Undead Revisited
Undead Revisited
Pathfinder 1e
Larger Bodak: A giant that falls prey to a bodak’s deadly gaze.
Smaller Bodak: Small humanoids that become bodaks.
Bodak Multiple Heads: A bodak created from a creature with multiple heads, such as an ettin, becomes deadlier because it has more eyes with which to project its horrific stare.
Taker of Eyes, Bodak Antipaladin 8: The bodak known as the Taker of Eyes began as Sir Amshel Veraine, a knight of Lastwall who sought to take the battle against evil to the Abyss itself. All throughout his career, he sought knowledge of the Outer Planes, until finally he felt he was ready to crusade beyond the battlefields of his homeland. Although his superiors knew his plans were suicidal, Veraine’s zeal (along with considerable family influence) was enough to persuade them. Together with a team of similarly minded zealots, Veraine exchanged a lifetime of battlefield treasures for a portal to the Abyss, through which he boldly charged, vowing to contact his superiors once a beachhead had been established.
It was a massacre. Out of their depth, with little concept of how to navigate the Abyss, Sir Veraine’s forces were slaughtered. As his warriors fell around him, Veraine realized the error of his ways, but with the spellcasters in his party already fallen, there was no way for him to evacuate his troops or call for aid. Instead, he did the only thing a knight of Lastwall could do: he charged. Pressing ever deeper into the suppurating vaults, Veraine sought to reach a leader among the demons, someone whose destruction would give his own death worth. Down he plunged, seeking something he couldn’t name. And then, with the last of his troops lying broken at his heels, he found it.
What Veraine discovered in that final amphitheater—what trials he endured at the hands of the demons—remains unknown, even to him.
Yet what emerged from that vault was not a man, but a broken thing whose eyes continually beheld atrocities beyond its understanding.
Former Devil Devourer: A devourer formed from a powerful devil.
Former Daemon Devourer: A devourer formed from a powerful daemon.
Former Demon Devourer: A devourer formed from a powerful demon.
Barasthaga, Devourer Oracle 14: In the Drowning Court of Abaddon, Thanatessim the Ash-Tongued misjudged his power, both personal and political, and challenged a more powerful rival for position among the ranks of greater thanadaemons. He failed, and rather than face obliteration at the hands of his enemy or the Horseman of Death, he f led, knowing even as he did so that no plane or world would be distant enough. And so he gathered all of his strength, everything he’d learned from an eternity of service to the Boatman, and fled somewhere beyond either.
The thanadaemon that fled never returned. Yet after a time, something else did. Calling itself Barasthaga the Blessed Minion—though never specifying precisely who or what it was a minion of—the devourer that contained some portion of the Ash-Tongued’s essence came to its former home on Abaddon, only to be driven away by the combined effort of its former compatriots.
Lictor Shokneir, Human Graveknight Fighter 5, Hellknight 10: During the Chelish civil war, several bands of mercenaries were dubbed Hellknights by the besieged Chelish royalty, but many of these “lesser” and unsanctioned orders refused to disband after the war was over. One of these was the Order of the Crux. Hunted down and destroyed by the Order of the Scourge in 4663 ar, the butchers of the Crux were wiped out, and their fortress of Citadel Gheisteno put to the torch. Yet 25 years later, three graveknights clad in scarred Hellknight armor rose from the ruin. They gathered together lesser undead under the banner of the Crux, and now seemingly bide their time in the shadows of their fallen citadel.
As he was in life, so is Lictor Shokneir the leader of his band in death. Always a grim and merciless man, Shokneir’s rebirth as a graveknight has only strengthened his certainty that his is the only valid interpretation of the law, and that those who question it are best put to the sword.
Jester of Years, Lich: ?
Tar-Baphon, The Whispering Tyrant, Lich: Cast down by Aroden and brought back by overwhelming force of will, the Whispering Tyrant nearly brought all of the Inner Sea region under his heel.
Harlot-Queen of Geb, Arazni, Lich: ?
Geb, Ghost-King: ?
An-Hepsu XI, The Uncorruptible Pharaoh, Lich: ?
Phaegia, Human Venerable Lich Cleric 11: Once an influential priest of Aroden, Phaegia turned to the worship of the demon lord Orcus as she felt her life slipping away with her advancing years, and made the grueling transformation into a lich so she could continue to “live” forever.
Arishkov Wolfstongue, Vampire: ?
Desert Mohrg: A desert mohrg rises from a violent criminal who has been executed via torturous means in arid, hot environments, typically methods designed to kill through exposure and draw out the criminal’s expiration. Being affixed to a rock, tree, or other object and being buried up to the neck and left to bake in the sun are both methods that can result in the creation of desert mohrgs.
Fleshwalker Mohrg: When a criminal is executed through methods that leave no physical mark upon the body (such as by poison or a death effect), and then the corpse is preserved via a gentle repose spell, a fleshwalker mohrg is the result.
Frost Mohrg: A frost mohrg’s genesis is similar to that of a desert mohrg—a violent criminal that is executed via lingering exposure to the elements, only in this case, in a cold environment.
Mohrg-Mother: Perhaps among the most perverse category of mohrg arises when the executed murderer is also pregnant with child.
Demonic Mohrg: In a few tragic cases, a mass murderer or serial killer pursues his vile compulsions not due to psychological reasons, but because he is possessed by a demonic spirit that forces him into the role of a killer. Disembodied demonic spirits like these are fond of using mortals as hosts in this way, for if the host is captured and publicly executed while still being possessed by the demon, it can arise from beyond the grave as something more than a mere mohrg—these creatures return as demonic mohrgs
Nightshade Nightskitter: ?
