The following are a series of Undead monsters from D&D 3rd Edition. Thank you to Esper the Bard for alerting me to the presence of these frightening and terrible creatures.
artist unknown |
New Spells:
Necromantic Cyst
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R: touch T: creature D: special
One creature you touch develops must save or develop a Necromantic Cyst, a small growth on their body. This growth gives them -[dice] penalty on any save against Necromantic spells or saves to halve Necrotic damage. On a successful save, the creature takes [dice] necrotic damage instead.
These growths can only be removed by a spell that removes corruption or surgery. The DC to remove the cyst is 10+[dice]. Should an attempt to remove the cyst fail, the creature takes [sum] necrotic damage.
For each [dice] used past the first, select one of the following:
- The cyst forms automatically, with no save against it's formation permitted.
- The cyst gives a penalty to their save equal to -2[dice].
- The cyst causes the creature it is attached to take +1d6 damage whenever it take necrotic damage.
- The cyst causes the creature to release a scent that is easily perceived by Undead, who get +[dice] to track and find the creature it is attached to.
- The cyst causes the creature to receive -[dice] less healing whenever affected by a magical source of healing.
Festering Eruption
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R: 100' T: creature D: instant
A target creature who has previously been affected by the spell Necromantic Cyst takes [sum]+X necrotic damage, where X is the number of Necromantic Cysts a creature has. This destroys any Necromantic Cysts left in or on the creature's body. If this kills a creature, their body bursts apart in a shower of gore, and the ruined remains of their torso becomes a Skulking Cyst under your control for [dice] days.
Base Undead Abilities:
Undead: Undead do not feel pain or get tired. They are immune to poison and disease. They are immune to cold, poison and necrotic damage. They do not need to eat, sleep or breathe. Any spell that says "Undead" in its title or description is talking about something like this.
Sunlight Vulnerability: Undead take 1d6 radiant damage for every round they spend in sunlight.
poster for the movie Carrie |
Skulking Cyst:
Number Appearing: 1d4
Alignment: Any Evil
Languages: None
Treasure: The wealth left behind on the dessicated corpses of previous victims or if bound, whatever treasures the Necromancer has in his lab.
There are two schools of Necromancy, those who idolize the clean purity of bone and those who feel such purists are wasting valuable materials. The former school uses more complicated magicks to simulate the many processes that muscles and ligaments perform to help living creatures move. They feel that relying on materials that can decay and degrade is a waste, along with a contamination risk. Bone is an easier material to work with, they claim, for it's hardness and durability. Once stripped of all of that tedious meat, only then can a creature's true beauty and purpose can be revealed.
The other school of Necromancers feel that this is simply a waste of good material, literally. Muscles and ligaments, tendons and organs, all of them can be repurposed to serve new Undead creations. Why waste mana on something simple when it is so much more convenient to use the tools that nature gave you- figuratively or literally. The Skulking Cyst is probably the best example of this method.
A ribcage, barely concealing a knot of necrotizing organs, gurgling and burping as they leak noxious fluid everywhere, sometimes dragging a blankly staring head behind them, these Undead will win no beauty pageants, even among those who find beauty in the grotesque and vile. Skulking Cysts are often bound by Necromancers of the flesh, who use them as guards and watch-dogs, listening for the sizzle of flesh and terrified screams to note if they have unauthorized visitors.
Skulking Cysts "walk" on hardened internal tubing and knots of coiled tendons, veins or muscle. They are not particularly fast or graceful, which is why they act as ambush predators, lurking in the shadows or in small, narrow areas, waiting for unsuspecting prey to come along. Their primary means of attack is by spraying acid at their foes, but they can also harm enemies by inserting bony appendages into them and draining them of blood.
