marauder is injured, it prefers to teleport back to the ethereal plane rather than put up a fight.

Ethereal marauders cannot speak.

They are regarded as neutral in alignment, but have distinctly evil habits.