Ravener Nightmare: The ritual to become a nightmare ravener requires bargaining with powerful entities from the nightmare dimension of Leng or with deities of nightmares like Lamashtu.
Ravener Thassilonian: The runelords of Thassilon, particularly the necromancer Zutha, often traded their powerful magical secrets to dragons in return for a period of servitude while the dragons lived. When this period ended, the runelord would aid the dragons in making the transition from living to undead. The methods for these rituals still exist in certain Thassilonian ruins, and are invariably guarded by the raveners who used the rituals to transcend their own mortality.
Arantaros, Blue Dragon Ravener: Pleased with his service, the demon lord Haagenti provided the blue dragon scholar Arantaros with the tainted gift of immortality, that the ravener might continue his devious studies into the esoteric arts of necromancy and alchemy, and it’s whispered in parts of Thuvia that the ravener may be secretly researching the legendary sun orchid elixir, in the hope of reversing his condition and living forever without the aid of his demonic patron.
Vashkiyan, Ancient Green Dragon Ravener: With each year, the green dragon Vashkiyan’s prized intellect declined, victim of a wasting disease that no spell could manage to cure. Death she could face, but the loss of her faculties filled her with unreasoning terror. As even her inborn magic began to fail, Vashkiyan turned toward planar evils rather than resign herself to death. One by one, she severed her ties with her mortal life to please Charon, the Horseman of Death. At the last she hunted down and slew her 15 living descendants, vivisecting each and feasting upon their organs. The archdaemon was pleased, and guided Vashkiyan through a ritual that saw her die in writhing agony, only to arise as a frightful ravener.
Bandit-King Alzar Kagir, Shadow: Rather than the law, justice found the bandit-king in the form of betrayal at the hands of his gang, who poisoned him and sealed him in his cave of treasures. They thought to unseal the cave some time later and divide the spoils, but did not reckon on the potency of their former leader’s greed or thirst for revenge.
Shadow Distorted: ?
Shadow Hidden One: ?
Shadow Plague: Victims of this supernatural disease, shadow blight, quickly weaken and die, at which point they spawn new plague shadows to further spread the contagion.
Upon death, the victim of shadow blight becomes a plague shadow.
Shadow Blight curse and disease.
Shadow Shadetouch: ?
Shadow Vanishing: Shadows dwelling in a place of strong negative energy or with a connection to the Shadow Plane can develop the ability to shadow slip through the Shadow Plane.
The Risen Lord, Dread Shadow Ancient Red Dragon: Accidentally transformed into a shadow when an attempt to change into a ravener failed, the undead dragon now known as the Risen Lord remembers nothing of his life but a sense of loss and a terrible rage.
Spectral Dead: Driven by all-encompassing hunger and murderous intent, spectral dead are corrupted souls that refuse to release their hold on the mortal world.
No one knows what plants the seeds of darkness and decay that utterly corrupt the souls of mortals. Some speculate that the prenatal soul, like fruit left too long to ripen on the vine, can sour to malignancy long before its binding to a mortal shell, dooming the creature from birth to a troubled life of anger and deceit and, eventually, to undeath. Others theorize that mortal action alone allows this malignancy to take root, and lives spent unwisely in the service of dark powers corrupt the intangible sparks of divinity that rest in mortal hearts. Still others note that despair and madness—afflictions capable of bringing even the most pious and good-natured people to their knees, through no fault of their own—can lead to the unnatural shackling of a spirit to the mortal world.
Once this metaphorical disease has festered within a soul, it becomes contagious, and some undead are able to pass their despicable gift on to the living, regardless of their victim’s former valor. While the positive energy of mortal humanoids can fight off the curse of undeath while they are still living, those slain by these powerful spirits sometimes have their souls instantaneously consumed by darkness, their corrupted spirits sloughing off their mortal shells to rise as the ghostly spawn of their slayers.
Allip Scribbling: ?
Spectre Corpulent: Ancient spectres that are able to satisfy their all-consuming rage by engaging in perpetual, gluttonous feasts upon the living undergo a startling transformation, growing in size and strength as their incorporeal bulk oozes and writhes around them in miasmal folds, appearing as an obese, ghostly humanoid.
Wraith White: Created by fiends from the distilled and corrupted souls of holy crusading knights who succumbed to temptation and died as sinners and blasphemers, white wraiths are composed of blinding white light rather than darkness.
Carak, Blade of Zyphus, Unique Allip: In life, Carak was a deadly assassin-priest of Zyphus. Upon his suicide, the assassin’s faith brought him back as an allip, eager to continue his dark work.
Barrow Wight: The most famous wights of fantasy are the barrow-wights of J. R. R. Tolkien, evil spirits bound by greater dark powers to the barrow-downs of a fallen kingdom to ensure it did not rise again. Their capture of the hobbits and attempt to corrupt them into wights themselves make for a horrifyingly iconic scene.
Others: The Others of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series fit the bill admirably, being the tragic spirits of the fallen, bound to a greater evil but perhaps remembering a dim shadow of what they once were and compelled to pass on their curse.
Wight Dust: Just as wights that rise from the dead in frozen environments can become infused with the dangerous qualities of their harsh environs, dust wights carry in their desiccated, crumbling frames the scorching punishment of the searing desert.
Wight Mist: ?
Wight Lord: Where typical wights rise from a wide variety of individuals, wight lords rise from the bodies of despotic rulers or ruthless generals.
A wight lord can rise from the remains of any cruel or sadistic leader, but those who were higher than 11th level when they perished retain some of their previous life’s knowledge—although not all of it. When this occurs, subtract 11 from the creature’s previous number of class levels to determine the total number of class levels the wight lord possesses.
