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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cleon" data-source="post: 5169797" data-attributes="member: 57383">Well if we're going the Native Outsider route we could try to make them closer to the original version.I'm having trouble finding sources, but I've found one claim that there's no Arabic tale in which ghuls <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content%7Edb=all%7Econtent=a916567231" target="_blank">dug up graves and devoured the corpses</a> and that this habit is a Western invention due to their habit of lurking around graveyards.Contrary to this, I've got tales like <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/lang1k1/tale31.htm" target="_blank">The Story of Sidi-Nouman</a> from The Arabian Nights which describe a ghul eating a body stolen from a grave. While <a href="http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/arabian/bl-arabian-4sindbad.htm" target="_blank">The Fourth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor</a> has a tribe of cannibals led by a ghul king who liked to drug their victims out of their wits, fatten them up, cover them in coconut oil and then devour them - the king ate his humans roasted, his subjects devoured them raw. However the ghul(s?) in the latter story seems quite different from the "desert ghul" that we seem to be talking about.So, how to reconcile this? Putting together what I've found so far...<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Arabian Ghuls are maneaters, but from what I can tell they like fresh meat. They might steal a recently dead corpse, but would have no more liking for an old decaying cadaver than a lion would.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Ghuls like treasure, so I'm supposing they'd break into tombs for the grave goods, not the corpse.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">They like to lead men astray in the desert and would injure or even kill them</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">A ghul possesses free will like any other genie, so could be converted to Islam and proper behavior as in the story <a href="http://www.al-hakawati.net/english/stories_tales/laila170.asp" target="_blank">The History of Gherib and his Brother Agib</a>. (Although in that story the ghouls appear to be cannibalistic giants rather than shapechanging desert spirits, it presumably applies to all forms of ghul.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">They can change their form to human or animal shape, and seem to favour the shape of hyenas.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">According to some sources, the only way to kill a ghul is to strike it dead with a single blow - maybe a lot of Fast Healing?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Finally, I'm wondering whether our Ghula should create illusion. Most genies have that power. A ghul is the basest kind of genie, so presumably its illusions would be weak - phantom fires and whispers to lure travellers astray, basically.</li> </ol></blockquote>

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