Undead: Theories abound regarding the origin and creation of undead, from the hushed tales told by simple peasants to the exotic research performed by sages and wizards. None agree, and only one fact is certain: Undead exist in the world and have since time immemorial. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The origin of undead can be traced back to a time eons ago, when the primordials thrived before the first foundations of the world were even a rumor. Immortal in the sense that they knew no age and withstood any hurt, these were beings of manifest entropy. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
In these earliest days, souls shorn of their bodies simply departed the cosmos, taken to a place beyond all reckoning. When the primordials first crafted the world, they had little regard for the fate of souls. But some among them recognized soul power as a potent force, and they hungered for it. These entities stopped up the passage of souls. With nowhere to go, many souls were either consumed by primordials that had a taste for such spiritual fare, or, finding no further road or final purpose, sputtered out and dissipated, gone forever. Others persisted, becoming undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Sentient living creatures have a body and a soul, the latter of which is the consciousness that exists in and departs from the body when it perishes. A body’s “life force” that drives a creature’s muscles and emotions is called the animus. The animus provides vitality and mobility for a creature, and like the soul, it fades from the body after death. Unlike the soul, it fades from the body as the body rots. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
If “revived” in the proper fashion, the animus can rouse the body in the absence of a soul. (This phenomenon is what makes it possible for creatures that were never alive, such as constructs, to become undead.) In some cases, the animus can even exist apart from the body as a cruel memory of life. Such impetus can come from necromantic magic, a corrupting supernatural influence at the place of death or interment, or a locale’s connection to the Shadowfell. Strong desires, beliefs, or emotions on the part of the deceased can also tap into the magic of the world to give the animus power. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Most undead, even those that seem intelligent, are this sort of creature—driven to inhuman behavior by lack of governance of a soul and a hunger for life that can’t be sated. Nearly mindless undead have been infused with just enough impetus to give the remains mobility but little else. Sentient undead have a stronger animus that might even have access to the memories of the deceased, but such monstrosities have few or none of the sympathies they had in life. A wight has a body and a feral awareness granted by the animus, but no soul. Even the dreaded wraith is simply a soulless animus, deeply corrupted and infused with strong necromantic energy. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The Shadowfell most often serves as the source of this impetus. In the Shadowfell, bodiless spirits are common, as are undead. Something within this echo-plane’s dreary nature nurtures undead. This shadowstuff can “leak” into a dying creature as that being passes away. It can be introduced by necromantic powers or rituals. Or it can be siphoned into areas strongly associated with death, pooling there. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Some undead retain their souls after the death of the body. Rituals allow this sort of transformation. A potent destiny or vigorous enough strength of will sometimes enables (or forces) a creature to transcend death. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
When most living creatures think about how undead come into being, they connect the origin of undead with the animation of a dead body. That said, undead are actually “born” in a variety of ways. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Powerfully evil acts resonate with such force that they can ripple across dimensions and open cracks in reality, permitting malevolent entities to escape into the mortal world. These entities seek out corporeal flesh, in particular the recently vacated vessels of the damned. Once inside the host, these spirits corrupt the animus, granting the corpse a semblance of life. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
An evil, perverse, and intelligent creature can be reborn into undeath when the influence of the animus revives the memories of the vessel’s previous host, although the soul of the creature is not present—these sorts of undead are just particularly wily animus-driven undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
At other times, atrocious deeds call dark spirits into the cadaver of the newly deceased, leaving the original soul intact. Sometimes, good souls can be trapped within their bodies, to be slowly turned to evil as the depraved spirits corrupt the soul. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Sites where evil creatures lair or where evil artifacts are stored can act as strong catalysts in the creation of undead. Undead so created are usually mindless animate corpses. Sometimes they are more powerful, soul-bearing undead whose spirits were corrupted while they lived in an area of tainted ground, and thus the creatures fell directly into undeath when their bodies succumbed. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Though some believe that some kind of fell power energizes animate creatures, it is more accurate to say that the animus or spirit resident in a walking corpse provides an undead creature with the requisite motive force for movement, and perhaps enough additional force to talk and even reason, and—most important—enough animation to prey on other creatures. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Dark deeds conducted by others can serve as a trigger for unlife, especially if such deeds accrue over months or years in one particular location. Such an area, more than any other, is worthy of the term “tainted by evil,” though the religious-minded sometimes call such areas unsanctified ground. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
When a living creature is drained to death by evil agencies, the husk of the body becomes a shell that is particularly susceptible to the influence of unlife. When an undead creature is responsible for draining the life force from a living creature, the creation of a new undead from the dead flesh is not assured, but the door is certainly open for unclean spirits to move into the recently evacuated house of the body.
A few particularly abhorrent undead carry a powerful contagion that, when transferred to mortals, causes them to weaken and die at an alarming rate, rising as undead in a matter of hours unless a cure is rapidly administered. Once a creature is infected in this manner, little can be done to save him or her from becoming undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Some obsessed knowledge-seekers pursue the spark of life too far, and thereby discover the dark fruits of undeath. They seek death’s secrets because of their fear of death, thinking that if they can come to understand mortality, their fear will be extinguished and their survival assured. Those who tread this road to its conclusion sometimes embrace death completely, and do not become so much immortal as simply enduring. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Sometimes undead are created when corpse parts are sewn together to form a great amalgam of death. Then, when the composite corpse is touched with lightning and the proper reanimation ritual performed, an undead creature rises, its mind rotted but its flesh strong with the animus of several beings. Such creatures share some external visual similarities to flesh golems, but are different in ability and origin. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
All undead were once living beings, in that they had a soul. Soulless constructs do not and cannot become undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Some necromancers use the arcane power source to fuel their magic, while others call upon the power of shadow to effect their dim miracles. Still others animate undead by the power of the divine, calling on fell gods to raise legions of bound wraiths to their will. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Some undead are born as a result of sheer force of will. These rare individuals staved off the afterlife by harnessing the great power of their soul (or ki). Rarer still, other undead abominations call upon the great psionic powers of the mind to cheat death. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Several varieties of undead can create new unliving progeny. Taking a broader view, undead self-propagation might be regarded as an infectious disease: It is nasty, it is easily spread, and it kills its hosts. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Unless they seek to animate the bodies of the dead, living beings should know better than to bury bodies in the Shadowfell. Though rituals exist to keep a corpse temporarily free of unlife, it’s better not to chance such things. Even when such rituals are used, corpses (whether buried or left behind untended) are likely to rise in the Shadowfell as shambling dead. Evil individuals are certain to rise as particularly nasty soulless monsters. In the world, only the most horrific and ruthless murderers return as specters, but in the Shadowfell, any death might spawn such a wicked undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Because all souls pass through this dim realm upon the death of their bodies, Shadow’s taint can corrupt these soul vestiges before they find their way to the Court of the Raven Queen in Letherna, forging sad spirits into ghosts and other insubstantial undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A decade ago, evil humans inhabited the valley where the cemetery of Kravenghast Necropolis now stands. Obsessed with death, the people performed living sacrifices on the tops of the mountains that frame both ends of the valley. They buried the mangled remains of the sacrifices in unhallowed graves in a central cemetery. Over time, the sacrifice victims rose as undead, though they were confined to the place of their burial. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