Undead: Those tragic souls transformed by evil from beyond the mortal world or cursed by their actions in life to rise again after death.
The spells animate dead, create undead, and create greater undead account for methods by which spellcasters can create a wide range of undead creatures—but the options granted by these spells are limited. With the GM’s permission, these can be adjusted to allow for the creation of additional types of undead. Doing so requires additional material components and spells (additional spells are cast as part of the casting time of the undead creation spell, but do not extend that spell’s casting time).
Most undead began as living beings that were animated after death, arose again spontaneously after death because of some great emotion or unfinished business, or, while still living, willingly embraced undeath to stave off the looming hand of oblivion.
For most people, death is a release, a passage into the just rewards of the afterlife. Yet not everyone who dies rests easy. Legends and campfire tales tell of those individuals too evil to die, or too twisted by pride or occult knowledge to cross over to the other side. These lost souls become the undead, plaguing the dark crypts or silent streets of cities and farm towns alike, feasting on the innocent or spreading their immortal contagion like a plague.
Bodak: Unfortunate creatures who witness acts of unspeakable planar evil and have their bodies destroyed and remade by the experience.
When mortals venture to the utmost depths of unforgiving planes, they sometimes come across knowledge so terrible or witness events so horrifying that their very souls are consumed, killing them and then reanimating them as the weird, smoke-eyed creations called bodaks.
Yet for some, bearing witness to true horror and supernatural evil does more than twist their minds—it ravages their souls to such a degree that they are themselves transformed. Requiring evil far beyond that normally found among mortals, this rare transformation occurs when unprepared mortals venture deep into those extraplanar spaces where humanity was not meant to tread—the deepest hiding holes of the evil planes. In these repositories of unholy knowledge, things are seen that cannot be unseen, and which indelibly stain the souls of the foolish. The creatures that emerge from these places are mortal no longer.
If a victim lacks the will to break a bodak's gaze, he is quickly overwhelmed by its power and dies shortly thereafter—the transformation into another bodak begins immediately.
Scholars and theologians have long debated the exact nature of these strange undead, positing that it’s the very act that creates a bodak—witnessing some evil and hideous occurrence beyond all mortal capacity for understanding—that gives unholy life and purpose to these creatures. In some sense, the bodak is the very manifestation of such an act, a curse upon the living, its life force scarred to such a degree that only causing others to gaze into its eyes and share its agony gives it some sort of relief. Most researchers believe that mundane evil is not enough, arguing that only traumatic deaths in the darkest pits of the planes are pure enough to form a bodak, with the creature’s animating energy being drawn from the evil Outer Planes where it met its fate. Yet others insist that it’s not the place that causes the transformation, but rather the purity of the evil and horror involved, thus making it possible for an ordinary human (or, more likely, a summoned demon) to spark the transformation, provided the horrors it shows to the victim are heinous enough.
Thanks to its Abyssal taint, the Worldwound hosts the largest population of bodaks in the Inner Sea region. Moreover, the Abyssal nature of the land itself makes it one of the few places—perhaps the only place—on Golarion where bodaks can form spontaneously in the same way they do on the Abyss, as the result of witnessing horrible extraplanar evil and depredations beyond mortal ken.
The diabolists favored by the aristocracy of Cheliax require large numbers of unwitting victims to perform their rites. While most of their dungeons and torture rooms are mundane, filled with wretched prisoners who bear witness to unspeakable things on a nearly daily basis, some of these spellcasters prefer to take victims to Hell itself, making their offerings to the plane in person. Few of these victims (and not all of the diabolists) survive these offerings, but a tiny fraction end up exposed to greater horrors than initially expected, with either the master or prisoner undergoing the transformation into a bodak.
The strange religions found in the Mwangi Expanse sometimes demand sacrifices and dark rituals. Explorers and adventurers unlucky enough to be caught by these more sinister tribes, particularly the zealots of Angazhan living in the ape city of Usaro, are sometimes transformed by bizarre and terrifying demonic rites. These bodaks roam the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse, terrorizing the inhabitants and sometimes transforming entire villages into their own kind.
Bodaks, the eyeless horrors twisted by sights no one was meant to see.
Create Greater Undead spell, caster level 20 corpse must be cast in the Abyss.
Devourer: Only the bravest and most powerful adventurers dare step beyond the boundaries of the known planes, into whatever darkness lies beyond. Most who do so never return—yet some, especially the evil ones, come back changed and twisted.
Information about this otherness is almost completely unavailable, with even the gods seemingly deaf to most questions, yet there are always a few who to decide to see for themselves. When powerful fiends and evil spellcasters undertake this quest, some come back and report nothing but vast expanses of ... well, nothing. Others don’t return at all. Yet some—the foulest ones, or those who become lost beyond the multiverse’s reaches—find something out there that changes them.
Though devourers never discuss just who or what they’re talking to, many suspect their madness rises from a lingering connection to whatever sinister, alien entity or force made them what they are, and the devourers themselves sometimes let apparent titles slip, with appellations like the Dire Shepherd or the Wanderer Upon the Stair.
Devourers’ origins are shrouded in mystery. While spellcasters may create them through the usage of create greater undead spells, exactly what occurs during these rituals is unclear, and it’s possible that devourers are more called into being than physically created—certainly it’s more than just a simple matter of animating a corpse.
Unlike many other forms of undead, devourers do not form spontaneously, nor do they breed or spawn. Rather, they begin as either one of two creatures: a terribly evil mortal spellcaster or an actual fiend. Those of either category who find themselves lost in the hinterlands of the cosmos sometimes return as devourers.
