Lords of Darkness
REF5 Lords of Darkness
1e
Mummy Greater: The greater mummy, the undead remains of a man (or woman) who has chosen to be mummified.
The greater mummy is not just a more deadly version of the creature commonly known as a mummy, it is a mummy who has chosen to undergo the mummification process, in which the victim's body dies, but the soul does not.
Vampire Greater: It is from the life-draining kiss of the succubus that greater vampires are born.
Ghost Lesser: They're merely restless spirits whose passing on to the next world is prevented for a number of reasons: For instance, the person may have died with an urgent need to pass on an important message to someone or accomplish some sort of unfinished task. Thus, it remains on the Prime Material Plane, unable to rest until the message is delivered or the task completed. In another case, the lesser ghost may, as true ghosts, be angered over its betrayal and murder in life, and the creature cannot rest until the one who committed the crime against it is properly punished.
A lesser ghost might also, through its own misbehavior in life, find itself bound to an unhappy existence between worlds until it finds some sort of way to atone for its deeds. Lastly, the relatively weak spirit might remain under the domination of a greater ghost, free from obeying it, but tormented and unable to rest until the creature is destroyed.
Pseudo-Lich: They are created when a very powerful magic-user is fanatically pursuing a certain goal at the time of death. Some inexplicable force, perhaps due to years of exposure to magic, allows the wizard's soul to inhabit the shell of its dead body until the goal is achieved or the body crumbles to dust.
Wight Great: The great wight is a leader of wights, a very rare creature that can only form from the body of a being of consecrated royal blood. The original body must have been of lawful good alignment and been dedicated to the service of a lawful good deity, then fallen from grace and not been reconciled to the religion of his birth before he died.
Despite the statements of Jilda the Sage, great wights come from no more noble a background than their followers. A great wight is simply a wight that has managed to absorb enough life energy to gain in power. This to some extent explains the enthusiasm of wights in attacking their prey. The more successful a wight is at draining energy, the better chance it has of becoming a great wight and getting its chance to rule its kind.
Ghast: Ghasts are ghouls who have wandered or been taken into the Abyss and gained superior powers due to exposure to the intense evil there.
Still, most ghouls and ghasts are the victims of other ghouls and ghasts, folk who died of wounds inflicted by those undead monsters. If victims are not blessed, they rise again in three days as ghouls, under the control of their slayer. Furthermore, unblessed victims may neither be resurrected nor reincarnated.
Ghost: Now true ghosts almost always began as powerful humans who during life possessed both an evil disposition and a powerful will. How exactly such a person actually does become a ghost remains a mystery, but one recurrent factor seems to be that their passing from life is marked by great anger or hatred.
Whether or not this ultimately results in the spirit's being unable to rest, or whether the departed “earns” Its status as a result of its earthly misdeeds isn't really known, and perhaps both likelihoods are possible.
Ghoul: ghouls were once evil humans who preyed upon others in life and who died unblessed.
Victims who are killed by ghouls become ghouls themselves if they are not blessed before being buried.
The ghoul is a human or demi-human who has risen from the grave to feed on human and other corpses. Some ghouls are self-made. In life, they were human predators who fed off the ill fortune of their fellow men. Their lives ended, yet their evil survived. Dying unblessed and buried unsanctified, they are cursed to continue feeding as ghouls.
Still, most ghouls and ghasts are the victims of other ghouls and ghasts, folk who died of wounds inflicted by those undead monsters. If victims are not blessed, they rise again in three days as ghouls, under the control of their slayer. Furthermore, unblessed victims may neither be resurrected nor reincarnated.
Lich: The urge for immortality is so strong in some powerful mages and magic-user/clerics that they aspire to lichdom, despite its horrible physical side effects and the usual loss of friends and living companionship. Lichdom must be prepared for in life; no true lich ever is known to have come about “naturally.”
To become a lich, a magic-user or magic-user/cleric must attain at least the 18th level of experience as a magic-user. The candidate for lichdom must have access to the spells magic jar, enchant an item, and trap the soul. Nulathoe's Ninemen, a fifth-level magic-user spell (detailed in the FORGOTTEN REALMS boxed set) which serves to preserve corpses against decay, keeping them strong and supple as in life, is also required.
The process of attaining lichdom is ruined if the candidate dies at any point during it. Even if successful resurrection follows, the process must be started anew. The process involves the preparation of a magical phylactery and a potion. Most candidates prepare the potion first and arrange for an apprentice or ally to raise them if ingestion of the potion proves fatal. Preparation of the phylactery is so expensive that most candidates do not wish to waste all the effort of its preparation by dying after it is completed but before they are prepared for lichdom.
