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For an old Scarred Lands game I ran, set in Hollowfaust, I had a rogue Necromancer named Ari, who served Belsameth, goddess of death, magic, madness and the night, and, from a little 'lab' set in the ghost quarter, would kidnap people to sacrifice and transform into undead. Being a game for 1st level characters, I wasn't about to use shadows or wights, but I wanted something less common than skeletons or zombies, which, in the City of Necromancers, would have been pretty passe...
Some tools she used, a pair of utilitarian spells, one intended for making bodies of important people suitable for display at state funerals and another meant to ease a hunters work in the field, turned to sinister purpose;
Mend the Dead
School necromancy; Level cleric 1, sorcerer/wizard 1
Casting Time 10 minutes
Components V, S, M (natron salts)
Range touch
Target one corpse
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no
With this spell, you can remove all traces of injury or decay to a corpse that has been dead less than 24 hours, or has been preserved with gentle repose. The body becomes warm, as if had just died, and wounds and signs of injury are obscured, so long as the body is primarily intact (missing tissue will not be replaced, but even trauma as severe as a severed finger will be rejoined to the hand, as long as all of the avulsed tissue is available and can be placed back into position). The decedents blood returns to a fluid state, although the body will begin cooling again immediately, as if it had just perished. Heal checks to determine cause of death become nearly impossible, and the difficulty class for such checks is increased by +10.
Shedding the Skin
School transmutation; Level druid 1, ranger 1, sorcerer/wizard 1
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M (salt and potash alum)
Range touch
Target one corpse up to size Large
Duration 1 minute
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no
You cause the skin and hide of a single dead creature to become pliable and elastic, yet also quite strong, allowing you to carefully peel the hide cleanly from the flesh in a single smooth action, generally starting at the lips and spreading the mouth open and peeling the skin back off of the head, across the shoulders and down the length of the body, removing the entire hide undamaged and within cutting or splitting it. The hide cannot be suffering from any significant amount of decay, and the spell will not repair any pre-existing damage to the hide. The creature must have died within the last 24 hours, or have been preserved in some manner (such as by gentle repose) for this spell to be effective. All non-hide material slides evenly off of the inside hide or skin as it is removed, including fatty tissue (but not fur or hair), making this spell extremely useful for hunters or furriers who wish to skin game in the field and store it for safe portage, although the skin will lose its temporary state of unnatural elasticity and toughness at the end of the skinning process. No creature larger than size Large can be skinned in a single casting by this spell, although multiple castings will make larger jobs significantly easier. Double the amount of castings required for each size category above Large, and the process cannot be performed in stages if the hide is to be removed intact, so each spell must be cast one right after the other.
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In her original incarnation, she only created four undead from a single corpse. She would begin by kidnapping some poor sod, and sacrificing him to Belsameth by driving a dagger into his heart.
She would collect the blood in a special copper vessel, and immediately begin working to instill necromantic 'life' into her first undead creation, the Blood Weird. The blood would be animated, a process that had to occur before it clotted, and become an ooze of cold, dead blood, that would flow along the ground to engulf living prey, attempting to suffocate it's prey (but having instructions from Ari to stop when a target ceases struggling, as she wished to sacrifice them herself. This wasn't always successful, and some targets indeed drowned...).
Blood Weird
Human Blood Weird CR 1/2
XP ???
NE Medium Undead
Init +2; [/b]Senses[/b] darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +0
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DEFENSE_______________________________________
AC 14, touch 12, flat-footed 12 (+2 Dex, +2 natural)
hp 4 (1d8)
Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +2
DR 5/--; [/b]Immune[/b] undead traits
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OFFENSE________________________________________
Speed 30 ft., swim 40 ft., climb 20 ft.
Melee melee touch +4 (0 + special)
Special Attacks drowning grapple
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STATISTICS______________________________________
Str 6, Dex 14, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +0; CMB +2, CMD 14
Feats Agile Maneuvers (B), Improved Grapple (B)
Gear none
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ECOLOGY_______________________________________
Environment any
Organization any
Treasure none
Appears as ~10 pints worth of reddish-black liquid, moving like a serpentine rivulet of cold blood.