They do not find their rebirth, their unholy transfiguration, in a specific place or plane. Rather, far beyond the knowledge and sight of mortals or outsiders, they experience some sort of transformative gnosis, realizing some infectious idea that simultaneously destroys and recreates them with a new form and a new hunger. Whether or not there might be something out there that actively calls to them, compulsively drawing them to its presence and making them into what they are, is anyone’s guess, yet it would explain why only evil outsiders and spellcasters seem to be susceptible, and also potentially why the strange mannerisms of the devourers who return to the planes seem more than simple madness.
Those devourers created (or potentially called from elsewhere) by magic share all the traits and madness of their transformed kin, a fact that has confused spellcasters for generations. Some scholars have pointed out that specific details of these magical rituals have certain traits in common across all schools of magic and faith, leading some to believe that the ability to create devourers may have been introduced long ago as a single spell, perhaps provided by whatever malign forces lurk beyond the planes.
Devourers, who form from the spirits of powerful spellcasters and fiends that venture into the darkness beyond the planes and come back forever tainted.
Grave Knight: Battlefield champions of ultimate cruelty whose depraved acts bind them to their armor for all eternity.
Some warriors are too arrogant to die.
The lust for battle and sheer will to win allow some truly evil and vile warriors to shrug off their final defeat. Through methods that remain poorly understood, the vengeful spirit of such a fearsome combatant sometimes forms a bond with its armor that permits it to simply refuse death, its spirit lingering long past when it should have gone on to its eternal punishment in the afterlife.
Unlike liches, graveknights almost never plan this return from their last battle. It happens, seemingly spontaneously and at random, to people totally unprepared for an undead existence.
Graveknights are born of defeat, and it is their rage at such an end that allows them to return, attempting to erase their failure through greater triumphs and atrocities.
While most graveknights arise spontaneously from the armor of sadistic warlords and fallen champions, there are methods by which evil men and women can deliberately transform themselves into these powerful undead lords, in much the same way some spellcasters seek to become liches. The process by which a hopeful graveknight makes the deliberate transformation is neither simple nor cheap. The character must first live and lead a life of wanton cruelty, winning great glory and power over the course of several violent conflicts (and achieving a minimum of 9th level in any character class, with an evil alignment for all 9 levels). When he achieves this goal, he may craft the suit of armor that will serve him in his afterlife as his graveknight armor—this must be heavy armor, although its exact type is irrelevant. The creator must also be proficient in the armor’s use. The armor itself must be of exceptional quality and crafting, requiring the finest of materials and artisans. Even the forge upon which the armor is to be crafted must be of exceptional quality. The overall cost of these components is 25,000 gp—this amount is over and above any additional costs incurred in making the armor magical. An existing suit of armor (including magic armor) can serve as the base suit upon which these 25,000 gp of enhancements are built.
Once the armor is complete, the hopeful graveknight must don the armor and then seek out a powerful evil patron to sponsor his cruelties—this patron can be a mortal tyrant, a hateful monster, a demonic god, or similar power. Once the graveknight-to-be secures a patron, he must engage upon a crusade in that patron’s name. This crusade must last long enough for the graveknight to achieve two additional levels of experience, during which he must wear his armor whenever possible.
Upon completing this final stage of his quest for undeath (and a minimum character level of 11th), the sadist has finally neared the end of his long path to eternal undeath. The last stage in becoming a graveknight is to construct a pool, pit, or other large concavity, into which the graveknight must place 13 helpless, good-aligned creatures of his own race, who must be sacrificed by the graveknight or his patron using acid, cold, electricity, or fire. The graveknight must wear his armor during these sacrifices, and within a minute of the last sacrifice, the graveknight must take his own life using the same form of energy, after which his body and armor must be destroyed by that form of energy. The pit within which the entire ritual took place must then be filled with soil taken from graves that have spawned undead creatures.
Once this final step is taken, the graveknight-to-be has a 75% chance of rising as a graveknight. This chance rises by 1% per point of Charisma possessed by the graveknight-to-be at the time of his death. Additional factors can increase this chance as well, at the GM’s discretion.
Whenever sufficiently evil warriors or similar sorts of beings die at the hands of a foe, there is a chance that they might return as graveknights.
Heavily armored warriors are most likely to arise as graveknights, perhaps because the complete shell of metal or other materials assists in trapping the soul.
Urgathoa claims graveknights as her children just as she does all undead. Her priests and other high servants maintain that she is the mysterious agency that actually calls them back from the grave, while the goddess herself gives more confusing and potentially contradictory answers.
Graveknights, whose lust for battle knows no end—not even in death.
Lich: Powerful spellcasters who bind their souls into valuable artifacts called phylacteries.
Liches are spellcasters who bind their souls into special receptacles called phylacteries.
Drawing on the powers of their faith or dark knowledge, the greatest spellcasters of the world transcend the boundaries of life through mysterious techniques unknown to the living.
One does not become a lich by accident or stumble into this form of undeath through misadventure. A lich is not a puppet, a blood-mad monster, or an accident of rage or despair. The lich is instead a creature of design and ultimate will, carefully and rationally planning its transition from life into undead immortality.
It is not merely force of will that propels one to lichdom, nor is it the simple desire to avoid death, though these are certainly factors in the mindset of the would-be lich. Instead, those who would follow the path of the undying mind must seek out tomes of forbidden magic and lost lore. Though the initiates might not be evil when they begin, the process under which they become liches drives them slowly into the arms of corruption—the focus they must develop drives out all other concerns, including the civilized needs of friendship and love.
