Editing Neh-thalggu (section)

==Golarion Neh-thalggu==
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Neh-thalggus are aliens from distant worlds, traveling the gulfs of space on immense living ships that swiftly decay when they land upon a new world, leaving behind a deadly cargo of hungry monsters. Neh-thalggus are carnivores, but they do not digest humanoid brains they eat—rather, these brains lodge in one of several bulbous blisters on the Creature’s back and help to increase its intellect.

Some speculate that neh-thalggus encountered in this reality may merely be juveniles of their kind, perhaps exiled from their home worlds by greater kin until they can prove their worth on other worlds. Their brain collections may be a morbid form of currency in their home realm, or the thoughts in these brains may merely be fuel for a dark apotheosis into an even more sinister mature form.

===Yah-thelgaad===
When a neh-thalggu has absorbed a critical mass of thoughts and memories from an unknown number of humanoid brains, its body undergoes a horrific transformation. The creature enters a state of torpor, its body curling into a tight ball as it consumes the oldest of its seven stored brains to trigger the metamorphosis. Over the course of several days of self-consumption, the neh-thalggu bursts from the shell of its old body into its new incarnation as a yah-thelgaad.

While the yah-thelgaad shares many of the features of its less powerful progenitor, it is in every way a more powerful creature than it was before. While the capacity to store one fewer brain than a neh-thalggu presents some disadvantage, the yah-thelgaad gains twice as much power from a collected brain as its lesser kin does. In addition, these creatures need not limit their harvest to the brains of humanoids - any Small or Medium creature's brain will do.

Yah-thelgaads are zealously devoted to the inscrutable causes of the Dominion of the Black, but they are also notoriously devout believers in that alliance's weird theology, worshipping a concept they refer to as the "Ineffable Void", among other cryptic mysteries. It is not uncommon for yah-thelgaads of high rank to also possess [[inquisitor]] or [[oracle]] levels, lording their authority and fanatical faith over those in their charge - the most powerful yah-thelgaads often take levels in mystic theurge to combine their class-based mastery of the divine with their stolen brains' arcane lore.

Yah-thelgaads often supervise the Dominion of the Black's surgical and genetic engineers on major projects, pushing those agents to attempt greater and more horrific procedures. For all their legendary cruelty, however, yah-thelgaads don't appear to gain pleasure from such experiments. Indeed, they don't seem to feel any emotions at all on their own, but rather experience such sensations vicariously through the memories of the brains they've collected. In this way, the creatures know lust, fear, hatred and pride without exposing their own minds to the disadvantages of being susceptible to mind-affecting effects.