Drowning Grapple does no damage and only restricts movement as per the Entangled (unanchored) condition), and can never achieve a pinned condition, but causes the target to need to begin making Con checks (DC 10, +1 / round) to avoid Suffocation. A victim cannot attempt to hold their breath normally versus this attack, as the cold blood attempts to force its way down the victims’ throat. Instead of gaining 2x Con score rounds of leeway before having to begin making Con checks, a victim only gains rounds equal to their Con modifier (minimum 1) before having to begin making checks, and this number is reduced normally if the victim makes a standard or full round action.
A character grappled by a blood-weird suffers half of any damage that is directed at the blood-weird, and the blood-weird’s damage reduction does not protect the victim from these attacks.
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Once the Blood-Weird's animation was complete, Ari would return to the bloodless corpse of her victim, and use first Mend the Dead to repair damage to the body, and then Shedding the Skin, to remove the victim's skin in one swift move.
The skin would be further cleaned with Prestidigitation, and then left inside-out, sprinkled with salts and tanning agents (potash alum, etc.). Originally, she used the brain of the deceased to tan the hide, but she has since found another use for that organ.
Leaving the skin to cure, she would turn to the body, and with an assortment of knives and scalpels of steel and obsidian, she would surgically remove every bit of muscle, sinew and tissue from the skeleton, leaving it denuded of flesh. This mass of musculature, organs and sinew she would place within a sealed ceramic container, used in ages past as wine storage tuns.
With the bones drying and the skin curing, she would focus on these muscles and organs next, imbuing the whole with a ghoulish hunger. Given the destructive nature of these undead, she would not bother to rebuke them, and merely leave them locked up in their ceramic vessels (which their acidic attacks could not dissolve) to unleash upon intruders, as they would attack the nearest living thing (which would surely not be her, as she would send a skeleton to let them out, while intruders dealt with her other undead minions...).
Viscera
Human Viscera CR 1/2
XP ???
NE Medium Undead
Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft., scent; Perception +0
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DEFENSE_______________________________________
AC 13, touch 11, flat-footed 12 (+1 Dex, +2 natural)
hp 7 (1d8+3)
Fort +0, Ref +1, Will +2
DR 5/slashing; Immune acid, undead traits
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OFFENSE________________________________________
Speed 10 ft.. climb 10 ft.
Melee slam +2 (1d6+2 bludgeoning +1 acid)
Special Attacks blood drain, acid jet
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STATISTICS______________________________________
Str 15, Dex 12, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +0; CMB +2, CMD 13
Feats Improved Grapple (B), Toughness (B)
Gear none
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ECOLOGY_______________________________________
Environment any
Organization any
Treasure none
This creature is a dripping mass of organs and muscles, pushing and pulling itself along the ground via muscular contractions like some boneless ooze. It rises to engulf another by shoving itself at them violently, with muscles and veins sprouting forth to drain blood from living prey.
Blood drain – If a Viscera hits with its slam attack, it can attempt to grapple. If it succeeds, it continues to inflict it’s slam damage as the muscles constrict around the target, and it’s acidic damage as well, while the veins and arteries snaking throughout the mass worm their way into living flesh to drain blood, causing 1 pt. of Con damage per round the grapple is maintained. For every point of Constitution damage caused in this manner, the Viscera heals 1 hit point worth of damage (up to its maximum).
Acid Jet – Once per day a Viscera can disgorge a gout of digestive acid to affect a single target within 10 ft (as a ranged touch attack, automatically hits if target is grappled) that inflicts 2d4+1 Acid damage. If a Viscera completely dissolves and consumes a grappled prey, an action which requires the creature to take 10 minutes consuming a dead body, its Acid Jet power is recharged and can be used again that day.
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Due to her desire to capture humanoid prey alive, for use in sacrifice, Ari's favorite creation was the Skin-Wight, which she would make for the tanned skin of her victim. The necromantic process gave it a leathery consistency, and made it ideal for capturing prey without 'accidentally' drowning them or dissolving them with acidic secretions, bones unbroken and blood undrained.