When the Tower of Zoramadria was moved across the Feywild through a ritual, the life force of many of its inhabitants was drained off to power that ritual. Many of Zoramadria’s students that escaped permanent destruction did so only by embracing undeath. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The preservation fluid within a brain’s jar is a valuable alchemical material, especially useful for crafting undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Most undead animate spontaneously or arise through profane rituals. A few mortals willingly become undead, though, viewing the condition as a form of immortality. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Many days south of Balic, a great plain of broken, black obsidian interrupts the monotony of the Endless Sand Dunes. The obsidian differs throughout the plain—it can be smooth and glassy, low and razor-edged, or shattered into jagged chunks 20 or 30 feet tall. Here and there, bare hillocks rise above the obsidian waves, crowned by a clump of hardy bushes or a small tree, or half-buried remnants of city walls jut out of the glistening glass like the bones of a creature that died in a tar pit. During the Cleansing Wars, a terrible battle was fought on this plain, and a defiler of awesome power broke the world’s skin, flooding the area with molten black glass to destroy whole armies with one dreadful ritual. (Dark Sun Campaign Setting)
With no food, little water, and no shelter to speak of, the Dead Land is one of the worst regions on Athas. By day, the sun’s heat on the black ground can kill a traveler within hours; at night, the armies slain here rise as hateful undead, driven to reenact the last battles of their lives. (Dark Sun Campaign Setting)
According to rumors, the Black Sands region was created by defiling magic that predated the rise of the city-states and their rulers. Supposedly, an ancient ruined city, haunted by hateful ghosts of a past age, lies at the center of the Sands, and any who enter its crumbled walls are doomed to join the undead spirits. (Dark Sun Campaign Setting)
Portals to Orcus’s realm of Thanatos might overlay the doors of mausoleums or stand among oddly arranged headstones. When a portal to Thanatos opens, the skies darken and the weather turns cold. The shades of folk that died in the surrounding lands reappear to wreak havoc, then vanish. The earth boils beneath cemeteries, churned by the dead. Within 10 squares of such a portal, a creature that dies rises on its next turn as a mindless corporeal undead of a type of the DM’s choice. (Demonomicon)
Dragons that wish to learn the secret of becoming undead could do worse than follow the tenets of Vecna. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Buried deep, beyond the prying eyes of the common worshipers, is an ossuary where Vol’s mummy high priest, Malevanor, performs the most profane rituals, twisting corpses with dark magic to create atrocities and undead horrors. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
To shore up the nation’s demoralized and weakened armies, the Blood of Vol provided Karrnath with rituals that produce loyal undead warriors. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
When the Shadowfell draws near to the world, the boundaries between life and death grow thin. Ghosts become common on Eberron then, because it is as easy for spirits to remain in the world of the living as it is for them to pass into the Realm of the Dead. Rituals that call the dead back to life sometimes go awry, bringing ghosts or other undead along with the desired spirit. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Undead fuel their minds and protect their corpses from dissolution through powerful necromantic rituals—especially liches, whose never-ending acquisition of arcane knowledge has propelled some into contention with the gods themselves. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
A few cling to the Shadowfell or to the world, continuing on as ghosts or other insubstantial undead. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
The catacombs are tainted by the presence of Vadin Cartwright, a priest of Tharizdun. In the abbey's vaults, Vadin discovered a red crystalline substance he calls the Voidharrow, which he believes contains a fragment of the Chained God's essence. He has taken up residence in the catacombs, experimenting with how his own power to create undead interacts with the Voidharrow. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Some souls can and do escape the finality of death. Those who fear what lies beyond, and a few too blinded by anger or hate to willingly move on, cling to their bodiless existence in the Shadowfell. These fearful, miserable, or hateful creatures often become undead of various sorts. (Manual of the Planes)
Many evil mortals consider the Shadowfell an ideal place to create undead servants. Over centuries, clerics of dark gods, cultists of Orcus, amoral wizards, and necromancers of the worst sort have created countless thousands of undead monsters using heinous rituals. (Manual of the Planes)
As if the active creation of undead by reckless mortals was not bad enough, the Shadowfell itself sometimes spawns the unliving. Areas such as the darklands, places tainted by necromantic seepage, and other, less understood regions spawn all manner of animated beings. The taint of shadow also corrupts the soul vestiges wandering on this plane, twisting these sad spirits into ghosts and other spectral creatures. (Manual of the Planes)
Just as horrific, undead sometimes create themselves. (Manual of the Planes)
Others find the weight of their mortal deeds so heavy they cannot bear to move farther than the Shadowfell. In time, they are corrupted by the plane’s malaise, becoming specters, wraiths, and other insubstantial beings. (Manual of the Planes)
Those that die on Thanatos rise in moments as undead. (Manual of the Planes)
Many of the angels who refused to rebel were condemned to torment and death here, and they linger in Cania’s depths as undead creatures of terrible power. (Manual of the Planes)
Although Pluton is largely abandoned, and no new mortal souls come here, some spirits feared to pass into true death and chose to cling to the half death that Nerull granted them. Most of these are now hateful, mindless undead creatures. (Manual of the Planes)
Between the Dread Ring’s outer wall and its central tower lies a true chamber of horrors. Stone-and-steel slabs hold bodies and parts of bodies. Some are fresh, still bleeding and occasionally twitching; others are ancient, covered in grave soil, mummified, or reduced to bone. More corpses, severed limbs, and disembodied heads hang on hooks around the room’s perimeter and are heaped in corners, awaiting use. Flasks and barrels contain blood, other bodily humors, and alchemical reagents used to render flesh soft and supple. Runes of necromantic magic adorn the walls, ceiling, and floor. (Neverwinter Campaign Setting)
An array of iron sarcophagi and tall vats lines two walls. Tubes protrude through the stone coffins’ sides, ready to pump fluids through the body of any creature placed within. (Neverwinter Campaign Setting)
A portion of the Thayans’ undead force is animated elsewhere, through necromantic rituals, but the bulk of the raisings occurs here. This “factory” has been designed and enchanted to raise corpses far faster and in far greater numbers than spellwork alone. (Neverwinter Campaign Setting)
Deadhold was forged in eons past when Orcus seized an astral domain and slew its residents. The demon prince then raised the slain residents as the living dead and drew the realm into the Shadowfell where he could hide it and cultivate it for future use. (P2 Demon Queen's Enclave)
Normally the spirits of the dead travel first to the Shadow fell, using it as a conduit to their final destiny. Some are claimed by the gods and carried to divine dominions, while others join the Raven Queen. A few refuse to go gracefully and become undead. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Dwarves of the Obsidian Cave rarely deal with other dwarves. preferring instead to wage a singular war against orcs, drow, and other threats to their people. When dwarves of the order die, their souls return to the Ebon Spire, where they linger as spiteful undead spirits. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Servitude in Death power. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Shackles of the Grave power. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Acererak's Apotheosis power. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Abomination: AGELESS THOUGH THEY ARE, IMMORTALS CAN DIE, and when they do, some return as twisted remnants of what they once were. Most abominations were created as weapons in the war between the gods and the primordials, but a scarce few have arisen spontaneously out of the chaotic forces of the universe. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Abomination Discord Incarnate: AT THE DAWN OF CREATION, mighty couatls—winged serpents of purity and virtue—strove to bind evil elementals and fiends. The titanic spiritual struggle sometimes resulted in the death of both entities and brought about a terrible fusion of body and spirit. From these morbid unions arose discord incarnates—perverse abominations bent on wanton destruction. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Discord incarnates arose during the cosmic war between the gods and the primordials. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Scholars speculate that a discord incarnate spontaneously arises from the clash of two powerful, opposing forces—a powerful demon and a couatl. Some experts suggest that the profane union is the work of a now-forgotten god or primordial that saw benefit in the creation of the twisted monstrosities. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Abomination Rotvine Defiler: A profane vestige of a powerful immortal devoted to fertility, the rotvine defiler seeks to destroy that which it has lost—life. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A rotvine defiler is the profane remnant of an immortal devoted to nature or agriculture. The corrupted immortals were slain and sealed under the ground, where the seeds of evil caused them to return to life and outwardly manifest their malevolence. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A rotvine defiler arises when a creature makes a sacrifice over the monster’s earthly tomb, breaking the seals containing it. The creature usually retains none of its original intelligence or memories. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Absalom: Absalom was born human. He was selected as Dregoth’s new high priest after Giustenal’s fall. He was among the first survivors the undead sorcerer-king transformed into dray. After transfiguring Absalom, Dregoth slew his high priest and raised him as an undead servitor. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Arath Nightcaller: ?
