Given that tomorrow is Halloween (and with roughly another month having passed since my last post... sigh, I really need to get back on blogging and back on running D&D games again, but I keep on meeting roadblocks and annoying hurdles (some my own fault, some not)), I figured it'd be as good a time as any to write about one of my favorite creepy types of D&D monsters: the UNDEAD! I've already written about the undead in King of Kings in a few different places: salt mummies, parrot-fiends, false prophets, and rusalki (not to mention various types of undead dinosaurs in session reports) have rounded out the kinds of dead things now walking in the world of the Enlightened Empire. So check those out if any of them catch your eye! Here, I wanted to make some original, King of Kings-ified versions of classic D&D undead, riffing on Gus L.'s Monster Archaeology posts from years back (a huuuuuge influence on me and my thinking about D&D), namely his post on Lesser Undead in OD&D (please PLEASE check it out !!)
The Reanimated
Number Encountered: N/A
Hit Dice: 1
Attacks: 1 claw (1d6) or weapon
Armor: Unarmored (0)
Morale: 6*
Puppeteered: The reanimated are controlled by some outside force or being. If that control is severed or destroyed, the reanimated instantly collapse to the ground.
Undead: Immune to poison, disease, mind effects, etc.
Unfeeling: Do not react to being harmed. Do not make morale checks unless forced to (such as due to a dispelling or turning).
The dead are a tool, one that can be used to very effective ends in the right hands. Whatever their origin, condition, or the mode of their animation, these reanimated cadavers form the backbone of the art of necromancy.
Types of Reanimated
Fresh
In Good Condition: +1 to hit points.
Bloated
Buoyant: Floats in water.
Fetid Gas: A successful hit causes the corpse to release stinking gases. Save vs. stench or begin to vomit.
Rotting
Disease: The claws of a rotting corpse carry disease.
Horrifying Countenance: Rotting corpses are disgusting to behold. Save vs. disgust or take a -1 penalty to all rolls while you can see the corpse.
Pickled
Edible: Although it likely tastes poor, the pickled corpse is technically edible.
Preserved: The pickled corpse has advantage on saving throws against effects that would damage or disintegrate its body.
Skeletal
Fleshless: Skeletons are immune to cold effects and take half damage from fire.
Fragile: Skeletons take double damage from bludgeons.
There's practically innumerable ways for a corpse to be reanimated: a necromancer animating dead muscle with chthonic magic, a ghul's chilly touch bringing the body under thrall (keep an eye out for a post on ghuls that I keep procrastinating on), a nefarious carnivorous plant wrapping its vines around the limbs like a marionette, baleful rays from purple moon-rocks throbbing in the joints, or fished out of the pickling jars of some mad sorcerer. There is no one way to counteract all types of reanimation (although turning, given the influence of Truth over all things, can be effective against all types of reanimated).
[This is basically just my attempt at combining all possible types of "dead body controlled by a necromancer" into one statblock with little modular bits connected. Zombies and skeletons are already this type of undead in OD&D and Basic, so this is more or less a broadening from that original mold! Also, the note that they can be forced to do morale checks is my first clumsy attempt at integrating various ways of "turning" undead that first got introduced in the post on parrot-fiends, since the Unceasingly Useful Dermestid Box provides a secular alternative to undead-turning.]
While reanimated corpses lack all agency, being little more than hunks of flesh puppeteered by an outside actor, there are those of the living dead which cling to independence and whose shuddering mockery of life sneers at Truth. Two such willful bodies are worth touching upon here.
Barrow Body
Number Encountered: 1d6
Hit Dice: 3+1
Attacks: 1 touch (energy drain)
Armor: as chain (2)
Morale: 10*
Energy Drain: The touch of a barrow body drains a full experience level upon a successful hit. The victim loses one hit die's worth of HP, corresponding to-hit bonuses, and any class abilities gained from the level they lost. A character brought to level 0 by a barrow body dies and becomes a barrow body.
Invulnerability: Barrow bodies take no damage from non-magical missiles. While melee attacks can damage the body's... body, the daeva inhabiting it does not "die" until dispelled (i.e., the barrow body can be rendered immobile by melee damage, but it will still be "alive").