Skin-Wight
Human Skin-Wight CR 1/3
XP ???
NE Medium Undead
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +0
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DEFENSE_______________________________________
AC 14, touch 13, flat-footed 11 (+3 Dex, +1 natural)
hp 4 (1d8)
Fort +0, Ref +3, Will +2
DR 5/slashing; Immune undead traits
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OFFENSE________________________________________
Speed 30 ft.
Melee grapple +3 (damage by constriction)
Special Attacks constrict (1d3)
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STATISTICS______________________________________
Str 10, Dex 16, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +0; CMB +3 (+5 to grapple), CMD 14 (16 vs. grapple)
Feats Agile Maneuvers (B), Improved Grapple (B)
Gear none
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ECOLOGY_______________________________________
Environment any
Organization any
Treasure none
A Skin-Wight is a leathery humanoid skin, flayed seamlessly from the body and moving bonelessly along the ground like a freakish serpent. Due to it's size and ability to flatten itself out, a skin-wight has a +2 racial bonus to Stealth checks.
Anyone striking at a skin-wight that is grappling another target and hits inflicts any damage that the skin-wights damage reduction blocks to the target of the grapple (i.e. the first five points of damage from any Bludgeoning or Piercing attack), as well as any damage over the total hit points of the Skin-Wight (so an 8 pts slashing wound would destroy the Skin-Wight and inflict the remaining 4 pts of damage to the grappled victim).
Pretty neat, in a macabre sort of way.
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The last part remaining would be the cleaned skeleton, which she would animate normally as a Medium Skeleton. (This setting had a 1st level Skeletal Cohort spell that animated a single skeleton, so she didn't even need to use a 4th level spell for this purpose.)
And that's where she was when I first used her against my players. Her blood-weirds, skin-wights and skeletons would sneak into town via the sewers and seize people from their homes, with the undead made of blood and skin immobilizing and incapicitating targets, while the skeletons would carry them back to her, for animation (if they died during the process) or sacrifice and animation (if they survived the blood-weird's attack).
On the Giant in the Playground forums, another poster, DracoDei, suggested refining the process, with undead to be fashioned from brains & nervous systems (Vestiges), digestive systems (Gutsnakes), lungs & windpipes (Blood-Eagles) and hearts, veins & arteries (Dark Hearts).
More stat-blocks to come...
Consider this idea snatched... I'll make up my own level appropriate stats, but that's an awesome idea (multiple morbid undead from a single corpse).
Very thematic for a necromancy focused campaign.
Set, you are one very sick puppy.
Set, you are one very sick puppy.
I 2nd that notion XP
Very cool, and so merciful of your character. Why kill more than you have to?
Q1: Any reactions for the various animated parts working together? :)
Q2: I'm not sure but I think you should consider some sort of downside for splitting the body up this way. A weakness of some kind that represents a diluted amount of soulstuff. Alternately their should be an external source of identity for the animation.
Sigurd
Definitely Yoinked.
Tome "Rogue Necromancer's" tome of Efficient Animation.
Contains detailed instructions and magic for harvesting a corpse and converting one corpse into 8 undead.
We need your character's name for the tome!
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Pretty neat, in a macabre sort of way.
Thanks!
Bwa-ha-ha-hah!
Are these all your own creation, or are they existing open content spells and creatures from the Scarred Lands setting?
My own creations. Designed to mix up a low-level game, since, at 1st level, Skeletons and Zombies were generally the only feasible alternatives, and I wanted some special abilities (like engulf, ability drain, acid spit and a drowning / suffocation attack) to make things a little more interesting than ye olde rusty scimitar or slam attack.
The only Scarred Lands specific stuff is the mention of the goddess Belsameth and the city of Hollowfaust, which could be replaced with Urgathoa and somewhere in Ustalav, close enough to the prison of the Whispering Tyrant to draw inspiration from living within a few days travel of 'her hero.' She's got an appropriate Ustalav / Ravenloft vibe, and would be wasted in Geb, I think.
The Skeletal Cohort spell is OGL, I think, and comes from either Hollowfaust: City of Necromancers or Necromancer's Legacy. In either event, I didn't bother to convert it, sticking to my own stuff.