The nine ingredients of the potion are as follows:
Arsenic (2 drops of the purest distillate)
Belladonna (1 drop of the purest distillate)
Blood (1 quart of blood from a dead virginal human infant killed by wyvern venom)
Blood (1 quart from a dead demihuman slain by a phase spider)
Blood (1 quart from a vampire or a being infected with vampirism)
Heart (the intact heart of a humanoid killed by poisoning; a mixture of arsenic and belladonna must be used)
Reproductive glands (from seven giant moths dead for less than 10 days, ground together)
Venom (1 pint or more, drawn from a phase spider less than 30 days previous)
Venom (1 pint or more, drawn from a wyvern less than 60 days previous)
The ingredients are mixed in the order given by the light of a full moon and must be drunk within seven days after they combine into a bluish-glowing, sparkling black liquid. All of the potion must be drunk by the candidate, and within 6 rounds will produce an effect as follows (roll percentile dice):
01-10 All body hair falls out, but potion is ineffective (the candidate knows this). Another potion must be prepared if lichdom is desired.
11-40 Candidate falls into a coma for 1d6 + 1 days, is physically helpless and immobile, mentally unreachable. Potion works; the candidate knows this.
41-70 Potion works, but candidate is feebleminded, Any failed attempt to cure the candidate's condition is 20% likely to slay the candidate.
71-90 Potion works, but candidate is paralyzed for 2d6 + 2 days (no saving throw, curative magics notwithstanding). There is a 30% chance for permanent loss of 1d6 Dexterity points.
91-96 Potion works, but candidate is permanently deaf (01-33), dumb (34-66), or blind (67-00). The lost sense can only be regained by a full or limited wish.
97-00 Death of the candidate. Potion does not work.
The successfully prepared candidate for lichdom can exist for an indefinite number of years before becoming a lich. He will not achieve lichdom upon death unless preparation of his or her phylactery is complete. A successfully prepared candidate may appear somewhat paler of skin than before imbibing the potion, but cannot mentally or magically be detected by others as ready for lichdom. The candidate, however, is always aware of readiness for lichdom, even if charmed or insanity or memory loss occurs. (A charmed candidate can never be made to reveal where his phylactery is – although he could be compelled to identify what the phylactery is, if shown it.)
The phylactery may take any form – it may be a pendant, gauntlet, scepter, helm, crown, ring, or even a lump of stone. It must be of inorganic material, must be solid and of high-quality workmanship if man-made, and cannot be an item having other spells or magical properties on or in it. It may be decorated or carved in any way desired for distinction.
Enchant an item is cast upon the phylactery (this is one of the rare cases in which this spell can be cast on unworked material), a process requiring continual handling of the phylactery for a long time, as described in the PLAYER'S HANDBOOK. The phylactery must successfully make its saving throw as noted in the spell description. It must be completely enchanted within nine days (not the 24 hours normally allowed by the spell). Note that the “additional spell” times given in the enchant an item spell description are required.
When the phylactery is thereby made ready for enchantment, the candidate must cast trap the soul on it. Percentile dice are rolled; the spell has a 50% chance or working, plus 6% per level of the candidate (or caster, if it is another being) over 11th level. The phylactery glows with a flickering blue-green faerie fire-like radiance for one round if it is successfully receptive for the candidate's soul.
The candidate then must cast Nulathoe's Ninemen on the phylactery, and within one turn of doing so, cast magic jar on it and enter it with his life force. No victim is required for this use of the magic jar spell.
Upon entering the phylactery, the candidate instantly loses one experience level along with its commensurate spells and hit points. The soul and lost hit points remain in the phylactery, which becomes AC 0 and has those hit points henceforth. The candidate is now a lichnee, and must return to his own body to rest for 1d6 + 1 days. The ordeal of becoming a lichnee is so traumatic that the candidate forgets any memorized spells of the top three levels available to him, and cannot regain any spells of those levels until the rest period is complete. (Candidates usually then resume a life of adventuring to regain the lost level.)
The next time the lichnee candidate dies, regardless of the manner or planar location of death, or barriers of any sort between corpse and phylactery, the candidate's life force will go into the phylactery. For it to emerge again, there must be a recently dead (less than 30 days) corpse within 90 feet of the phylactery. The corpse may be that of any creature, and must fail a saving throw vs. spell to be possessed. If it makes its saving throw, it will never receive the lich.