Paralyze with Terror: Anyone seeing a barrow body must save or be paralyzed with terror. Paralysis is broken if the barrow body attacks, goes out of sight, or if the victim is shaken out of it via smelling salts etc.
Undead: Immune to poison, disease, mind effects, etc.
Unfeeling: Do not react to being harmed. Do not make morale checks unless forced to (such as due to a dispelling or turning).
The death of a good, honest person is a victory for deceit, and thus corpses not properly protected (by a watchful dog (their mean gaze shielding from unclean spirits) or ritual fires) are vulnerable to possession by the invisible deceitful daeva Nasrusht. Nasrusht has no body, and thus hungers after bodies, for even feeling dulled by death and decay is more than the nothingness that is its normal existence. In the western satrapies at the core of the Enlightened Empire, Nasrusht is kept at bay by ritual excarnation, placing the body atop a tower of silence and leaving it open to be picked apart by carrion birds and dogs, before the bones are safely removed and ensconced in the tomb. Such towers are a more recent appearance here in the eastern satrapies. Instead, the locals since time immemorial are more accustomed to heretical burial practices: constructing barrow mounds to bury their heroes, or ensconcing them beneath great stone kurgans, flesh still on bone when set into the earth. Thus, for centuries generations of good, honest folk have been left open to rapacious Nasrusht, leaving an uncanny barrow body in many tombs. Some temple exorcists of the True Religion have made it a mission to wander the countryside and expel the Nasrusht-cursed corpses from their crypts, despite the protestations of villagers and tribesmen disgusted that their ancestors are being defiled so insultingly.
Corpses of good people are ritually unclean due to Nasrusht's influence, whether reanimated as a barrow body or otherwise. The only exception to this are ancient relics of saints, begrudgingly made clean by temple functionaries disappointed at the popularity of such local cults. Thus, victims of Nasrusht's touch, which makes the skin pallid and the face languid and drains the victim of the will to live and of their connection to their very selves as they become more alike to the dead than the living, will not be ministered to by temple priests until they are ritually washed and atoned. Their accursed half-life can only be dispelled by a high-ranking mobad, and not just any high-ranking mobad but one who has specialized in the art of forgiveness for uncleanliness via star-magic. Such mobads are rare, and likely to request very particular favors in exchange for their services (it is said that one such mobad-doctor, Behzad Marzbani, occasionally makes his appearance in Humakuyun when he isn't on his dhow in the Sea of Giants).
[For more on Nasrusht and burial practices in historic Iran, read the page on corpses in Encyclopaedia Iranica. Also note that IRL, the type of burial practice involving exposing the body to the elements actually originated in eastern Iran, not in the west, as I have it here, but I kinda flipped it for the purposes of the game.]
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| Yes, I maybe cleaved a bit too close to the look of the ringwraiths with this drawing but they look cool so |
Rove-Wraith
Number Encountered: 1d6
Hit Dice: 4+1
Attacks: 1 weapon (1d6 + energy drain)
Armor: as chain+shield (2+shield)
Morale: 11*
Energy Drain: The sword of a rove-wraith drains a full experience
level upon a successful hit. The victim loses one hit die's worth of
HP, corresponding to-hit bonuses, and any class abilities gained from
the level they lost. A character brought to level 0 by a rove-wraith dies and becomes a barrow body.
Invulnerability: Rove-wraiths take no damage from non-magical weapons, and half damage from silver weapons.
Mount: Rove-wraiths ride upon steeds made from smoke or congealed blood.
Paralyze with Terror: Anyone
seeing a rove-wraith must save or be paralyzed with terror. Paralysis
is broken if the rove-wraith attacks, goes out of sight, or if the
victim is shaken out of it via smelling salts etc.
Undead: Immune to poison, disease, mind effects, etc.
Unfeeling: Does not react to being harmed. Does not make morale checks unless forced to (such as due to a dispelling or turning).