Consider this idea snatched... I'll make up my own level appropriate stats, but that's an awesome idea (multiple morbid undead from a single corpse).
Very thematic for a necromancy focused campaign.
Thanks!
Set, you are one very sick puppy.I 2nd that notion XP
Agreed. :> I even melted wax from a red Yankee Candle and pressed it into the shapes of red blobby wave-critters, to use as 'figures' for the Blood-Weirds, sticking them to cardboard squares as bases.
Very cool, and so merciful of your character. Why kill more than you have to?
Q1: Any reactions for the various animated parts working together? :)
Ari's entire line of research was geared towards eventually learning to charge, animate and 'power' every system of a living body with necromantic forces. Her penultimate goal was to unite them back into a single creature (which would appear to be a human zombie, until it 'unfolded' in combat to become a bunch of different animated parts and systems), and her *ultimate* goal was to use the process to make herself into a form of lich, one system at a time.
Being merciful, on the other hand, didn't really play into her thought processes, given how many people she was killing to test her various theories. :)
Q2: I'm not sure but I think you should consider some sort of downside for splitting the body up this way. A weakness of some kind that represents a diluted amount of soulstuff. Alternately their should be an external source of identity for the animation.
That's why all of these critters have Int 0. They are just mindless animations, like skeletons or zombies, with no identity at all. The only one that would have Intelligence and a personality, the Vestige (brain & nervous system), would be the part that ends up in control of a conjoined creature, reassembled temporarily. Ultimately, she didn't want them to have minds of their own, as it would conflict with her goal of becoming the guiding mind controlling her own transformed body of now-deathless tissues.
And even if I did choose to give them an Int of 3 or so, and make them inherently evil, like 3.5 skeletons became, I'd have whatever 'self' once inhabited those organs, tissues and bones have long passed on to it's reward, with the malignant sentience being, at best, a shadow or echo, like whatever lingering fragment is contacted by a Speak With Dead spell. Alternately, in a setting where negative energy is evil, I'd have some tiny malignant entities of Int 3 inhabit the bodies (and make a similar ruling for skeletons and zombies, to explain their evil impulses, since it would be kinda silly for them to be evil, but mindless and lacking in volition).
Tome "Rogue Necromancer's" tome of Efficient Animation. Contains detailed instructions and magic for harvesting a corpse and converting one corpse into 8 undead.
We need your character's name for the tome!
Her name was Ari.
Her husband was named Non, and his line of undead research was vastly easier to stat up, as his specialty was blasting people to death with evocation spells and then conjuring up malicious elemental spirits weaker even than mephits to remain trapped within the charred / frozen / blasted corpses, creating elementally-infused zombies. In Pathfinder, his undead I'd just represent by giving them the Fast Zombie and Burning Skeleton templates (with electrical and cold based versions as well). He found humans to be too weak, so he'd generally hunt down ogres for this role, and they would end up with a few extra HD from the elemental spirit, and a Golem-like tendency to get overly excited and go berserk in combat, requiring him to re-rebuke them from time to time.
Had they not met their fates at the hands of the party, both were intended to become the victims of their own research going terribly wrong. :)
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Tweaked from DracoDei's suggestions over on the Giant in the Playground forums, the reason why Ari would have stopped 'brain-tanning' the skins of her victims, as she discovered how to animate the brains and nervous system of her victims.
Initially, she had to crack open the skulls of her victims and crack each vertebrae open carefully, to extract the brain and nervous tissue, repairing any damage to the sensitive tissues with Mending spells, and then, later, having to repair each cracked vertebrae and resealing the skull with Mending spells as well.
Once the process was refined, she could crack the skull to allow the brain to slither free with it's own necromantic mobility, with the nerves sliding free like tentacles, without her having to perform extensive surgery just to recover some of the nerves. (She always meant to come up with a spell that would animate a skeleton and cause it's flesh, organs, sinew, etc. to just slide off in a puddle around it's feet, but never got around to it. She always said she was 'too busy,' but, really, she did enjoy getting her hands dirty...)