A sure sign a Necromancer of the flesh or a Skulking Cyst is nearby are the desiccated corpses of previous intruders. Then again, there might be no warning, especially if the corpses were removed. After all, what self respecting Necromancer would abandon free building materials?
from Libris Mortis |
Statblock:
HD 3
AR 2
Atk Vampirize or Acid Spray
Mor 20 (if bound)/ 10 (if free)
Saves 10 or less
Vampirize: On a successful grapple check, a Skulking Cyst can latch onto a creature and start to drain it of blood. This does 1d6 CON damage per round to a creature. If reduced to 0 CON, the creature dies, it's veins emptied of blood.
Acid Spray: As an action, the Skulking Cyst may spray a creature with acid from one of it's open tubes. This does 2d6 acid damage, save for half, and 1d6 acid damage per round until it is neutralized, diluted or wiped off. This also does 1 damage per round to Armor. Armor reduced to 0 bonus Fighting Spirit (FS) is destroyed. On a successful save, a creature's armor isn't affected. If a creature fails his save, he may choose to succeed, in exchange for one random item in his inventory dissolving and being destroyed by acid. If a magical item is rolled, then reroll.
Tactics:
- Hide in a small space, such as a crawl space
- Wait for potential victims to come by
- Ambush them
- Flee if in danger of being destroyed (if unbound)
artist unknown |
Forsaken Shell:
Number Appearing: 1 or 1d3 + 1d3 Flayed Berserkers
Alignment: Any Evil
Languages: None
Treasure: Forsaken Shells abandon the riches left behind by their victims, using them to set traps. Additionally, since they create Flayed Berserkers, their is almost always a reward for their destruction, even if the locals do not actively know about them.
The Handsome Men are an extremely powerful, but psychologically fragile people. For reasons none of them can remember, they conquered the Deserts and Jungles of the North, then built themselves a society based off racial castes and opague social dynamics and endless, persnickety etiquette. Then, the Handsome Men denied their crimes and scrubbed their worlds clean, building for themselves an imaginary fantasy land through which they can pretend that all the wars, oppression and violence they cause does not exist. This, along with the alien nature of the Handsome Men, is largely the reason why their society is so strange.
But their society is oppressive, and those crushed under their hand-tooled, polished boots resented them. The Froglings were among the few races which raised the banner of revolt successfully against their masters. The Frogling Revolts and the campaigns of the various Free Frogling Armies and Organizations could fill dozens of books, each one filled with countless factions that betrayed and allied with each other at seeming random, which is quite normal for a region with no central government dominated by countless warlords, each one united more by culture and consensus than anything more substantial.
Regardless, despite the Handsome Men's wild eccentricities and their refusal to publicly acknowledge anything ugly, they are still terrifying foes when unleashed. As such, they won almost all of the battles, but were worn down by guerilla tactics, terrorism and asymmetric warfare. And one of the best tools the Free Froglings had against their foes were the Necromancers. Necromancy had long been a part of the Handsome Men's Dominions, the distaff counterpart to the Handsome Wizards. While the latter spent their days keeping everything prim and proper, stage-managing their bosses, the former made sure the grinding gears of the Handsome Men's dominions continued turning.
And so when war broke out, many of these Necromancers jumped at the chance to flex their muscles and indulge the darkest angels of their nature, working to create countless monsters, plagues and other horrors. The Forsaken Shells were one such horror.
Forsaken Shells are the flayed skins of the dead, imbued with necromantic energies, gifted with malignant intelligence. Forsaken Shells are clever and dangerous hunters, able to slip through tiny cracks in walls and under doors and possessing far greater strength than their skin-deep substances would suggest. Forsaken Shells can tear and repair themselves at will, allowing them to disguise themselves as a number of different objects in pursuit of prey. It could be the skin stretched out to dry, or concealed among the hangings, or under the sheets in an isolated room. They are also smart enough to exploit their unique properties as being only skin. They will leap from high places and tear themselves apart into makeshift parachutes, floating down toward their enemies to ambush them from above. Or perhaps they will cover a corpse with themselves and wait for someone to get close, then spring out and attack.
Regardless of what form they take, Forsaken Shells are clever and dangerous foes. Those who underestimate them often find their lives cut short, but even the educated and clever might still find that they are only able to escape by the skin of their teeth.