Arcanian: TO GAIN THEIR ARCANE POWERS, warlocks traffic with otherworldly entities, and sorcerers draw on the power of ancient bloodlines. Wizards, in contrast, must endure years of apprenticeship and toil, because their arcane knowledge is the reward of diligence. Yet not every inexperienced wizard is willing to wait. (Monster Manual 3)
Experiments that require arcane energy beyond a spellcaster’s ability typically end with an impotent sputter. At rare times, a spell surges with wild energy and obliterates its caster, leaving a messy warning to other wizards. (Monster Manual 3)
Once in a great while, though, something truly horrid comes to pass. In a vain attempt to master power beyond his or her control, a wizard absorbs too much raw energy, which warps the caster’s personality and memory and kills his or her body. A spark of life remains, though, and the spell, or at least its essence, animates the caster’s corpse and gives it new purpose as an arcanian. (Monster Manual 3)
When raw arcane energy kills a wizard, the power sometimes animates the corpse and gives birth to an arcanian. Empowered with a will and a vessel, an arcanian is driven along a path etched by the dying impulses of the wizard. Red arcanians entertain impassioned fiery desires, blue arcanians try to preserve life in frozen perfection, and green arcanians despise physical beauty. Other arcanians might also exist, the warped products of failed spells using lightning, thunder, or necrotic energy. (Monster Manual 3)
Arcanian Blue Arcanian: ?
Arcanian Blue Arcanian, Vandomar: In his last attempt to revive Elaida, he unleashed a mighty spell that simultaneously animated her corpse as a flesh golem and transformed him into an undead monster-an arcanian that still haunts the upper level of his tower. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
The blue arcanian was created when the wizard Vandomar reached for power beyond his means in his attempt to resurrect the paladin Elaida, who perished in the siege of Gardmore. The wizard's ritual succeeded only in animating a golem, destroying Vandomar in the process. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Arcanian Green Arcanian: ?
Arcanian Red Arcanian: ?
Ash Remnant: They are the last vestiges of those who failed to escape the mist. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Ash remnants are thought to be the final victims of the Mourning, the last remains of those who perished at the boundaries of the Mournland when it was created. They are animated by raw hatred and despair, constantly reliving the terror of the Mourning in the shattered remnants of their minds. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Ashardalon's Heart: Remnants of the cult survived this disaster, and it reconstituted itself around a relic of its dragon liege: Ashardalon’s heart. With a magic born of equal parts skill, faith, and desperation, the cultists rekindled the heart—but not to life. The ritual infused it with the energy of the Shadowfell and transformed it, reborn in undead darkness, into the center of faith and necromantic power for the cult. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Atropal: Atropals are unfinished godlings that had enough of a divine spark to rise as undead. (Monster Manual)
Atropus, The World Born Dead, A vast primordial of undeath, spawner of the atropals. (Player's Option Heroes of the Elemental Chaos)
Atropal, Harrowzau the God Swallower: ?
Atropal, Harrowzau the Unborn: ?
Barrowhaunt: The Barrowhaunts are a group of five former adventurers bound to the lands surrounding the Sword Barrow. Their deeds in life are seldom recollected, and no one is truly sure why their spirits have never been laid to rest. Now they savagely attack any who enter the lands of their trust. Many rumors exist about the exact nature of their curse; one common legend suggests that they sought to plunder the Sword Barrow and evoked the wrath of a warlord entombed within. The warlord’s spirit called to the native hill folk in the area, who marched to the Sword Barrow to confront the adventurers and reclaim the warlord’s treasures. The adventurers, rather than relinquish their trove, slaughtered the hill folk. A dying elder placed a curse on the adventurers’ souls, binding them to the land for all of eternity. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
At first, the elder’s curse seemed empty and hollow, but every time the adventurers left the Gray Downs to sell their hard-won loot, they could not help but return to the hills in search of even greater treasures. Eventually, their greed surpassed their skill. Descending deeper into the Sword Barrow than they’d ever gone before, the adventurers fell prey, one by one, to horrid monsters and insidious traps. Though cursed to haunt the Gray Downs and guard “their” barrows from other would-be pillagers, they still seek out treasures and relics for themselves. The spoils of their exploits are stashed in an ancient crypt deep within the Sword Barrow. Their motive for collecting such worldly possessions isn’t clear, but some believe they are forced to sate their everlasting yearning for adventure and exploration. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Barrowhaunt, Adrian Icehaunt Reginold: ?
Barrowhaunt, Baldos Grimehammer: ?
Barrowhaunt, Cassian d’Cherevan: ?
Barrowhaunt, Joplin the Sly: ?
Barrowhaunt, Uthelyn the Mad: ?
Barrowhaunt Lingering Spirit Warrior: Traveling and fighting alongside the Barrowhaunts are the spirits of the creatures they have slain—intelligent monsters, slaughtered tomb robbers, and ancient hill folk. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Beholder Ghost Beholder: Death need not be an end to avarice and ambition. As living creatures, beholders must eventually fall from the air to rot on the hated earth. Yet some have the willpower and anger to float again, returning as ghost beholders. (Monster Manual 3)
Beholder Undead: BEHOLDERS ARE AMONG THE MOST FEARED and deadly monsters to prowl the world. Yet even beholders succumb to death, and when they do, necromancers sometimes find use in their vile remains. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Beholder Undead Beholder Death Emperor: A beholder death emperor is a more powerful version of the beholder death tyrant. (E1 Death's Reach)
Death tyrant and death emperor beholders are animated corpses of eye tyrants. (E1 Death's Reach)
Beholder Undead Beholder Death Tyrant: A death tyrant beholder is an animated corpse of an eye tyrant. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Death tyrant and death emperor beholders are animated corpses of eye tyrants. (E1 Death's Reach)
Beholder Undead Bloodkiss Beholder: The necrotic forces that reanimate a bloodkiss beholder warp and change the creature’s flesh, making the monster barely akin to its living counterpart. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Beholder Undead Eye of Death: ?
