Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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The Genius Guide to Gruesome Undead Templates is available now!
When talking about new templates there are two crucial questions: "Why do we want these?," and "What are they?"
On the why:
The idea behind gruesome undead is to “spice up” these monsters, to make them more interesting (and perhaps more frightening) for players and GMs. Rather than face another horde of zombies, the players find themselves facing rotting corpses with elongated, twisted limbs, or gibbering wrecks of things once humanoid that whisper maddening secrets from beyond the grave. Creatures that have more wrong with them than “just” being walking corpses, gruesome undead have uncanny appearances, smells and sounds that makes them more frightening to even veteran characters than a typical monster of the type (generally represented by each gruesome undead’s shock value – see below), while the fact that they are difficult to identify makes them more of a mystery for players.
On the what:
CarrierThe slender figure constantly shivers, as though lightly shaken by unseen hands. Boils, sores, and crusty, scabrous growths are scattered across its body, some visibly oozing a thick, yellow fluid. Even from a distance the smell of soured sweat and rotting blood fill the air, and some foul miasma grows in strength each time the yellowish sludge spurts from a sore.
Carrier undead are normally a result of someone dying of disease under the same conditions that might normally create an undead – lack of proper burial, evil magic, negative material energy, or strong negative emotions. Less commonly, carrier undead may be the result of an undead disease – either from necromantic magics or from infection from a ghoul bite or similar undead injury. They are most common in areas struck by pandemic, sometimes clawing their way out of piles of unburied, festering corpses left to rot as communities flee from plague-ridden areas.
Flayed
The creature's body is shiny and wet, its muscles and teeth clearly visible. A constantly sheen of blood oozes from it, showing that though standing and active, the figure is lacking any skin. Its movements are accompanied by the sound of sticky leathers being pulled apart, and the strong smell of blood fills the area.
A flayed undead has no skin (or in the case of ghosts and similar incorporeal undead that lack any organs, have a form that looks like it has no skin). Most often flayed undead are those who were tortured to death and lost their skin as part of that torture, or those who carry heavy self-hate and guilt and as a result manifest as bodies lacking the natural protection of their outer hide. Flayed undead can also be created intentionally by necromancers who like to use the skin of undead to create books of necromantic knowledge.
Fungal
The pulsing mounds and growths on the creature make it difficult to determine its true shape or nature. Mushrooms, strange grey ridges, and waving patches of undulating hair cover its exterior, writhing with no discernible pattern and making soft, wet sounds.
Fungal undead often come into existence when undead dwell in damp, underground places. Leaky tombs and crypts, sunken ships, swampland battlefields, and towns destroyed by flooding are all likely locations for these gruesome creatures. The fungi attached to such animate corpses are themselves undead, making them immune to effects that target or protect from plants. Occasionally an undead fungus spreads from its point of origin, infecting undead and spreading through colonies of necromantic creatures to create a horde of fungal undead.
Gaping
As the creature’s jaw lowers a creaking sound loudly accompanies the stench of death. Its mouth continues to expand well past what seems reasonable, its teeth gleaming as its maw grows to be larger than its entire head originally appeared to be.
Gaping creatures can unhinge their jaw and expand the size of their mouth to be preposterously big. Humanoid gaping undead can have a toothy mouth grow up to two feet in diameter, though the shape varies from undead to undead. As an alternative to opening their mouth to great scope, such undead may instead split their face to expose a “second” mouth, such as a gaping undead’s entire face splitting vertically to create a head-sized mouth filled with rows of sharp teeth.
Gaping undead may be the remains of creatures that died screaming in agony, or of those with strong ties to singing, speaking, or sound, or may just be a gruesome mutation of the normal undead creation process. They could easily be found in places where innocents died in large numbers while terrified and hurt (such as an abandoned bardic academy that is also the site of a slaughter), or places where negative energy is strong and effects the development of undead created there (such as the demiplane of a necromancer who foolishly drew on the negative plane).
Racked
The manlike shape seems too long, too lean, with one shoulder much higher than the other and an oddly hunched posture. Its arms twitch and dangle, and its legs tremor as though it can barely stand. As one long, twisted arm reaches forward there are loud snaps and cracks as its shoulder visible pops in and out of the socket.
Racked undead were subject to merciless stretching prior to death. Most often they are the result of being put on the rack as torture and pulled at wrists and ankles, but a racked undead might have died by being drawn by horses, caught in a clockwork device that tore it slowly apart, or been ripped limb from limb by a carnivorous ape. They are likely to be encountered in places close to the scene of their torture and death – most often mad alchemist’s labs, haunted dungeons, or dangerous wildernesses.
A racked undead has long, twisted limbs of uneven lengths. They pop in and out of joint, twitch spastically, and periodically show signs of still being pulled and twisted by some unseen force.
Whispering
The sound of dozens of voices whispering in endless, overlapping, urgent hushed tones fills the area and drives out all other sounds. Horrid secrets are hinted at and vile names spoken, as though a choir of children was quietly reciting a book from hell.
Whispering undead are normally either undead spellcasters who have never given up seeking knowledge, or the remains of someone killed after betraying a secret it swore to keep to itself. They most often haunt old libraries and places where divination and sonic magic was stored or researched.