Vestige
Human Brain CR 1/2
XP ???
NE Medium Undead
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft., blindsight 60 ft.; Perception +2
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DEFENSE_______________________________________
AC 13, touch 13, flat-footed 11 (+2 Dex, +1 size)
hp 4 (1/2 d8+2)
Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +4
DR ; Immune electricity, undead traits
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OFFENSE________________________________________
Speed 5 ft., 20 ft. flying (poor maneuverability)
Melee nerve lash +2 (1d3-2 nonlethal + daze) or 4 nerve lashes +0 (1d3-2 nonlethal + daze)
Special Attacks dazing strike, spook, command undead
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STATISTICS______________________________________
Str 6, Dex 14, Con --, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 14
Base Atk +0; CMB +2, CMD 12
Feats Alertness, Attack Finesse (B), Command Undead (B)
Gear none
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ECOLOGY_______________________________________
Environment any
Organization any
Treasure none
A vestige appears as a floating brain and nervous system, hovering in mid-air, it's nerves hanging limply and trailing behind it, dripping clear fluid. When it senses living minds, the nerves begin whipping around like tentacles, lashing out to attempt to stun targets with physically feeble, but psychically potent attacks.
Dazing strike conveys the dazed condition (Will DC 12 to resist) and does not affect any target immune to electrical damage or mind-affecting effects. The nerve fibers can lash out to a range of 10 ft.
Spook inflicts the Shaken condition for 1 minute to humanoids or the Frightened condition to Animals or Undead (Will DC 13) and can affect a single target within 30 ft. as a standard action.
The Vestige counts as having twice it's HD for the purposes of Command Undead, allowing it to control 1 HD worth of other undead. It cannot channel negative energy for any purpose other than to activate Command Undead (similar to a specialist Necromancer) and can use this ability three times per day, plus an additional time for each point of it's Charisma modifier.
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Another inspired by DracoDei.
Inspired by a barbarian practice of fascinating viciousness, Ari developed a technique to transform the lungs and windpipe of a victim into a grotesque flapping horror, forever screaming it's last breath.
Blood-Eagle
Human Blood-Eagle CR 1/3
XP ???
NE Small Undead
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +1
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DEFENSE_______________________________________
AC 13, touch 13, flat-footed 11 (+2 Dex, +1 size)
hp 4 (1/2d8)
Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +3
DR 5/slashing; Immune sonic, undead traits
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OFFENSE________________________________________
Speed 0 ft., 20 ft. flying (poor maneuverability)
Melee none
Special Attacks death-cry
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STATISTICS______________________________________
Str 5, Dex 14, Con --, Int --, Wis 12, Cha 10
Base Atk +0; CMB +2, CMD 14
Feats none
Gear none
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ECOLOGY_______________________________________
Environment any
Organization any
Treasure none
A flayed pair of tattered lungs, carefully shredded to create the appearance of ragged wings with a six foot span, flap towards you, the writhing windpipe facing in your direction and unleashing a terrible death-scream.
Death-cry inflicts 1d3 sonic damage on a single target in 30 ft. and requires a Will save (DC 12) from all subjects within 30 ft. to avoid being shaken for 1 minute. Animals have a -2 penalty to this saving throw.
I recall a movie based on the Cthulu mythos (I think it was just called Dagon, named after one of the Ancient Ones), where they did something similar to that skin "sluffing".
Except the person was still alive... rather gruesome to watch.
Overall, not a terribly great movie (didn't get into it like I do the written stories and gaming), but it had some cool special effects for a horror flick.
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These creatures and spells are brilliant!
My players are currently playing CotCT, these will make excellent additions to Rolth's arsenal of evil. Consider this yoinked.
Thanks! Yoink away.
I recall a movie based on the Cthulu mythos (I think it was just called Dagon, named after one of the Ancient Ones), where they did something similar to that skin "sluffing".
Haven't seen that one, although I've heard of it. [tangent] Why, oh why, must so many Lovecraft-inspired movies suck so hard? [/tangent]
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These creatures and spells are brilliant!
My players are currently playing CotCT, these will make excellent additions to Rolth's arsenal of evil. Consider this yoinked.Thanks! Yoink away.