Statblock:
HD 5
AR 3
Atk Strangle (Grapple, on success, 1d6 STR damage) or Attach
Mor 20 (if bound)/ 12 (if free)
Saves 12 or less
Strangle: A Forsaken Shell may attempt to strangle a creature by grappling it. On a successful Grapple check, a creature is restrained and cannot move, and takes 1d6 STR damage a round it is successfully grappled. If reduced to 0 STR by this ability, the creature falls unconscious for 1 minute or until it passes a successful CON save.
Attach: A Forsaken Shell may attempt to attach to a creature by making a DEX check. On a hit, this causes the Forsaken Shell to attach to the creature. This causes a creature to take 1d6 DEX damage a round as it attempts to attach to them, wriggling under clothing and armor and covering them like a second skin. If reduced to 0 DEX, the creature is entirely wrapped in the Forsaken Shell, it covering them like it was their natural skin.
While the two of them are attached, any spiritual damage (radiant, psychic, necrotic) taken by the Forsaken Shell is halved and the other half targets the creature it is attached to. Physical types (fire, cold, Sharp, bludgeoning) of damage are not, but are transmitted as pain to the creature it is attached to.
Assimilate Skin: Each day a Forsaken Shell covers a creature, it causes that creature to take 1 CON damage. If reduced to 0 CON by a Forsaken Shell, the creature dies and it's skin peels off to become a new Forsaken Shell. It's skinless body then rises as a Flayed Berserker.
Tactics:
- Attach to a lone or vulnerable person
- Bond to them and strangle, if necessary, to subdue them
- Flee if in danger of death (if unbound)
artist unknown |
Flayed Berserker:
Number Appearing: X (equal to the number of Forsaken Shells) or 1+X
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Languages: None
Treasure: Forsaken Shells abandon the riches left behind by their victims, using them to set traps. Additionally, since they create Flayed Berserkers, their is almost always a reward for their destruction, even if the locals do not actively know about them.
Flayed Bersekers are not intentional creations, but unintentional by-products of the hunting of Forsaken Shells. When the Shells successfully take another's skin, that person dies and their remaining mana is poisoned by the Forsaken Shell's twisted embrace. Their flayed body then rises as a vessel of pure hatred and uncontainable rage. Constantly in pain and driven by a warped sense of self-preservation, Flayed Berserkers have only two goals- to protect "their" skin and to kill any living creature they come across, with a preference for humanoids.
Flayed Berserkers who are separated from their creator Shell and not bound by a Necromancer will seek to return to it through the most direct route possible, destroying any obstacle in their path. Flayed Berserkers whose creator Shell has been destroyed go on a rampage until they run out of living targets or are destroyed.
Statblock:
Flayed Berserker
HD [What they had in life]
AR [What they had in life]
Atk Weapon (what they had in life; Atk and damage bonuses reduced to half what they had in life)
Mor 20
Saves Highest Ability Score or less
Undead, Sunlight Vulnerability
Screaming Rage: Flayed Berserkers feel no fear and have no sense of self-preservation. They will fight anything that threatens them or the Forsaken Shell that was once their skin. If their Forsaken Shell is destroyed, they go on a homicidal rampage until put down.
Tatters of Memory: Flayed Berserkers have all the abilities they had in life, but they will not use them to do anything but do harm. They are very unintelligent and will always choose the most blunt solution to any problem, and also the most violent.
Tactics:
- Protect the Forsaken Shell that once was your skin
- Attack the nearest enemy with blind rage
- Know no fear
Boneyard
Number Appearing: 1
Alignment: Any Evil
Languages: None
Treasure: Boneyards, if unbound, leave lakes of blood and mounds of destroyed corpses behind them. There will be plenty of valuables to obtain, once you dig through the mutilated remains of it's victims. If bound, it is under the command of a Necromancer who has numerous magic items, grimoires, spells and mounds of more mundane treasure.
