Malevolent and Benign
Malevolent and Benign
Pathfinder 1e
Autmnal Mourner: Autumn mourners are the lingering spirits of the neglected dead. Deprived of a proper funeral, burial, or even commemoration, they now mourn the summer’s annual passing and the subsequent death of the trees’ falling leaves.
Autumnal mourners arise from the bodies of the unburied and forgotten dead.
While the potential for autumnal mourners exists in every land, only the forest and woods’ seasonal changes, as experienced by their deciduous plant life, generate their creation.
Avatar of Famine: Being a follower of the god of famine comes at a high toll, especially for those who strive to be its avatar. In order to become an avatar of famine, a tomb must be built and at least 500 sentient creatures sacrificed in the tomb. Their lives are not taken by violence however. They are closed into the tomb and die one by one of starvation. The last to die of starvation becomes the avatar of famine, bound to the tomb and that which they were created to guard.
Bone Sovereign: Bone sovereigns are terrible amalgamations of skeletons whose animating enchantments coalesce to form a single, self-aware undead entity.
Cadaver: Cadavers are the undead skeletal remains of people who have been buried alive or given an improper burial (an unmarked grave or mass grave for example).
Dark Voyeur: A dark voyeur’s affinity for mirrors is caused primarily by its link to one special mirror, the mirror that reflected its death and trapped a portion of its departing soul within its glass.
Foul Spawner: ?
Gray Lady: Many a seaman who ventures out into the trackless sea is destined never to look again on the loved ones he left behind. Either death or the lure of foreign lands keeps them from returning to those who wait patiently for them. Pining away on shore for the sight of a lost husband or son and ultimately dying of a broken heart, some women return to haunt the coast as gray ladies.
A gray lady is the shade of a woman who died heartbroken and alone waiting for the return of a loved one from across the sea.
Harbinger: If a paladin dies in a state of disgrace without having atoned, there is a chance the abyssal powers will claim his body as well as his soul. The reanimated body becomes a harbinger and serves at the direction of some powerful force for evil.
Haze Horror: Heat and humidity often manifest as a visible haze, and many people have survived the dangers of a hostile environment only to succumb to heat exhaustion. A haze horror is that fate manifested.
Some sages claim that there are haze horrors in the terrible northern climes whose touch is deathly cold and who appear as mists upon glaciers and in ice caverns.
Hearth Horror: A hearth horror is the ghost of a dead place, horribly corrupted by evil and obsessed with restoring itself to its former glory. Hearth horrors are typically houses, although they can be groves, caverns, or even enormous castles or complexes. Hearth horrors may come in many shapes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common: their physical form has collapsed, decayed, or been destroyed.
A hearth horror cannot form just anywhere. It forms in a location where great or terrible events have taken place. The horror takes on the personality and alignment of the events that happened there and is typically evil.
The heart of the hearth horror is formed when blood from victims spills upon the soil and sinks deep into the ground. The clot slowly grows in size over the years until it gradually forms into a heart buried in the earth beneath the area of the original construction.
Hellscorn: Hellscorns are the undead manifestations of vitriolic hate that only spurned love can engender. Hellscorns predominantly appear as they did in life; however all hellscorns still bear the open wounds dealt by their capricious lover. Phantasmal blood incessantly pours from the gaping punctures and slashes staining the spirit’s burial garb. In a similar vein, hellscorns killed by poison continuously froth and foam at the mouth, indefinitely regurgitating the toxin responsible for their death.
Inscriber: It has been said that the search for knowledge can be a soul-consuming pursuit. The unfortunate case of the inscribers proves the saying’s literal truth. Every inscriber was once a living scholar who obsessed over a certain field of study. Some inscribers devoted their lives to particulars of occult lore, while others strove to catalog every species of plant in existence or to learn the secrets of creating perfect wine. Regardless of their missions, they shared the same end: after death, their lust for knowledge overcame the laws of nature, driving them to search the world for further information.
Lostling: A creature reduced to 0 points of Wisdom from a lostling's wisdom drain falls into a deep, nightmare-plagued slumber. As a result of this catatonic state, the unfortunate victim eventually dies from starvation or thirst. Creatures dying in this manner transform into lostlings within 1d3 days.
Lostlings are the pitiful souls of creatures of lost individuals who died in the wilderness from starvation or madness.
Neverlasting: The great elves of old were longer-lived, but even they were still mortal. A proud few could not bear the end and chose the path of unlife; never truly living, yet never dying, these are the neverlasting. Through an evil ritual, the flesh is flayed from their heads, their clan banners animate and turn to shadow, their swords gain a powerful enchantment, and their skin becomes as tough as the strongest iron.
Sabulous Husk: Sabulous husks are walking corpses filled with sand, the dry and leathery remains of an unfortunate killed in the desert. They have no intelligence of their own and are animated through the will of the desert itself, being mere containers for the scourging sand within.
Skelton Black: Black skeletons are the remnants of living creatures slain in an area where the ground is soaked through with evil. The bodies of fallen heroes are contaminated and polluted by such evil and within days after their death, the slain creatures rise as black skeletons, leaving their former lives and bodies behind.
Slavering Mouther: Slavering mouthers are thought to be undead gibbering mouthers brought back from the dead by dark powers.
Undead: A deadwood’s power over the undead is awe-inspiring. Its influence over a forest is so strong that the body of any animal or person who falls dead within miles of a deadwood rises as undead creatures, which will most likely spend the rest of their existences guarding the deadwood.
Few mortal creatures have ever attempted to eat an entire deadwood fruit, and none who has is known to have survived. Tales of what might happen to those who “live” through such an attempt vary. Some believe they would gain permanent command over the dead and others that they would be transformed into strange, powerful, and unique undead.
Ghoul: The deadwood exerts its foul influence to a radius of 300 feet for every 2 HD of the tree. Any
animal, giant, humanoid, or monstrous humanoid corpse within this range that remains in contact with the ground for 1 full round is animated into a zombie or skeleton. Corpses of humanoids with 2 or 3 class levels are instead turned into ghouls, while those with 4 or more class levels are instead turned into ghasts.
Ghoul Ghast: The deadwood exerts its foul influence to a radius of 300 feet for every 2 HD of the tree. Any
animal, giant, humanoid, or monstrous humanoid corpse within this range that remains in contact with the ground for 1 full round is animated into a zombie or skeleton. Corpses of humanoids with 2 or 3 class levels are instead turned into ghouls, while those with 4 or more class levels are instead turned into ghasts.
Skeleton: As a standard action, a bone sovereign can create any number of skeletal monsters from its body.
The deadwood exerts its foul influence to a radius of 300 feet for every 2 HD of the tree. Any
animal, giant, humanoid, or monstrous humanoid corpse within this range that remains in contact with the ground for 1 full round is animated into a zombie or skeleton. Corpses of humanoids with 2 or 3 class levels are instead turned into ghouls, while those with 4 or more class levels are instead turned into ghasts.
Zombie: The deadwood exerts its foul influence to a radius of 300 feet for every 2 HD of the tree. Any
animal, giant, humanoid, or monstrous humanoid corpse within this range that remains in contact with the ground for 1 full round is animated into a zombie or skeleton. Corpses of humanoids with 2 or 3 class levels are instead turned into ghouls, while those with 4 or more class levels are instead turned into ghasts.