I recall a movie based on the Cthulu mythos (I think it was just called Dagon, named after one of the Ancient Ones), where they did something similar to that skin "sluffing".Haven't seen that one, although I've heard of it. [tangent] Why, oh why, must so many Lovecraft-inspired movies suck so hard? [/tangent]
[tangent]Because Lovecraft didn't describe his monsters and left it as 'things too terrible to put onto paper'. That's quite hard to replicate in a visual medium like films.[/tangent]
EDIT: [further tangent]Dagon predates Lovecraft by several millennia, being a Semmitic deity. Wikipedia link[/further tangent]
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This is another idea taken more directly from DracoDei's inspiration (his version was able to fly, and probably tougher, but I'm still sticking with stuff that could be faced by a 1st level party without breaking the CR bank).
Dark Heart
Human Dark Heart CR 1/3
XP ???
NE Tiny Undead
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +0
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DEFENSE_______________________________________
AC 15, touch 14, flat-footed 13 (+2 size, +2 Dex, +1 natural)
hp 5 (1/2d8+3)
Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +2
DR 5/slashing; Positive Energy Resistance 5; Immune undead traits
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OFFENSE________________________________________
Speed 10 ft., climb 10 ft.
Melee attach melee touch +3 (blood drain)
Special Attacks blood drain, negative energy pulse
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STATISTICS______________________________________
Str 4, Dex 14, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +0; CMB +0 (+2 for grappling, +14 to maintain a grapple!), CMD 8
Feats Toughness (B), Weapon Finesse (B)
Gear none
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ECOLOGY_______________________________________
Environment any
Organization any
Treasure none
This coldly beating heart is nestled within a slithering mass of blue and red arteries and veins, that pull it along like a nest of serpents. It attacks with its many veins and arteries, which latch onto a target and begin draining blood at the rate of 1 pt of constitution damage per turn as a standard action. For each point of blood drained, the Dark Heart is healed of one hit point of damage, or recharges one use of its negative energy pulse attack. Despite its tiny size, the Dark Heart benefits from it's expansive network of veins and arteries for the purposes of this attack, and is treated as two size classes larger for the purposes of grapple modifiers to CMB.
Attach otherwise is treated exactly like the Stirge ability, including the +12 racial bonus to maintain the grapple.
Once per round, as a move action, a Dark Heart can unleash a wave of negative energy that inflicts 1d6 damage to anyone within 10 ft. (Will save DC 11 for ½ damage). It can be commanded by an intelligent master to use this ability to heal undead creatures, but only uses it to damage living foes if left to its own devices.
A Dark Heart has Energy Resistance 5 versus attempts to damage it by channeling Positive Energy.
Advanced Dark Hearts are created from larger humanoid or monstrous creatures, and have 1 HD if crafted from a Large target (and become size Small), 2 HD from a Huge target (size Medium), 4 HD from a Gargantuan target (still size Medium) and 8 HD from a Colossal target (size Large). Damage from negative energy channeling increases as if the HD of the Dark Heart were its levels in Cleric and DC increases by +2 per size increase, and blood drain similarly increases (1d2, 1d3, 1d4, and 1d6). (Stats change as if the creature had taken the Giant template multiple times, but Dexterity never decreases.) A Dark Heart of 2 or more HD has Positive Energy Resistance 10 and an 8 HD Dark Heart has Positive Energy Resistance 15.
If the 'donor' could fly by magical means, the Dark Heart retains this movement type. (Nightmares, Ogre Magi and Yeth Hounds are the most likely donors for flight-capable Dark Hearts.)
Creating a Dark Heart ensures that one cannot create a Viscera from the same corpse, as the arteries, veins and heart are required for this specific purpose.
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Another of DracoDei's inspirations, modified slightly for my own purposes.
Gutsnake
Human Gutsnake CR 1/3
XP ???
NE Small Undead
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft. scent; Perception +0
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DEFENSE_______________________________________
AC 14, touch 13, flat-footed 12 (+1 size, +2 Dex, +1 natural)
hp 5 (1/2d8+3)
Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +2
DR 5/slashing; Immune acid, undead traits
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OFFENSE________________________________________
Speed 10 ft.