The final and most important aspect of a lich’s transformation involves creating a new home for its soul called a phylactery—this is often something strong and impressive, such as a gem or box of unparalleled quality, though almost any object can serve.
Liches, the twisted spellcasters who lock away their souls so death may never claim them.
Mohrg: The spirits of serial killers and those who exult in the taking of life.
Those who exult in the needless taking of life sometimes return to the world after death as mohrgs.
Some mohrgs were bloodthirsty warriors who slew as many as they could on the battlefield, others cold and calculating murders who selected their victims with delicate care, but nearly all mohrgs lived and died as mortal humanoids who delighted in the deaths of their fellow beings. A few mohrgs, however, are created from the remains of innocents by spellcasters (using the create undead spell), who are driven mad by being deprived of a peaceful death and then watching the transformation and slow decay of their own bodies.
There are two means of becoming a mohrg: by spell or by deed. A dead creature subject to a create undead spell might find herself transformed into a mohrg. Likewise, a humanoid who has killed many over the course of his life—or even just a few, if he is particularly unrepentant about the lives he’s taken—could awaken to discover that he has not yet passed to the afterlife, but arisen to undeath.
A mohrg is as much a product of the method of its execution as it is an undead manifestation of one who, in life, was a murderous criminal or warmonger. At times, unusual methods of execution can trigger equally unusual mohrgs. The extreme nature of these executions are such that these variant mohrgs are only rarely created by accident—more often, they are deliberate creations by officials who themselves dabble in necromancy and may in fact be as vile as those they put to death.
Once per day, a mohrg-mother can choose to animate a recently slain victim as another mohrg instead of as a fast zombie.
Sages’ opinions differ on the origins of mohrgs, and on the specific conditions that result in the existence of individual specimens of their undead type. One prevailing theory among those who study the unliving maintains that Urgathoa selects a number of the darkest souls awaiting sorting and judgment by Pharasma and takes them as her due, corrupting them with a touch and returning them to the world to spread the seed of undeath in an inexorable plague over the Material Plane. While some claim that the souls that become mohrgs are so abhorrent that the Lady of Graves actually rejects them, wiser heads understand that such is not the nature of Pharasma’s judgment, and suspect that it’s either the work of the Pallid Princess or some terrible process that occurs before the souls ever leave their corpses (as is the case with many other forms of undead).
All mohrgs have been cursed into their condition—either by the gods or by a spellcaster.
Mohrgs, the undead murders who rise after death to stalk the streets.
Nightshade: Colossi formed in the lightless spaces where the Shadow Plane and Negative Energy Plane meet.
Where the Shadow Plane meets the Negative Energy Plane, evil and darkness hold sway in vast and lightless gulfs. When a fiend succumbs to the ravages of this environment, the ensuing death can be the catalyst for creating one of the most powerful undead.
Nightshades are creatures beyond categorization, things made from darkness and malice, yet not truly natives of either the Shadow Plane or the Void. Born of a corruption of both planes in the lightless reaches where the planar boundaries break down, they are twisted and warped by evil.
They form from the twisted souls of those fiends and outsiders who, seeking greater mastery over negative energy and the dreaming gulfs of darkness where the Shadow Plane and Negative Energy Plane meet, are themselves overcome and twisted beyond recognition, turned into servants of the planes’ own nihilistic ends.
Nightshades are born when one or more outsiders—typically fiends—are lost or cast down into the adumbral depths where the Shadow Plane and Negative Energy Plane become a void like the darkest ocean trench, one of the places where reality ends. The death of the immortal becomes a catalyst for a reaction in which the planes seem not to twist the original creature so much as birth a new entity in its place.
The creation of something as powerful and dire as a nightshade requires the spirit of an immortal being.
Although four primary types of nightshades are known to exist, some sages speculate that they might all be the same species of creature in different life stages. Other scholars instead hold that they are distinct subtypes of the same creature, formed in the same manner but differing according to the specific component fiends from which they were created. According to this theory, the older and more powerful the fiend or fiends were—their exact species or alignment does not appear to matter—the more powerful the form of nightshade produced, though the combined deaths of multiple fiends produce a nightshade of a type otherwise reserved for the death of a much more powerful one on its own. Even the proponents of this theory, however, have no idea of the exact formulae involved, and the few casters capable of controlling a nightshade are generally more concerned with maintaining their tenuous hold over the undead juggernauts than with such unpragmatic musings.
Ravener: The circumstances that give rise to a ravener are as unique as their appearances. Some barter their very sanity to the madness beyond the Dark Tapestry, others forge bargains with demon lords or the Horsemen of Abaddon, and still others beseech malevolent gods. (Strangely, even lawful dragons make pacts with the lords of Hell only rarely—perhaps raveners find the strings attached to diabolical contracts too convoluted and numerous for comfort.) Yet not all raveners seek aid from more powerful creatures—in fact, doing so often conf licts with the same arrogance that leads dragons to become raveners in the first place. This second group instead finds immortality in much the same way liches do, researching rare and forbidden necromantic spells to create rituals of transformation unique to each dragon.
While some raveners achieve their status through arcane study and necromantic power, others are born of a combination of blasphemous rituals and the malign influence of dark powers. Raveners of this latter group must each seek out an evil patron to feed his or her necromantic rebirth. Each patron requires sacrifices and tribute pleasing to its debased desires. The aspiring ravener must first further the patron’s schemes upon her home world and perhaps others. The dragon might be sent against the patron’s foes, tasked with obtaining lost relics, or made a general among the patron’s mortal followers. In addition, the dragon must show the depth of her resolve. For some dragons, this means slaying their parents, mates, or children; the sacrifice of their most prized treasures; the annihilation of their life’s work; or some other show of commitment. Finally, the ravener must amass sufficient eldritch power to shatter natural laws or the barriers between planes and become the conduit for her patron’s might. Should the dragon falter in her tasks or prove an unworthy vessel for the power of her patron, what remains of her shattered soul languishes in servitude to her patron until the end of days.