Black Bloodspawn: Dwelling primarily in the White Kingdom near the Lake of Black Blood, black bloodspawn are the progeny of Gorgimrith, the Hunger in the Mountain. Whenever the massive entity desires, it can slough off bits of its rotted organ walls to create black bloodspawn. (E2 Kingdom of the Ghouls)
Black bloodspawn are actually mobile mouths of Gorgimrith, the Hunger in the Mountain. They spawn from its massive body and sometimes travel far from the White Kingdom. (E2 Kingdom of the Ghouls)
Black Bloodspawn Devourer: ?
Black Bloodspawn Hunter: ?
Blackstar Knight: BLACKSTAR KNIGHTS ARE UNDEAD SPIRITS housed in vessels of animate black stone. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
These blank-faced stone warriors house souls bound to their rocky forms. The ritual for creating them remains a deeply guarded secret, and possibly one that Kas no longer controls. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Blaspheme: CRAFTED FROM PIECES OF CORPSES and given life through alchemy and magic, blasphemes are intelligent, cunning undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Blasphemes are created from pieces of multiple corpses. Through carefully guarded rituals, these crafted forms are given life or, in a few cases, infused with the creator’s intelligence. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Blasphemes are crafted from pieces of corpses and given life through alchemy and magic. (E1 Death's Reach)
Blaspheme Disciple: ?
Blaspheme Disciple Keeper: ?
Blaspheme Entomber: ?
Blaspheme Fragment Keeper: ?
Blaspheme Grave Chill Blaspheme: ?
Blaspheme Imperfect: ?
Blaspheme Imperfect Keeper: ?
Blaspheme Knight: ?
Blaspheme Knight Keeper: ?
Blaspheme Soul Vessel: ?
Blaspheme Unholy Slayer: ?
Bodak: When a nightwalker slays a humanoid, that nightwalker can ritually transform the slain creature’s body and spirit into a bodak. (Monster Manual)
A nightwalker can turn a humanoid it has killed into a bodak using an arcane ritual that only works when cast in the Shadowfell, and only when cast by a nightwalker. Nightwalkers alone can warp the void energies of the Shadowfell to create such horrors. (Monster Manual)
Nightwalkers create bodaks and use them as assassins. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Nightwalkers often use evil rituals to restore their victims to a mockery of life, cursing them to rise as bodaks. (Manual of the Planes)
If legend can be believed, Vecna or one of his disciples taught nightwalkers the ritual to create bodaks in exchange for a pledge of loyalty to the Maimed God. (Manual of the Planes)
Bodak Frost Giant Bodak Reaver, Jarl Hargaad: When the giants first landed on the Frost Spire, they looted many of the tombs they found here. They left this cave alone. Jarl Hargaad rests here, though the looting of his vassals' burial grounds has awoken him from his eternal slumber. He has risen as a bodak. (Revenge of the Giants)
Bodak Reaver: ?
Bodak Skulk: ?
Bodak Skulk Fey Bodak Skulk: A ruthless eladrin uses a couple of bodak skulks infused with fey powers as bodyguards and also to hunt his enemies. (Dungeon Master's Guide 2)
Bone Worm: ?
Bone Yard: A BONE YARD IS A MASS OF ANIMATED BONES that rises up due to a tragedy, massacre, or desecration. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Bone Yard Charnel Cinderhouse: Charnel cinderhouses arise when a conflagration consumes a building and kills the inhabitants. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Bone Yard Desecration: A DESECRATION IS THE ANIMATED REMAINS of a desecrated cemetery. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
This creature arises when a cemetery is desecrated by the community that created it. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Bone Yard Pit of the Abandoned Regiment: BORN OF THE ROTTING, SKELETAL REMAINS of soldiers left to die after battle, the pit of the abandoned regiment is a force driven by hatred and revenge. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
This creature is the amalgamated remains of a regiment of soldiers that was left to die after a battle.
Boneclaw: BONECLAWS ARE MAGICALLY CONSTRUCTED UNDEAD built to hunt and slay the living. (Monster Manual)
One creates a boneclaw by means of a dark ritual that binds a powerful evil soul to a specially prepared amalgamation of undead flesh and bone. The exact ritual is a closely guarded secret known only to a handful of liches and necromancers. Cabals that wish to possess the knowledge of boneclaw creation have resorted to diplomacy, theft, and clandestine warfare to acquire the ritual. (Monster Manual)
Although rumor holds that the first boneclaws were created by a powerful lich in the service of Vecna, the truth is that a coven of hags led by a powerful night hag named Grigwartha created the first boneclaw over a century ago. They invented a ritual that combines the flesh and bones from ogres along with the trapped soul of an oni. Although the materials can vary, the ritual is the same among those who know it. (Monster Manual)
Boneclaws are vicious undead created by dark powers to hunt the foes of their creators. The ritual to create boneclaws is jealously guarded by the few casters that know it. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Boneclaw Frost Giant Boneclaw: ?
Boneclaw Impaler: ?
Bonestorm: ?
Brain in a Jar: A BRAIN IN A JAR IS THE PRESERVED BRAIN of a sinister being who sought to escape death. Through ritual magic and complicated alchemical processes, the brain is kept alive, retaining all the memories and mental faculties of its former host. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Different kinds of brains in jars exist, though each is created using the same principles. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Brain in a Jar Brain in a Broken Jar: A brain in a broken jar is created through incomplete rituals, spoiling fluids, or damaged containers. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Brain in a Jar Brain in an Armored Jar: ?
Brain in a Jar Exalted Brain in a Jar: This is a brain taken from a powerful creature by devotees to preserve the subject’s knowledge and wisdom. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Burning Dead, Fiery Undead: ?
Cauldron Corpse: ?
Cauldron Mote: ?
Corpse Marionette: This thing is a creation of Borrit Crowfinger’s magic. (Dungeon Delve)
Corrupted Yuan-Ti Malison Incanters: ?
Crawling Claw: THIS SEVERED HAND OR PAW has been animated by foul magic.
Crawling claws are severed hands, feet, or paws that have been animated by necromantic rituals or by spontaneous necrotic energy. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The most basic crawling claw is crafted from any hand or paw. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Crawling Claw Crawling Gauntlet: Crawling gauntlets are severed hands enchanted or trained to serve as minions. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Crawling Claw Dragonclaw Swarm: Dragonclaw swarms are the result of necromantic experiments with dragon bones. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Crawling Claw Lich Claw: Liches that want to humiliate and dominate their rivals seek out other liches to acquire pieces to make lich claws. Many lich claws occur spontaneously, due to the saturation of necrotic energy in the chambers of defeated liches. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Crawling Claw Swarm: Crawling claw swarms are the result of numerous severed limbs lost in a horrible battle. Sometimes the limbs animate on their own; other times, necromancers sweep a battlefield for useful pieces. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Death Chief: The undead king reanimates each clan chieftain who dies, forming the Dodforer, a council of “Death Chiefs” who serve him. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Death Knight: DEATH KNIGHTS WERE POWERFUL WARRIORS who accepted eternal undeath rather than face the end of their mortal existence. With their souls bound to the weapons they wield, death knights command necrotic power in addition to their undiminished martial prowess.