Melee melee touch +2 (constrict 1d2-2 + 1 hp acid damage)
Special Attacks acid squirt (2d4 acid), constriction (1d2-2)
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STATISTICS______________________________________
Str 6, Dex 14, Con --, Int --, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +0; CMB +0 (+2 for grappling), CMD 9
Feats Toughness (B), Attack Finesse (B), Agile Maneuvers (B)
Gear none
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ECOLOGY_______________________________________
Environment any
Organization any
Treasure none
A Gutsnake attacks with an animated length of intestine, generally 20 ft. long, dragged along by a five foot length of swollen larger intestine, with a a fouly blouted stomach wobbling and belching at far end, hissing like some disgusting serpent. The thinner length of intestine snakes out with incredible dexterity, wrapping itself around living prey and attempting to constrict it with surprising strength, for a leathery rope of intestine, secreting necromantically enhanced digestive juices upon it's prey all the while. Like the Dark Heart, the 20-25 ft. of entangling intestine eliminates the size penalty for grapple checks, allowing the creature to be treated as two size classes larger when determining CMB for grapples.
One per day, the Gutsnake can discharge from it's swollen stomach a gout of powerful acid that inflicts 2d4 acid damage, targeting a single victim within 10 ft. as a ranged touch attack (and automatically hitting any target it currently has grappled in it's leathery coils). If the Gutsnake succeeds in dissolving and consuming a creature of at least size Small, a process which takes approximately 10 minutes after the creature dies, it recharges this 'breath weapon' and can use it again.
Larger donors, such as Ogres, produce appropriately larger and more powerful Gutsnakes, with HD progression and application of the Giant template (without the Dexterity reduction), similar to the Dark Heart. The acidic secretions of larger Gutsnakes also increase, from 1 pt. per round to 1d2, 1d3, 1d4 or 1d6 per round for Gutsnakes fashioned from Colossal creatures. The acidic discharge similarly increases in potency, adding +1d4 acid damage per size increase, to a maximum of 6d4 damage for an 8 HD Gutsnake, fashioned from the digestive system of a Colossal beast.
As with a Dark Heart, the creation of a Gutsnake ensures that a Viscera cannot be crafted from the same corpse.
Note: A side-effect of writing this stuff in my sleep, and cut-n-pasting like mad, is that I'm positive that I've got these CMBs all messed up. Since most of these critters use some form of grappling, it's breaking my brain trying to get used to how CMB works.
Ya I would personally sacrifice one of Mikhaila Burnett's body parts too....
Oh ya joining a game would be cool.
Sigurd
Wow, I like. My hats off to you Set. these are cool as, an undead person(whose not on fire at least).
hmmm, I wonder if larger creatures should create more powerful versions of these. Just imagine what would happen if this was done to say an Oger, or a Firblog.
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Thanks all for the kind words!
Chaotic_Blues;
Yeah, it wasn't until the Dark Heart and Gutsnake that I started suggesting what the critters would look like if created from larger donor creatures. Originally, the necromancer creating them was a low level character for a 1st level party, so she wouldn't have had access to Ogre parts, but scaling them up to use Ogre or Giant tissues, you could make some pretty fun larger challenges.
Possible other 'minor undead' I haven't gotten around to statting up (and never used in game);
Animated eyeballs, 1 hp only, usable as scouts by a necromancer, they are so necromantically susceptible that they can be commanded without tying up HD worth of the necromancer or evil Clerics 'command rating.' As long as they are within a mile of the spellcaster who commands them, he can cover an eye with his hand and see what his animated eyeball is seeing, making them useful scouts. They normally have to roll around or inch slowly into position with their flailing optic nerve, but if made from an Ogre Magi or similarly magical-flight-capable creature, they retain that flying ability.
Crawling claws, similar to the Forgotten Realms beasties, animated severed hands that crawl like bony spiders, and lash out with a shattered forearm bone like a scorpion's sting. When removed from a skeleton (or zombie), the corpse is outfitted with blades or morning-star like bludgeons (pierced through with nails), so that the skeleton/zombie still has offensive utility (but is useless for more mundane tasks requiring hands).