Raveners are self-made undead, not created or generated spontaneously in the fashion of weaker undead.
The process by which a dragon becomes a ravener typically involves recruiting dark powers and undertaking necromantic rituals. Some of these rituals incorporate unusual stages that can alter the resulting ravener’s powers.
Shadow: Greedy spirits whose own mean-spirited miserliness shrinks their souls, bringing them back after death as some of the most despicable undead monstrosities.
Not even the grave can stop the greed of some people. Driven by envy and covetousness, those misers and thieves led to evil by their avaricious natures sometimes fade away or return after death as shadows, dark reflections of their former selves.
Rampant covetousness and grasping greed lead some people down the dark path of evil and betrayal, eventually ending in a reprehensible death scene or a lonely expiration. While most such petty and despicable souls travel on to their final rewards the same way everyone else does, in some cases gluttons, misers, and thieves waste away into nothing but shadows—undead things that reach and grab, but cannot hold.
As the victim of a shadow’s touch expires, its own shadow detaches from the corpse, taking on the same half-life as its killer.
On their own, shadows arise from the souls of greedy but lackluster evildoers—those whose crimes are heinous, but who lack the rage of a spectre or the exultation in evil often found in wraiths. The bandit who unemotionally slits her victims’ throats because it’s convenient, the petty diplomat who orders a witch burning to cover up his adulterous affair, and the miserly headmaster who lets orphans starve to save a few coppers all make good candidates for becoming shadows. Yet while such spontaneous transformations do occur, the vast majority of shadows are instead created by magic. Necromancers have long seen the value of relatively weak, pliable, and unambitious undead servants—especially incorporeal ones—and most shadows currently in existence were originally called to undeath by the spell create undead (or else by the life-draining attacks of other shadows created in this manner).
Death at the hands of a shadow means becoming one.
Also fortunate for the living is that although shadows can and sometimes do drain energy from animals or even vermin found in their lairs, only humanoid creatures that fall victim to their touch become shadows themselves. This is because of the nature of the humanoid spirit or soul and the magical similarity between the shadow and its prey.
Years ago, a young noblewoman lost in the woodlands beheld a holy vision on a hilltop and founded a small abbey there, whose sisterhood cared for all lost souls who came to its doors. Their kindness proved their undoing when a lost mercenary unit took advantage of their hospitality, only to rob and set fire to the abbey’s great hall with the sisters trapped inside. But the shadows that danced in the hellish light of the flames visited upon the soldiers all of the pain they had inflicted, and left none alive.
Historically, it’s known that the runelords of ancient Thassilon sometimes employed shadows, taking those traitors or servants who displeased the runelords and ripping their shadows away, killing these mortal subjects and turning their shadows into phantasmal servitors and spies capable of serving for eternity. These shadows subsisted on the life force of their victims, in turn stealing the victims’ shadows to create new servitors for their vile masters. While the records are unclear about which runelord was the first to harness the undead in this manor, various reports cite Zutha (Runelord of Gluttony, and a powerful necromancer), Belimarius (Runelord of Envy), and Karzoug (Runelord of Greed), and many of the lesser necromancers in the empire embraced the practice as well.
Shadows were well known in ancient Osirion as well—drawings and hieroglyphs concerning them decorate ancient tombs buried in the desert. Many of those same tombs are haunted by hungry shadows, awaiting tomb-robbers and explorers. Some of these shadows are guardians and protectors against those who would defile the dead, who owe their horrible existences to decadent nobles who commanded that their retinues be entombed alive with them. In other tombs, however, the resident shadows are the soul-shells of greedy and grasping pharaohs and viziers, unable to let go of what they held in life and determined to guard it forever after death. Either way, the result is the same for unfortunate tomb-raiders and archaeologists.
While undead in general are the work of Urgathoa, shadows are often also associated with Norgorber, the god of greed, secrecy, and murder. Indeed, some worshipers of Norgorber refer to shadows as “emissaries of the Gray Master” or “Blackfinger’s claws,” and believe the god takes the shadows of the faithful after death and makes them his proxies in the mortal world, infused with a measure of his killing power.
Any creature that is drained to 0 Strength by the Risen Lord dies. One round later, the creature’s body spawns a shadow (if the creature had 8 or fewer Hit Dice) or a greater shadow (if the creature had 9 Hit Dice or more).
Shadows, those souls too covetous and miserly to relinquish their grasp on life.
Shadow Greater: A shadow that has fed on the lives of many victims, or that dwells long enough in a place suffused with sufficient negative energies, may grow in power, becoming a greater shadow.
Any creature that is drained to 0 Strength by the Risen Lord dies. One round later, the creature’s body spawns a shadow (if the creature had 8 or fewer Hit Dice) or a greater shadow (if the creature had 9 Hit Dice or more).
Allip: Allips are the undead souls of those who took their own lives out of madness and insanity.
While rarer than those arising from more mundane insanity, some allips in Golarion start out in life as priests of the Old Cults who delve too deeply into the maddening secrets of their faith, taking their own lives when mysteries better left unrevealed spark a consuming darkness in their souls. The corrupting demon Sifkesh revels in driving mortals toward insanity and eventual suicide, and regions harboring her cults often have significant populations of the babbling spirits. The city of Westcrown, in particular, owes its high concentration of allips to the demon, particularly during the period known as the White Plague. The city’s elite had made something of a game of corrupting souls and driving them toward madness, and the militant order known as the Hellknights was formed to put an end to their murder spree and combat the plague of allips that resulted from it.