“Death knight” is a monster template that can be applied to nonplayer characters. (Monster Manual)
The ritual to become a death knight is said to have originated with Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead. Many death knights gained access to the ritual by contacting Orcus or his servants directly, but some discovered the ritual through other means. (Monster Manual)
The ritual of becoming a death knight requires its caster to bind his immortal essence into the weapon used in the ritual. (Monster Manual)
Among the most powerful of undead humanoids, death knights are warriors who chose to embrace undeath rather than pass on to the afterlife. They bind their souls into their weapons, fueling their necrotic powers as they marshal armies of undead. (Monster Vault)
Gifted with undeath as a result of a ritual, a death knight is like the martial equivalent of a lich.
A humanoid becomes a death knight through a profane ritual that strips away the emotional bond of one’s life, replacing them with cruelty and a perverse sense of honor. This ritual is often bestowed as a gift from high-ranking followers of Orcus, the Demon Prince of the Undead. When a warrior reaches a certain state of notoriety, Orcus’s adherents approach the individual and try to tempt him or her with the promise of immortality. A warrior who accepts the offer turns into a dark reflection in the shattered mirror of undeath. Its armor becomes blackened and scarred, and its flesh becomes as withered and twisted as the person’s corrupted soul. (Monster Vault)
The ritual that transforms a warrior into a death knight binds part of the subject’s soul to one of his or her weapons. This weapon is not only a symbol of an individual’s transformation, it is also the source of a death knight’s power. (Monster Vault)
Death knights, liches, mummies, and vampires are created by rituals or processes that tie the soul to an unliving form. Similar creatures could be created in different circumstances. Such diversity among undead reflects the fact that death touches every part of existence. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Death knights are warriors that accepted undeath as a way to circumvent mortality. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Death knights were once powerful warriors who have been granted eternal undeath, whether as punishment for a grave betrayal or reward for a lifetime of servitude to a dark master. A death knight’s soul is bound to the weapon it wields, adding necrotic power to its undiminished martial prowess. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
“Death knight” is a template that can be added to any monster. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Prerequisite: Level 11 (Dungeon Master's Guide)
The process of becoming a death knight requires its caster to bind his immortal essence into the weapon used in the ritual. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Death Knight, False Sir Keegan/Sir Drzak: ?
Death Knight, Mauglurien: ?
Death Knight Blackguard: ?
Death Knight Dragonborn Paladin: ?
Death Knight Dragonborn Paladin, Raxikarthus: ?
Death Knight Human Death Knight, Naergoth Bladelord: ?
Death Knight Human Fighter: ?
Death Knight Human Fighter, Lord Carrion: ?
Deathgaunt: Xoriat's insanity lives on through the ages in the bodies of those the daelkyr slew long ago. Such are the deathgaunts. (Seekers of the Ashen Crown)
On the great battlefields of the Daelkyr War, countless goblins and orcs perished. In some such places, the taint of Xoriat and the shadow of Mabar seeped into the blood and bones of the fallen, raising them as creatures of death and madness. (Seekers of the Ashen Crown)
Deathgaunt Madcaster: ?
Deathgaunt Lasher: ?
Deathgaunt Spiner: ?
Deathgaunt Drover: ?
Deathgaunt Hordeling: ?
Deathtritus: THE PRESENCE OF NECROTIC ENERGY can animate flesh, but it can also give unlife to refuse and residue, forming a deathtritus. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Deathtritus Ancient Tomb Mote: ?
Deathtritus Dragonscale Slough: THIS SLITHERING PILE OF MOLTED SCALES often forms where a dragon has died or has spent a considerable amount of time. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A dragonscale slough is made of the animated flesh and scales that fall from dragons. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Deathtritus Offalian: Composed of the butchered flesh, rotting organs, and pungent fluids of humanoids and livestock, these snakelike creatures crave the taste of fresh meat. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Offalians are undead serpents that form when people or animals are senselessly butchered and left to rot. They are composed of the organs and bodily fluids of the slain creatures. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Deathtritus Osteopede: CREATED FROM DIRT, DUST, AND CRUSHED BONE, the osteopede is a centipedelike creature that skitters rapidly across the ground. The creature is infused with necrotic energy, which it releases with each bite and each slash of its jagged legs. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Osteopedes are undead centipedes that form from dirt and bone in places of death. They also sometimes arise from pastures where bone fragments were used as fertilizer. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Deathtritus Tomb Mote: Tomb motes are made up of the animated bone, dust, hair, and flesh particles that accumulate in tombs. They are usually found in areas filled with necrotic energy. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Deathtritus Tomb Mote Swarm: ?
Demon Abyssal Rotfiend: Abyssal rotfiends are demonic undead contained by demon and devil flesh. The spirit within a rotfiend is often a demon soul, although it can come from any evil creature. (Monster Manual 2)
Demon Haures: The first haureses were created from goristro demons that fell in combat defending Orcus. Experimented on for centuries to perfect their current form, haureses have no thought or memory of anything other than battle. (Demonomicon)
Demon Immolith: THE SPIRITS OF DECEASED DEMONS sometimes fuse together as they fall back into the Abyss that spawned them. The event is unpredictable, and the result is a horrid demonic entity called an immolith. (Monster Manual)
Demon Immolith Claw: ?
Demon Immolith Deathrager: ?
Demon Immolith Inferno, Nerothoth: ?
Demon Immolith Seeker: ?
Demon Seszrath: CAST OUT FROM THE VILEST PITS OF DARKNESS in the Abyss, the seszrath is a horrible monstrosity composed of fused corpses and demonic essence.
It is thought that the first seszraths were created during the birth of the Abyss. However, little is known of these creatures. In particular, how they continue to spawn and from what matter they are created is a source of conjecture. Some believe that new seszraths are continually spawned by an undiscovered demon lord—perhaps an unknown primordial who manipulates the power of undeath as an affront to Orcus. Others believe that seszraths are born of a gate between the Abyss and the Shadowfell, thought to exist at the deepest levels of both planes. (Demonomicon)
Demon Shaadee: SHAADEES ARE THE RISEN MANIFESTATIONS of humanoid spellcasters who pledged their souls to the lords of the Abyss. After toiling for their demonic masters in life, these wretches discover that death does not end their servitude. (Demonomicon)
Shaadees are spawned from powerful spellcasters—wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, and others who offered their services to powerful demons to increase their own power. Such spellcasters use their dark knowledge to enslave lesser creatures, sow chaos within civilized lands, and acquire vast wealth and power. When a spellcaster bound to a demon dies, however, it becomes a shaadee—an undead demonic slave eternally serving the abyssal lord its mortal soul was pledged to. (Demonomicon)
Demon Undead Glabrezu, Holchwier, Exarch of Orcus: ?
Demon Undead Goristro: ?