Swarm of animated teeth. Made primarily from the canine teeth of dogs & cats, the fangs of vipers, etc., a swarm of teeth clatters along the ground like container of dice dropped down a flight of stairs, tumbling ever forward to leap at living prey and repeatedly jump into living flesh point-first, sating it's ghoulish hunger for blood to fuel its unliving state. Only the teeth of carnivores (and occasional omnivores, like bears and apes) are used to fashion these swarms, and the animation requires that at least some of the teeth come from a carnivorous undead (with ghouls being the most likely donors, although vampires are also an option, a single ghoul will provide enough of the necessary teeth, combined with hundreds of animal teeth and fangs, to produce a single such swarm).
Note that I've managed to come up with minor undead for most bodily systems (muscular, digestive, respiratory, circulatory, nervous) etc. I've skipped one bodily system, and I have no intention of working it up as an undead, 'cause there's gross, and then there's wrong. Nic Logue might 'go there,' but I'm staying right here. :)
These undead are purely physical, as well. It's entirely possible to create 'lesser shadows' that are the animated shadow of a sacrificed victim (incorporeal, unable to fly, just moves along solid surfaces, unable to inflict damage, just slithers up on people to blind them for the convenience of other associated undead to fight) or the animated breath of a dying man (suffocate foes) or even some sort of undead fashioned from the body heat drained from a man (moving around as an incorporeal heat ripple, engulfing others to drain the heat from them similarly, inflicting cold damage). But these didn't fit Ari's line of research (although I did use the blinding lesser shadows during the original adventure, representing what she considered a failed line of research that she still had one of 'lying around').
Not that I'm trying to quash your boundlessly ooky creativity, but I just wanted to note one of the S&S Creature Catalogs did something kind of like this but maybe a bit more 'modest.'
They talked about necromancers stretching their per-corpse resources during a lengthy wartime seige by making three undead from every corpse... one from the bones, one from the meat and muscle held together by struts and supports, and one from the skin filled up with sand.
Once again, not saying you aren't being clever and creative and sick. Just wanted to give a shout out to the Swords & Sorcery folks. :)
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Not that I'm trying to quash your boundlessly ooky creativity, but I just wanted to note one of the S&S Creature Catalogs did something kind of like this but maybe a bit more 'modest.'
Yup, read the 'Seige Undead' thing, but my idea predates that. Not that priority really matters. Whoever designed those undead had very different goals than myself. I wanted both low HD undead more interesting than skeletons and zombies for a 1st level party, and a creepy 'do it yourself Lich' process that involved necromantically empowering each system individually.
Had I *really* been on the ball, I would have tied each body part / system to a specific undead, making the digestive system ghoulish and the blood vampiric, etc. But I wasn't that creative, and that might have taken the cleverness a step too far into unweildy and artificial.
I think there is a 'skin-based undead' in the "Libir Mortis", but I don't remember what it is called off the top of my head.
You could technically get another undead out of it as well... Crawling Claw from the "Fiend Folio" uses only the left hand. Then you could still have a one-handed skeleton. :)
IMC - I think I'm going to limit these, except for the skeleton, to the remainder of the lunar cycle plus one lunar cycle per 2 caster levels (max 3). So yes you can animate them but the nature of your material rotting and what have you means that they fail in short order.
I also think they should take damage from sunlight.
Another advanced version will make the skin more durable but consume all the soft organs in the creation.
It's mostly a balance thing. I want this to remain the exception not the rule.
Sigurd
ps.
Did Ari have a last name or by name.
'Ari ______ tome of Efficient Necromancy'
I think there is a 'skin-based undead' in the "Libir Mortis", but I don't remember what it is called off the top of my head.
Skin Kite, page 119.
Two old media would go good with this thread: Bill Cosby's riff "Chicken Heart" about a giant animated chicken heart coming to get him and his brother Russel (it's on youtube) and and Peter Jacksons movie "DeadAlive" with the animated viscera as one of the monsters....