Create Greater Undead spell, caster level 15 with
Insanity spell.
Banshee: Whether created through vile misdeeds in her last moments, a terrible and torturous demise, or some wretched betrayal by her loved ones, a banshee is the vengeful undead spirit of an elven female that seeks only to destroy all those who still tread the mortal realm.
In the Darklands, the perpetual betrayals of drow society typically lack the sympathetic tragedy required to create banshees, although a new breed of exceptionally clever young noble daughters have learned to intricately manipulate their treacheries to give rise to the creatures, whether born from the betrayal of a matron mother, the mutiny of a favored daughter, or the gradual winning and then dashing of an underling’s trust.
Create Greater Undead spell, caster level 20 with
Fear and
Wail of the Banshee spells and the corpse of a female elf.
Spectre: Spectres are creatures of insatiable anger, their undeath the result of evil lives and a rage too great to allow them to let go of the mortal world. Arrogant egomaniacs enraged by the insult of their own deaths and murder victims seeking revenge on their captors are prime candidates for transformation into spectres, though such transformations is far more common if the mortals were actively evil.
Areas infested with the foul followers of Zyphus are often prime locations for spectres, as the cultists’ souls tend to linger on the mortal plane after death, rewarded with undeath and allowed to continue their dark deeds on Golarion. Other gods also command the respect of these undead, however, and the creatures’ spawning ability means spectral clerics in the service of Urgathoa quickly rise within her clergy, the dark spirits’ endless hunger for life force and control of an army of spawn a fitting homage to the Pallid Princess. Geb’s ruling class contains several powerful spectres, some of which host decadent, energy-draining banquets in their unhallowed halls, feasting on buffets of sentient souls, with the victims rising as spawn to expand the nation’s legions of incorporeal spies and infiltrators.
Wraith: Wraiths, much like spectres, arise from souls tainted by evil lives.
Creatures slain by white wraiths rise as normal wraith spawn in 1d4 rounds.
Wight: Broken corpses hungry for the souls of the living, doomed to their lonely existences through a wide variety of tragedies, malevolence, or unwilling possession.
The origins of wights are highly varied. Some are created through obscure necromantic rites (usually create undead) and bound to the service of necromancers or evil priests. More commonly, wights are simply the unfortunate victims of other wights, the light of their lives turned to a corrupted mockery by the undead’s touch.
Every touch of a wight draws the target farther from life and deeper into death, until the last of its life force ebbs and the target is transformed in an instant into a dreadful thing of suffering and hate, leavened with a tormented enslavement to the will of its creator.
More tragically, wights can also arise spontaneously.
Scholars of the undead use the term “wights of anguish” to describe those whose birth into unlife occurred following a horrible trauma, often both mental and physical, that leaves their bodies broken, their psyches shattered, and their spirits consumed with hate and revenge. The depth of their suffering and the lingering shock are so intense that these unfortunates become enthralled to their own pain, clinging to it with every fiber of their being, crucifying themselves across the threshold of death’s door, unable to truly live but unwilling to truly die.
More sinister are “wights of malevolence,” those who through the depravity of their own benighted souls have earned an eternity of roaming the world, cursed with an eternal hunger that can never be slaked and a ragged weariness unable to ever find rest. Popular legend says those sentenced to such an existence are the truly damned, so vile that Hell itself spat them up rather than take them to its bosom.
But perhaps most frightening are those known as “wights of possession.” These are wights created when an evil undead spirit bonds with a corpse in order to animate it, often choosing its host based on convenience or strength of body. Though the original spirits of these bodies may have long since f led to their just rewards, few things are more horrible for their grieving friends than to see their loved ones’ corpses suddenly come to life and begin slaughtering the mourners.
Wherever humanoids die in utter anguish or are entombed in infamy (or even buried alive as punishment), wights may arise, and once they establish a foothold, they begin to spawn and proliferate.
Wights of malevolence sometimes arise from the unquiet remains of the exceptionally evil. Warlords of unspeakable cruelty may be sealed within barrows in the hope that, should their evil linger and stir even in death, they will be trapped and contained.
Old legends suggest that the treasures of a wight of malevolence are themselves tainted with the wight’s foulness, causing a darkening of spirit and a growing psychosis, leading to murderous paranoia that consumes the victims, and causes them to become wights themselves. Depending on the legend, this fate can be averted by freely giving the wight’s treasures away to others; having them blessed by one of the fey (at whatever price the fey demands); or scattering them in the sunlight for 3 days, allowing anyone to take a portion, and then collecting whatever fate has decreed will remain. Only by breaking the cycle of greed can the wight’s treasure be safely recovered.
A wight’s treasure can become infused with its dark spirit, creating a gnawing, obsessive greed that saps the spirit and life of any creature that claims it. A character that possesses accursed wight treasure gains a number of negative levels equal to the total gp value of the stolen treasure divided by 10,000 (minimum of one negative level). These negative levels remain as long as the creature retains ownership of the treasure (even if this treasure is not carried)—they disappear as soon as the stolen treasure is destroyed, stolen, freely given away, or returned to the wight’s lair. If the treasure is merely sold, the negative levels become permanent negative levels that can then be removed via means like restoration.
A creature whose negative levels equal its Hit Dice perishes and rises as a wight. If the wight whose treasure it stole still exists, it becomes a wight spawn bound to that wight. If not, it becomes a free-willed wight. Removing these negative levels does not end the curse, but remove curse or break enchantment does, with a caster level check against a DC equal to the wight’s energy drain save DC. A wight’s treasure does not confer negative levels while in the area of a hallow spell.