Demon Undead Marilith, Shonvurruthe Blood Serpent: A marilith rewarded with undeath through service to Orcus. (E1 Death's Reach)
Deva Undead Deva Fallen Star: Deva Fallen Star Vile Rebirth power. (Monster Manual 2)
Vile Rebirth (when the deva fallen star is reduced to 0 hit points by non-necrotic damage) • Healing
The fallen star does not die and instead remains at 0 hit points until the start of its next turn, when it regains 25 hit points, loses resistance to radiant damage, and gains the undead key word. This power recharges, and the triggering damage type changes to nonradiant damage. (Monster Manual 2)
The life cycle of the deva parallels that of the rakshasa—a spirit constantly reincarnating to mortal form. When a deva gives in to iniquity to become a fallen star, its soul is corrupted. If it dies in that state, it returns to combat as an undead; if finally slain by radiant damage, it carries its wickedness into its next life and becomes a rakshasa-a fate that even evil devas revile. (Monster Manual 2)
Deva Fallen Star Servitor Vile Rebirth power. (E2 Kingdom of the Ghouls)
Devil Infernal Armor Animus: THROUGH AN EVIL RITUAL, a devil can invest a suit of armor with a mortal soul. (Monster Manual 2)
Infernal armor animuses are mortal souls bound to suits of armor to serve as caches of life energy for devils. (Monster Manual 2)
Devourer: WHEN A RAVING MURDERER DIES, his soul passes into the Shadowfell. There it might gather flesh again to continue its lethal ways, becoming a devourer. (Monster Manual)
Devourers are created from the souls of murderers lost in the Shadowfell. (Monster Manual)
Devourers, for example, are the undead remnants of horrific murderers lured into the darkness of the Shadowfell and transformed into manifestations of great evil.
Devourer Soulspike Devourer: ?
Devourer Spirit Devourer: ?
Devourer Viscera Devourer: ?
Direguard: A direguard is a skeletal undead imbued with powerful magic. Foul rituals transform willing warriors into direguards, but at a price. If a direguard does not meet a specific quota of killing, it is destroyed by the dark pact that grants its power. (Monster Manual 2)
Liches and death knights perform the ritual that turns a living ally into a direguard tied to their wills. (Monster Manual 2)
Direguard Assassin: ?
Direguard Deathbringer: ?
Direhelm: Direhelms are created through a ritual from the Codex of Araunt, involving grave dirt from the tombs of warriors fallen in battle. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Dodkong: ?
Doomsept: A doomsept is a sevenfold spirit, created by one of the rituals in the Codex of Araunt.
Doresain Exarch of Orcus, Doresain the Ghoul King, King of the Ghouls: ?
Dracolich: WHEN A POWERFUL DRAGON FORSAKES LIFE and undergoes an evil ritual to become undead, the result is a dracolich. (Monster Manual)
Dracolichs are unnatural creatures created by an evil ritual that requires a still-living dragon to serve as the ritual’s focus. When the ritual is complete, the dragon is transformed into a skeletal thing of pure malevolence. Some evil dragons willingly undergo this ritual. (Monster Manual)
A handful of evil cults possess a ritual for turning a dragon into a dracolich against its will. These cults do what they must to keep knowledge of that ritual from others. When a dragon is transformed into a dracolich with such a ritual, a linkage between the cult and the dragon is formed, and the cult gains influence over the dragon’s behavior. (Monster Manual)
As described in the Monster Manual, a dracolich is created from a powerful dragon through an evil ritual. Some dragons willingly choose to become sentient undead; others have the ritual forced upon them. Dracoliches are greedy for power and treasure, but individuals pursue other goals equally passionately. Dracoliches can arise from dragon families other than the chromatic, but chromatics are most prone to the transformation. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Unlike evil chromatic dragons, which turn to the magic of shadow and undeath to prolong their existence (see the dracoliches in the Monster Manual and other undead dragons in Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons), metallic dragons use elemental magic to become eternal guardians of great treasures, ancient artifacts, and holy sites. (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Half a millennium has passed since the Cult of the Dragon formed under the mad archmage Sammaster. He gathered followers who were drawn by his delusional visions that prophesied the eternal rule of Faerûn by undead dragons. He then formulated a process to create the first dracolich, which he recorded in his work Tome of the Dragon. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
A fettered dracolich’s intellect and perception are diminished, but it retains a strong force of personality that struggles to resurface. As a result, its behavior is unpredictable and destructive. If its phylactery is returned to it, a fettered dracolich is released from its slavery. It becomes a standard dracolich. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Dracolich, Dragotha: Dragotha sought out a powerful priest of the death god, a vile human named Kyuss, who promised immortality in exchange for the dragon’s service. Dragotha agreed, and not long afterward, Tiamat’s spawn descended on him and killed him. As the dragon lay, broken and dying, Kyuss made good on his vow. Instead of restoring him to life, however, Kyuss transformed Dragotha into a terrifying dracolich. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Dracolich, Ahmidarius: The dracoliches have warped Ahmidarius to their cause, using the power of their corrupted Wells to turn him into an insane dracolich. (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Dracolich, Yorantadrios: ? (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Dracolich Blackfire Dracolich: ?
Dracolich Blackfire Dracolich, Xenro: This large chamber is the lair of a discontented red dragon tricked into undeath by Magrathar’s servant, Porapherah. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Xenro was once a mighty red dragon who terrified and oppressed the land. Porapherah, playing to the creature’s vanity and thirst for power, convinced him to undergo the ritual that transformed him into a blackfire dracolich. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Dracolich Bone Mongrel Dracolich: A DRAGON DOES NOT BECOME this sort of dracolich by choice. A bone mongrel is created from the remains of several dead dragons to form an animate and dully sentient whole. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
The evil ritual that creates this creature requires the bones of several dead dragons. When the ritual is complete, the disparate parts are transformed into a malevolent skeletal monstrosity. The creature hates its mockery of life but, owing to the ritual’s evil nature, cannot end its own animation. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
A bone mongrel’s phylactery takes the form of a skeletal portion of a dragon incorporated into the dracolich, such as a tail section. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Dracolich Deathbringer Dracolich: ?
Dracolich Dreambreath Dracolich: SOMETIMES A DRAGON INTERESTED IN PROLONGING its existence discovers a way to forsake the physical limitations of animate bone and rotting wings. Dreambreath dracoliches have learned how to project a permanent dream of themselves into the waking world, where they can stalk prey through both nightmare and reality forever. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
A formless psychic realm exists that is called various things in different places but is most often known as Dream. Here dreams cavort, heedless of the waking world—but not always. Most fade into obscurity, but their echoes resonate forever throughout Dream, giving rise to countless variations. The remnants of particularly vile dreams sometimes latch onto the dying wish of a dragon (possibly enabled through a ritual). From this union a dreambreath draco lich is born. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Dracolich Dreambreath Dracolich. Rhao the Skullcrusher: ? (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Dracolich Fettered Dracolich: Some cult cells have taken to capturing young dragons and putting them through a modified ritual of ascension. This ritual ties the dragon’s will to whoever holds its phylactery, resulting in a fettered dracolich. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Dracolich Icewrought Dracolich: When a white dragon grows close to death, it might seek the Heart of Absolute Winter, which is either a location or a ritual, depending on which tome or sage one consults. A full year later, an icewrought dracolich emerges in the midst of a howling winter storm. White dragons might do this because they have one or more clutches of eggs yet unhatched, and at the end of their lives, they suddenly grow concerned about their progeny. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Dracolich Runescribed Dracolich: ?