The skill of a Necromancer comes not from the number of Undead he can command, but from the unique creations he can manufacture, or the size of the Undead he can control. The Boneyard is to some, the apatheosis of such ideas. The Boneyard is an enormous serpent of bones, made of countless victims strung together and united through malign intellect and twisted magic. Ribcages form the folds of it's neck and rib bones weave together to form the skeleton of it's body. It's head is the largest skull the Necromancer can find, augmented with every spare tooth he had on hand. It is a great rattling horror, the stuff of bleached-white nightmares.
Boneyards are dangerous not just for their immense size, but also for their numerous terrible powers. Boneyards have the ability to disassemble and reassemble themselves at will, thus they are able to disguise themselves as piles of bones or elaborate ossuaries. They can also split off some of their bones and form subordinate Undead minions from their excess bone. And last and most terrible, Boneyards can tear the bones from living creatures, tearing them apart from the inside out, harvesting their blood, pain and mana to fuel themselves, while slaying their unfortunate victim. For this reason, they are sometimes also referred to as Bone-Takers.
Boneyards are terrible Undead, but do not arise naturally. They are always the product of Necromancers, who are usually very careful to keep them bound with multiple overlapping enchantments, to prevent such a powerful beast from going on a rampage and destroying it's erstwhile master. Only the most advanced of Necromancers can create a Boneyard (or an Undead of similar stature), as they require not only an iron will and punctilious attention to detail, but also buckets of mana. As such, Boneyards are often controlled by groups of Necromancers or other dark Wizards working together.
Boneyards can only be controlled by a powerful diabolic spirit, whether a Demonic entity summoned from the Rotten Planes or a sufficiently malicious and thirsting ghost, but Necromancers often are picky with such creatures, choosing the ones with the least intelligence that they can get away with. (un)Fortunately, intelligence and power are not always correlated.
This means that Boneyards often prove excellent, if exceedingly blunt, weapons. And due to their overall low intelligence and the general caution they are treated with, Boneyards are rarely given the chance to rebel. And good thing too, for the only thing worse that a terrifying monster directed by conscious will is one that feeds rapaciously on anything it encounters, leaving a massive swath of destruction in it's path.
by Wayne Reynolds |
Statblock:
HD 1d8+8
AR 3
Atk Scything Bone (2d6 sharp) + Bite (1d12 sharp + 1d6 DEX)
Mor 20 (if bound)/16 (if unbound)
Saves (7+HD) or less
False Appearance: A Boneyard can take itself apart to resemble a floor littered ankle-deep with bones, a pile of skulls, or any shape it wishes, though that shape will always be constructed of countless bones from a myriad of species.
Summon Soldiers of Death: A Boneyard can summon Undead Soldiers by shedding parts of it's body as an action. The Boneyard loses X HD and these become Undead under it's control. See below for a statblock. The Boneyard can later reabsorb surviving Undead as a free action, as long as those Undead are adjacent to it. This restores X HD to the Boneyard, where X is the number of HD the absorbed Undead had.
Sharpen Bones: A Boneyard's Bite causes the bones of a target to become sharp, making movement difficult and painful. This causes 1d6 DEX damage after each successful bite attack. If a creature is reduced to 0 DEX, the creature can still move, but takes 1d4 damage each time it does so. If a creature is removed from the presence of a Boneyard, they will regain 1 point of DEX per day.
Bone Eruption: A Boneyard can, as an action, make a single bite attack against a creature, and force that creature to make a CON saving throw. On a failed save, the creature has all of his bones tear their way out of his body, instantly killing that creature. This also heals a Boneyard for X HD, where X is the number of HD/levels the slain creature had. The Boneyard may only do this once every 1d4 rounds. On a successful save, nothing else happens.
Tactics:
- Rush the nearest creature
- Make normal attacks to determine the strongest
- Use Bone Eruption on the strongest
- Use Soldiers of Death to gather up stray enemies or cover your retreat
Soldiers of Death:
When a Boneyard chooses to create Undead Soldiers, it can distribute the X HD as it chooses. Each Soldier must have at least 1 HD.
