Gargantuan Blackball
by Blacky the BlackballArmour Class: 9
Hit Dice: None
Move: 60' (20')
Attacks: 1 touch
Damage: See below
Number Appearing: 1
Save As: See below
Morale: 11
Intelligence: 0
Alignment: None
XP Value: 7,500
The gargantuan blackball (there is only one known to exist) sits in the city of Saltmire. It appears to be an incredibly huge (500' diameter) sphere of total blackness, and its size makes it visible for miles around. Like a normal blackball, anything that touches it simply vanishes with no saving throw - when it suddenly appeared 30 years ago, it obliterated half a street's worth of buildings.
Luckily for the inhabitants of Saltmire, the gargantuan blackball doesn't move around and doesn't seem interested in chasing intelligent creatures. Whether this is because it can't, because it chooses not to, or because humans are simply below its notice threshold is unknown, since as with all blackballs it has proved utterly impossible to communicate with or even affect. Being so huge, it is too big to be affected by a Gate spell. So far, no-one has tried using a Wish spell on it.
The gargantuan blackball has been stationary in its location since it appeared, although in the intervening years what started as a strange cult devoted to worshipping it has grown and now controls the city with a ruthless hand. Criminals are regularly "sacrificed" by being thrown into the blackball, and the city is now a de-facto theocracy. Strangely enough, the priests of the cult do have clerical spells - although the exact origin of their divine power remains a mystery. The priests themselves, of course, maintain that they get their power from the blackball and that it speaks to them in their dreams. Critics say that they are either insane or being duped by some other Immortal who is manipulating them - but they don't say it too loudly because they don't want to end up being thrown in the sphere for heresy...
The strangest thing of all is that on four occasions over the years a dragon has been seen to fly to the city and fly straight into the blackball in an apparent act of suicide. Not even the Cult of the Sphere can offer an explanation for that, and rumours that it is the same dragon that has flown in on all four occasions are dismissed as ridiculous.