If the creature had 3 hit dice or fewer in life, it saves as a zero-level fighter. If it had 3 + 1 hit dice or greater in life, it saves as if it were alive, with the following alignment modifiers: LG, CG, NG: + 0; LN, CN, N: - 3; LE, - 4; NE: - 5; CE: -6. The candidate's own corpse, if within range, is at -10, and may have been dead for any length of time. The lichnee may attempt to enter his own corpse once per week until succeeding. (A phylactery too well-hidden might never offer the lichnee a corpse to enter. Many lichnee commit suicide to save themselves such troubles.) When the lichnee enters its own corpse, it rises in 1d4 turns as a full lich.
Seven days after ingesting any part of the candidate's original body, a wightish lichnee body will metamorphose into a body similar to the candidate's original one, and manifest full lich powers and abilities (re-roll hit points using eight-sided dice).
Mummy: The preparers, usually priests, began the mummification process with a live victim, usually a warrior-one of their own people. Their spells kept the poor soul in his body after it died, while they removed and preserved his vital organs, then dried out and preserved his body.
Mummies do not exist of their own accord. Unlike life-draining undead, they do not give birth to their own kind out of the bodies of their victims. Mummies are created by men to act as tomb guardians. The process is similar to that required to create a skeleton or a zombie, but requires long preparation of the body, expensive and rare preservative spices and compounds, and a spell to bring them to “life.” For the mummy creation ritual to be successful, the mummy must be a living being (usually human) when the mummification process begins. The unspeakable horror and agony of the process (the body dies, but the soul and mind remain aware and trapped within) are responsible for the mummy's “unholy hatred of life.”
The mummification rituals draw upon power from the Negative Material Plane, replacing life energy with death energy.
The common mummy (as described in the MONSTER MANUAL), has been brought into being by the acts of others.
As part of the mummification process, the internal organs of the living victim are removed and preserved separately in three canopic jars, immersed in an elixir made from the bodies of larvae. These organ jars must remain within the tomb guarded by the mummy.
Shadow: Some persons who die are not yet ready to leave life. Others are murdered or killed under traumatic conditions. When that happens, the one who died may leave behind a shadow-that part of a spirit or soul that grasps greedily after life. It is usually tied to a place of emotional significance-the scene of its death, for instance.
Skeleton: When a skeleton is animated, the enchantment accomplishes two things. First, it knits the bones together magically, binding them with force drawn from the Negative Energy Plane. Almost all the bones have to be there-without mostly complete remains, the spell is almost impossible to hold together.
Second, the spell binds energy called the animus into the skeleton to animate it. That's not the same as the spirit or soul of the deceased. It is only a fragment of soul energy, the portion that helped keep the soul in the living body. In death, the animus lingers around the remains until they turn to dust. This is true no matter what the race of the creature whose bones are animated.
Spectre: Any human drained completely of life energy by a spectre becomes a half-strength spectre under its control. When a person is drained of life by a spectre, his body does not vanish into thin air. Rather, the corpse remains, the soul leaves, and the negative part of the being that is jealous and hateful of life takes form as a spectre. Only humans can become spectres. Other races drained of life by a spectre simply die.
This can also occur spontaneously when an evil or hateful NPC of Lawful Evil alignment dies. If that NPC has sufficient motivation (in the DM's judgment), he may return to haunt the living as an undead spectre. The NPC should make a saving throw vs. death magic. If successful, he becomes a spectre.
Wight: Wights are formed from the bodies of men and women of noble birth who are buried in earthen tombs. There, their bodies are sought out by an evil spirit of power which has no way of interacting with the Prime Material Plane unless he inhabits such a body.
When the spirit inhabits the body, it halts the normal process of decay and instead works its magic to partially petrify the body. When the body has the right balance of flesh and mineral, it can move again under the spirit's guidance.
Why the spirit wants to return to a semi-fleshy form is unknown.
If a lichnee enters another's corpse, he is limited to the corpse's living strength, and will have no more than 4 hit dice. The intelligence and wisdom of the lichnee candidate are preserved, and the corpse will rise after 1d3 turns of apparent continuing death (the lichnee's presence being undetectable during this time) as a wight.
Zombie: Zombies that are actually dead often, at least in the Netherese tradition, come from once living zombies. As the body's spirit dies, rebellion goes with it.
Demi-Lich: Demi-lichdom is not a state that can be deliberately chosen or prepared for; why and how it occurs to some liches and not to others remains a mystery, although great strength of will and activity as a lich seems to make demi-lichdom more likely. Perhaps fell Lower Plane or divine powers are involved. Some liches consume larvae (see Monster Manual) on a regular basis rather than employing Nulathoe's Ninemen to maintain bodily vitality; some sages have advanced the hypothesis that a demi-lich's sentience originates with such creatures.