Dracolich Runescribed Dracolich, Anabraxis the Black Talon: ?
Dracolich Runescribed Dracolich, Melathaur: ?
Dracolich Stoneborn Dracolich: SOMETIMES WHEN A DRAGON DIES, its body comes to rest at the bottom of a lake or a slow-moving river. The corpse is covered over and protected by silt, dirt, and loose rock, slowing the natural process of decay. Over vast periods of time, the bone is replaced by stone-hard mineral. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Unlike other fossilized remains, the decaying forms of dragons still retain a spark of magic. When such bones are uncovered, they can spontaneously arise as stoneborn dracoliches. Occasionally sorcerers raise the bones by inscribing them with necromantic sigils. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Stoneborn dracoliches arise spontaneously when their remains are uncovered, or when a nearby powerful magical event triggers the animation of the long-quiescent bones. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
A necromantic ritual exists to rouse a collection of fossilized dragon bones, turning them into a stoneborn dracolich. As with other kinds of dracoliches, only the original creator can influence the actions of a stoneborn dracolich while possessing its phylactery—others who later gain the phylactery have no power over it. A stoneborn’s phylactery takes the form of a petrified tooth or claw removed from the dragon’s remains. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Draconic Wraith: A draconic wraith is the vilest portion of a dragon’s soul, which sometimes lingers beyond death. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
A draconic wraith is the same sort of being as a humanoid wraith: a spirit infused with the essence of the Shadowfell. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Draconic wraiths are either born from the Shadowfell or created by other draconic wraiths. Rarely does a humanoid wraith kill a dragon, and a wyrm so slain normally cannot rise as a wraith. Humanoids slain by draconic wraiths can, however, rise as wraiths themselves. Powerful rituals do exist to create draconic wraiths, but they are known only to the greatest necromancers. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
A draconic wraith forms from the vilest portion of a dragon’s soul, allowing such creatures to come into existence upon the dragon’s death. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
A draconic wraith is the same sort of being as a humanoid wraith: a spirit infused with the necromantic essence of the Shadowfell. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Draconic wraiths can arise in a variety of ways. Some are spawned by the Shadowfell or through the use of powerful necromantic rituals, while others arise spontaneously from the corpse of the vilest, most evil of dragons. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Draconic Wraith Soulbinder: Souleaters, soulravagers, and soulbinders are rare horrors said to have a common origin in the Shadowfell. They are the warped, stillborn hatchlings of a powerful shadow dragon named Urishtar, who fertilizes her eggs with the captured souls of hapless mortals. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Draconic Wraith Souleater: Souleaters, soulravagers, and soulbinders are rare horrors said to have a common origin in the Shadowfell. They are the warped, stillborn hatchlings of a powerful shadow dragon named Urishtar, who fertilizes her eggs with the captured souls of hapless mortals. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Draconic Wraith Soulgrinder: Any humanoid creature killed by a soulgrinder rises as a free-willed wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn; a dragon instead rises as a soulgrinder. The new wraith appears in the space where it died or in the nearest unoccupied space. Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Draconic Wraith Soulravager: Souleaters, soulravagers, and soulbinders are rare horrors said to have a common origin in the Shadowfell. They are the warped, stillborn hatchlings of a powerful shadow dragon named Urishtar, who fertilizes her eggs with the captured souls of hapless mortals. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Soulravagers are crazed draconic wraiths that have lost control of their limitless anger and now stalk the living and the dead to destroy whatever souls they find. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Draconic Wraith Wyrm-Wisp: A WYRM-WISP IS THE SLIGHTEST MANIFESTATION of draconic evil. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Any humanoid creature killed by a wyrm-wisp rises as a free-willed wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn; a dragon instead rises as a wyrm-wisp. The new wraith appears in the space where it died or in the nearest unoccupied space. Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Draconic Zombie: Draconic zombies arise under the same circumstances as skeletal dragons, either as necromantic creations or as the result of the Shadowfell’s encroachment on the mortal world. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Draconic Zombie Deathless Hunger: ?
Draconic Zombie Rancid Tide: ?
Draconic Zombie Rotclaw: ?
Draconic Zombie Winged Putrescence: ?
Drakkensteed Grave-Born Drakkensteed: A few powerful spellcasters have developed a ritual to reanimate drakkensteeds as a particular form of undead. These undead creatures generate internal necrotic energy and retain many of the instincts that make drakkensteeds such coveted mounts. (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Dread Warrior: UNHOLY RITUALS THAT CALL FORTH UNDEAD HULKS usually raise shambling, mindless creatures. Dread warriors, on the other hand, rise to unlife possessed of enough martial skill to serve as formidable guardians. Each dread warrior is created with an unbreakable connection to its master that makes it utterly loyal. (Monster Manual 3)
Legend holds that the priests of Bane were the first to craft these warriors, creating them from the corpses of potent enemies. (Monster Manual 3)
THAY’S NECROMANCERS ARE AMONG THE BEST in the world, and their undead creations are simply more capable and enduring than others. Thay produces more than its share of shambling corpses, but its Dread Legions contain a significant number of intelligent skeletons and zombies. Known as dread warriors, these evil undead can follow orders, communicate, and fight just as well as a living counterpart, but they do so without fear of death. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
“Dread warrior” is a template you can apply to any humanoid creature to represent one of these Thayan monstrosities. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Dread Warrior, Ukulsid, Fang of Yeenoghu: ?
Dread Warrior Dread Archer: A necromancer creates dread archers to shoot anyone who attempts to approach the spellcaster or his or her fortification. (Monster Manual 3)
Dread Warrior Dread Guardian: ?
Dread Warrior Dread Marauder: ?
Dread Warrior Dread Protector: Stories tell of powerful necromancers creating a dozen dread protectors to scatter about their bedrooms and workstations. (Monster Manual 3)
Dreadclaw: Karrnathi traditions and those of the Skull born of Aerenal have mixed under the purview of the Emerald Claw. Claw necromancers raise dread claws by treating living humanoids with a toxin that reacts to a necromantic catalyst. The toxin kills the humanoid and prepares it for a dark ritual. (Seekers of the Ashen Crown)
Dreadclaw Darkliege: ?
Dreadclaw Darkliege, Yeraa: ?
Dreadclaw Goblin Dreadclaw Reaver: ?
Dreadcalw Reaver: ?
Dreadclaw Soulbound, Gydd Nephret: ?