Wights can be found nearly anywhere on Golarion, though they are encountered most frequently in areas that have seen a long history of war and strife, especially in and around the battlegrounds and burial grounds of fallen empires. Places like the River Kingdoms and western Iobaria with their innumerable failed settlements and petty battlefields are fertile breeding grounds for wights, as are war-torn frontiers like those between Taldor and Qadira, and lands tainted with prolonged suffering like Galt and Nidal. Wights are most associated with humans, but evil dwarves have a long tradition of creating loyal tomb guardians to ward their mausoleums, while the ancient exodus of the elves (and the terrible fates suffered by those who remained) make wights a recurring plague in reclaimed elven holdings. And of course, like most undead, they’re more common in areas where cults of Urgathoa operate.
Wights are less common in Garund than elsewhere, as the funerary practices and necromantic traditions there have long favored mummification for the preservation of the honored dead and for guardianship of tombs. Wights are prevalent, however, in the flooded ruin and innumerable shipwrecks of the Sodden Lands, the Shackles, and the rain-lashed coasts around the Eye of Abendego. These desperate wights sometimes live in a perverse mockery of life, seeing themselves as the last survivors of their villages (or voyages), not realizing that they are truly dead.
Far to the east, the cruel rakshasas of Jalmeray exult in the temptation and corruption of the unwary into the kind of unspeakable vileness that leads these unfortunates to become wights in death, serving the rakshasas as loyal bodyguards and assassins.
Packs of wights are a long-standing menace at the triune borderland of Ustalav, Lastwall, and the Hold of Belkzen. The Virlych dead lands surrounding the ruins of Gallowspire, steeped in horror, are haunted by the tormented remnants of those harrowed an age ago by the Whispering Tyrant’s magics, bodies shredded and spirits flensed until nothing but pain and deathless rage remained. Patrols from Vigil exterminate these wights whenever they are found, but on more than one occasion a patrol has simply disappeared, until a later patrol suffered a tragic encounter with the corrupted remains of the righteous fallen.
Across the border in Belkzen, honor is for the living, and wherever the warriors fall is where they rot. On rare occasions, notable leaders are buried in lone cairns, but more often when burial is required (such as when an army dies on land the victors wish to inhabit), all of the fallen from a single battle are interred in a mass barrow with their leader. These funerary rites often awaken one or more wights that embrace the charge of leading the dead. Unusually powerful orc priests, shamans, or witches may also travel at times through the Hold visiting the various tribes to create guardian wights or take control of those that arise spontaneously.
Of all these lands, however, the ones most associated with wights are the cold Kellid and Hallit lands of the north, from long-lost Sarkoris in the east to the Lands of the Linnorm Kings in the west. No strangers to suffering and misery, nor to war and cruelty, these realms are liberally scattered with barrows, dolmens, and cairns. Some are haunted by wights of their own, but legend tells of the White Legion, an army of frost wights gathered beyond the Crown of the World, culled from the lost and the dead of all the cold lands. Their purpose is a mystery, but enemies of Irrisen fear they may be in league with Baba Yaga and her witch daughters.
Any humanoid creature that is slain by a wight lord becomes a wight itself in only 1d4 rounds.
Create Undead spell, caster level 14 with
Enervation spell.
Attic Whisperer: Create Undead spell, caster level 13 with
Crushing Depair and
Fear spells and corpse of a child.
Crawling Hand: Create Undead spell, caster level 11 severed hand of a medium or smaller humanoid.
Crawling Hand Giant: Create Undead spell, caster level 14 with
Enlarge Person spell and severed hand of a large or larger humanoid.
Crypt Thing: Create Undead spell, caster level 16 with
Teleport spell
Draugr: Create Undead spell, caster level 12.
Dullahan: Create Undead spell, caster level 17 with decapitated humanoid corpse.
Shadow Greater: Create Greater Undead spell, caster level 19 with
Shadow Walk spell.
Huecuva: Create Undead spell, caster level 11 with corpse of a cleric.
Zombie Juju: Create Undead spell, caster level 11 with
Enervation or
Energy Drain spell.
Skeletal Champion: Create Undead spell, caster level 11 with
Enervation or
Energy Drain spell.
Totenmaske: Create Greater Undead spell, caster level 18 caster must be a cleric.
Witchfire: Create Greater Undead spell, caster level 19 with corpse of a hag.
Skeleton Burning: Spawn created by a desert mohrg rise as burning skeletons rather than fast zombies.
Skeleton: ?
Ghost: Interestingly, a great number of ghosts and revenants owe their undead existence to the depredations of mortal killers who later became mohrgs, and it’s not unheard of for a revenant to hunt a mohrg, or for a ghost to assist adventurers in tracking down the unholy reanimation of its killer.
Zombie: ?
Poltergeist: ?
Revenant: Interestingly, a great number of ghosts and revenants owe their undead existence to the depredations of mortal killers who later became mohrgs, and it’s not unheard of for a revenant to hunt a mohrg, or for a ghost to assist adventurers in tracking down the unholy reanimation of its killer.
Skaveling: ?
Vampire: ?
Void Zombie: ?
Winterwight: ?
Mummy: ?
Shadow blight: curse and disease; save Fortitude DC 16; onset 1 minute; frequency 1/day; effect 1d8 Strength damage, upon death, the victim becomes a plague shadow; cure successfully casting both remove curse and remove disease within 1 minute of each other.
I believe all the links are valid.