Soldiers with 1-2 HD are human-sized, have 1 AR and make attacks that do 1d6 damage. They, like all Undead Soldiers spawned by the Boneyard, have Mor 20 and Saves equal to (7+HD) or less.
Soldiers with 3+ HD are Large/Ogre-sized. They have 2 AR and make attacks that do 1d8+1 damage.
Soldiers with 5+ HD are Huge/Cottage-sized. They have 3 AR and make attacks that do 1d10+1 damage.
by Ludwin Schouten |
Slaymate:
Number Appearing: 1 or 1d4
Alignment: Any Evil
Languages: Varies, depending on creator
Treasure: Old toys, well-preserved children's clothes, small magical trinkets
The innocence of children is well known. Many will overlook crimes against adults, dismissing or justifying them, but only the most black-hearted will do the same for those who harm children. Some consider the harming of children to be a litimus test for cruelty, for if one can be cruel to children, one can do anything and feel nothing. Similarly, all but the most diabolical will hold some consideration for harming children. And despite their open often contempt for the laws of man and God, Necromancers are no such exceptions to this rule.
Slaymates are Undead children, milky white-eyed creatures covered in preserved flesh and usually wrapped in lovingly preserved clothing that they might have worn while alive. If it weren't for their eyes and corpse-pale skin, they could be nothing more than dirty, scared children.
Necromancers who create Slaymates are either the cruelest and most diabolical of men, torturing and neglecting a child until it dies, then summoning a Demon to wear it's shell as a cruel mockery of all that is good and pure, or they are conflicted individuals, driven to these actions by guilt, rage or sorrow.
Slaymates, regardless of their origin, seek out creatures to perform the role of surrogate parent. If shown anything resembling affection or compassion, they will develop a strong attachment to the one who was kind to them and adopt them as their new Mom or Dad. They will follow that person around and try to "help" with whatever their new parent is. How a Slaymate helps is likely to be a grisly experience, as while the child they once were is dead, the spirit that possesses them remembers not only the innocence of children, but also their cruelty.
Necromancers often keep Slaymates around, not just for their powerful abilities, but also usually because the creation of such creatures is usually an attempt by the Necromancer to alleviate their own guilt. Some Necromancers with dead children will raise the corpses as Slaymates and pretend like their offspring are still alive, while others will "adopt" Slaymates created from the remains of children left behind after battles, the sacks of cities, etc.
Regardless of their situations, Slaymates are as pitiful as they are hazardous. When you see one, say a prayer for your own children and put them down, for their own and everyone else's good.
Statblock:
HD 1d4+1
AR 4
Atk Weapon (1d6+1) or Bite (1d3 + CON save vs disease
Mor 20 (if bound)/13 (if unbound)
Saves (7+HD) or less
Help your Father: Slaymates boost the effectiveness of Necromancy spells within a 30' radius of themselves. If a Necromancy spell is cast by a magic-user within the Slaymate's aura, the magic-user may reroll up to X MD, where X is the Slaymate's HD.
Despoiling Aura: Slaymates produce an aura of clinging corruption that affects everything around them. While in 30', no healing spells or magic can be cast, unless it uses more Mana Dice than the Slaymate's HD. Additionally, any spell that does Necrotic or Poison damage does +1d6 damage.
Play with your Food: Slaymates can, by eating the organs of a newly dead corpse (within the last hour) heal themselves for X HD, where X is the number of HD that creature had while alive. If this would give the Slaymate additional HP over it's maximum HD, it gains +1 HD. This effect is permanent.
Carrier: Slaymates carry the disease Pale Wasting. If a creature is bitten by a Slaymate, he must make a CON save. On a failed save, the creature takes 1d3 CON damage a day. The creature also develops a pale, sickly complexion and has disadvantage on all other CON saves. If reduced to 0 CON by this disease, the creature dies.
Tactics:
- Stay near your parent
- If someone can heal, go and stand near them
- If you see someone in danger of dying or recently dead, go and cut him open so you can eat his tasty bits
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