While good, honest corpses are left open to nefarious Nasrusht, the corpses of especially cruel and evil-hearted men, those most motivated toward deceit and destruction in life, are made unclean by their own conduct and can maintain willfulness after death. Most often, these are the corpses of rapacious conquerors, warlords, and tyrants, although especially cruel torturers and sorcerers are present among their number as well. They are called rove-wraiths because, in their desperate restlessness as they hunger after the pleasures of life, they wander about the wildernesses and palace complexes they once ruled over, never comfortable staying in one place (rather unlike the buried bodies held by Nasrusht, or ghuls cursed forever to a single spot). They become fixated on some object of their obsession in life, or on some cruel mission they never succeeded in following through to fruition, which they seek after in their wanderings (even if the mission was as simple as not feeling they had brought enough villages to heel). They are, however, thankfully rather solitary creatures, banding together into small and short-lived alliances of evil, and thus their forces are kept from overwhelming the world of living men.
1d12 Rove-Wraiths of the East and their Cruel Fixations
- Yarga the Bloodthirsty: Barbarian tyrant of northern Numistan in ancient times, who once delighted in the lamentations of women. Now a blind and deaf mummy stiff under layers of clay with an uncanny drunken ability to dodge blows. Seeks a way to hear his favorite sound again.
- The Decapitatrix: The cruelest of amazon queens, who decapitated the victims of her raids, and then her own tribeswomen, until she herself came under the blade. A shuddering headlessness under dripping deer hides. Desperate for her own head, now lost.
- Dog-headed Dyan the Dreadful: The only known wraith of the dog-headed men, who are already known for their demon-haunted cruelty. He was known for injustices done unto babies and mothers. Just wants to taste succulent childflesh again, but for his burnt-out tongue.
- The Ringseeker: Eunuch advisor to an ancient tyrant, arch-liar and arch-torturer, whose foul tongue wormed its way into his liege's worst neuroses. Ashamed of himself, he seeks after a golden ring of his tyrant's seal, which he coveted from the ruler's heir.
- Shameful Once-Prince: Wraith of the ruling house of the Enlightened Empire, passed over for the throne due to his evilness, leading to uprising and civil war. Disfigured, scarred, and perpetually sobbing, he wanders after his insistent birthright.
- Farahnaz the Ferocious: Warrior woman tyrant of the mountain fastnesses, now ghastly and bent over like a dessicated monkey, sword in hand. Wanders the mountains searching for the dragon (now long-dead) that she abandoned her kingdom to starvation for.
- Skazzadraxx of Tandurstan: Ancient dino-wraith king, whose palace (now half-buried and rotten) was a circus maximus of gore, wherein the now-decrepit thunder lizard mockingly murdered human slaves for the delight of reptile masters. Seeks after rivers of blood once again.
- The Star-Blind: Selfish sorcerer who sought to spy on all souls in the world through meditations on the north star as an aspect of many-eyed Mihr. Empty eye sockets glowing with starlight, skin bursting with a thousand betrayed secrets, he wanders just wanting to finally die but Mihr won't let him.
- Filth-Festerer: Mother of a dozen diseases, she was a selfish chthonic sorcerer who bred daevas in her bloodstream and had sex with feces-covered false prophets. Her skin sloughs off like a loose robe as clouds of flies festoon her. She seeks the ancient evil known as the Red Death.
- Queen Naghme: Poisoner of two dozen husbands and suitors, now given over to spiders and snakes. Her pallid skin bulges with the venomous things crawling beneath the surface, wrapped in her black rag. She seeks after the tomb of her son, in order to marry him.
- Nameless Betrayer: Eunuch of an ancient tyranny whose betrayal was so rank that his name was expunged from all records, all monuments, and all speech. Shamefully shuddering in a ragged rug clutching a curved dagger, he seeks after his own name, surely still recorded somewhere.
- [ ]: Sorcerer who sought to bring about the Deluge anew, putting his ear to the ground to listen to the whispers of the caged false stars below. Killed a hundred or more in rituals mocking the sun, but never sought his own immortality, instead being magically suicidal. Cursed by Truth to spit brine when he attempts to speak, he knows his name but it is anathema to be spoken. Seeks out the salt desert, so he may finally dry.
[Yes, these are just wights and wraiths... BUT my hope is that they're at the very least an interesting take on wights and wraiths, that tie them more into the setting :) Thank you for reading and have a happy Halloween!]