Dregoth, Sorcerer-King: He burns for vengeance against the other sorcerer-kings, who slew him centuries ago but neglected to prevent his fell rebirth. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Abalach-Re warned the other city-states’ overlords, and they partnered to destroy Giustenal and its defiler dragon monarch. The shattering of Giustenal scattered the surviving dragonborn inhabitants and flooded the spirit world with the trapped souls of those who died in the titanic arcane battle. Giustenal became a literal city of ghosts. The sorcerer-kings ultimately failed in their task, though. Dregoth returned to Athas as a monstrous and powerful undead being. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Almost two thousand years ago, the other sorcerer-kings conspired to kill Dregoth, fearing his growing strength. The resulting magical duel turned Giustenal into a vast tomb. In the end, Dregoth fell dead, and his opponents left the ruined city to the desert. But with the last of his power, Dregoth made the transition to undeath. (Dark Sun Campaign Setting)
Echo Spirit: Life-giving magic from the fey crossing preserved the spiritual remains of those who have died here over the ages, but Soryth's recent corruption of the area has awakened one of these remnants as an angry undead creature. (Beyond the Crystal Cave)
Echo Spirit Spirit Echo: An echo spirit's Spiritual Echoes power. (Beyond the Crystal Cave)
Fey Lingerer: THE PASSIONS AND OBSESSIONS of some strong-willed eladrin can drive them even after death. When their physical forms are ruined, their spirits lash out at their slayers. (Monster Manual 2)
Fey lingerers are eladrin knights and wizards who refuse to die. They are not the gracious and mannered eladrin of the fey court, but are twisted and depraved, withdrawn from elven grace. (Monster Manual 2)
When they are destroyed, fey lingerers transform into vengeful incorporeal spirits. (Monster Manual 2)
Fey Lingerer Fey-Encanter Vestige: Fey Lingerer Lingerer Fell Incanter Vestige Transformation power. (Monster Manual 2)
Fey Lingerer Fey-Knight Vestige: Fey Lingerer Lingerer Knight Vestige Transformation power. (Monster Manual 2)
Fey Lingerer Lingerer Fell Incanter: ?
Fey Lingerer Lingerer Knight: ?
Flameharrow, Eye of fear and Flame: Flameharrows are created by powers of vile chaos—some say Orcus—to spread pain and misery. The animating spirit of the creature is smelted from the soul of a homicidal madman. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
Flameharrow Lord: ?
Flameskull: CREATED FROM THE SKULLS OF WIZARDS and other spellcasters, flameskulls serve as intelligent undead guardians. (Monster Manual)
Rituals for creating flameskulls are ancient, so flameskulls exist in places lost to history. (Monster Manual)
Once Vadin is dead, trouble in the catacombs quickly fades away. Until that time, however, the priest takes advantage of any retreat by the adventurers to reinforce his undead guardians. He can't replace every monster the adventurers destroy, however. His ability to create undead is limited to the skeletal guardians and the flameskull. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Flameskull Blackfire Flameskull: ?
Flameskull Demonic Flameskull: ?
Flameskull Great Flameskull: ?
Flameskull Ghostfire Flameskull: ?
Flameskull Lord, The Bright Lord of Everburning Fire: ?
Fomorian Fomorian Totemist: ?
Forgewraith: A FORGEWRAITH IS AN UNDEAD HUMANOID whose spirit was extinguished and rekindled in the fires of a furnace or a forge. (Dungeon Magazine Annual Vol. 1)
Most forgewraiths form when numerous humanoids die in a fiery disaster on a developed site. The souls pass on, but the pain and fire mix with unleashed magic to form a humanoid spirit of monstrous hate. (Dungeon Magazine Annual Vol. 1)
Forgewraith, Haestus d'Cannith: I am something between living and dead, and greater than either. My power in life allowed my spirit to remain kindled in death. I am a soul alight with the forge’s fire. (Dungeon Magazine Annual Vol. 1)
Forsaken Shell: A FORSAKEN SHELL IS SKIN RIPPED from a creature’s body and then animated purposefully or spontaneously by foul magic. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
When a forsaken shell kills a Medium living humanoid creature, the slain creature rises as a free-willed forsaken shell at the start of its creator’s next turn. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Forsaken shells arise when skin is ripped from the flesh of a living target. The flesh is then animated either through the actions of a necromancer or through spontaneous necrotic energy. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Forsaken shells propagate their kind by ripping the skin off their victims, assimilating it, and then exuding it as a new monster. In this way, one forsaken shell can spawn thousands of its kind, creating an army of animate skin. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Numerous kinds of forsaken shells exist. Each kind of creature victimized by a forsaken shell has the potential to become a new kind of shell. Humans, giants, and dragons are the most common targets of forsaken shells. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Forsaken Shell Dragon Shell: When the forsaken shell kills a living dragon creature, the slain creature rises as a free-willed dragon shell at the start of its creator’s next turn. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Forsaken Shell Titan Shell: When a titan shell kills a Large living humanoid creature, the slain creature rises as a free-willed titan shell at the start of its creator’s next turn. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghost: GHOSTS HAUNT FORLORN PLACES, bound to their fate until they are finally put to rest. Sometimes they exist for a purpose, and other times they defy death through sheer will. (Monster Manual)
A ghost is the spirit of a dead creature, often a Medium humanoid killed in some traumatic fashion. (Monster Manual)
Sentient ghosts are the most common of the undead that retain their souls without resorting to necromantic rituals. They have a purpose that fetters them to the world, even if it’s only to spread misery or wreak vengeance. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Because all souls pass through this dim realm upon the death of their bodies, Shadow’s taint can corrupt these soul vestiges before they find their way to the Court of the Raven Queen in Letherna, forging sad spirits into ghosts and other insubstantial undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Sometimes, though, the victims of a vampiric dragon rise as spiritual undead such as ghosts and wraiths. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Ghosts can come in many forms. Some are cursed to roam until a past sin is righted, or a wrong undone. Others are merely the animus of hate, raging eternally in undying terror. (Dungeon Master's Guide 2)
When the Shadowfell draws near to the world, the boundaries between life and death grow thin. Ghosts become common on Eberron then, because it is as easy for spirits to remain in the world of the living as it is for them to pass into the Realm of the Dead. Rituals that call the dead back to life sometimes go awry, bringing ghosts or other undead along with the desired spirit. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
A few cling to the Shadowfell or to the world, continuing on as ghosts or other insubstantial undead. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
As if the active creation of undead by reckless mortals was not bad enough, the Shadowfell itself sometimes spawns the unliving. Areas such as the darklands, places tainted by necromantic seepage, and other, less understood regions spawn all manner of animated beings. The taint of shadow also corrupts the soul vestiges wandering on this plane, twisting these sad spirits into ghosts and other spectral creatures. (Manual of the Planes)
If threats fail to impress the heroes, Vladistone warns them that the Ghost Tower houses a terrible magical relic that will destroy everyone nearby. He calls it a soul gem and claims that it can strip the soul from the body of a living creature, causing it to become a ghost just like him. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
Ghost, Julain De'Spri: He and his wife, Amori, were buried here long ago. Recently, however, some terrible power ripped their spirits from the peaceful place where they were residing and brought them back to this room. Now Julain's spirit is waiting here, restless, as Amori's body and spirit are being tampered with elsewhere. (Halls of Undermountain)
Ghost, Salazar Vladistone: Over sixty years ago, a group of bold adventurers calling themselves the Silver Company delved into a mysterious tower that appeared in the ruins of Castle Inverness. The result was tragic-one of the Silver Company, a woman named Oldivya Vladistone, perished. Her husband, Salazar, continued to adventure with the Silver Company for some years, growing more despondent the longer he had to deal with his wife's death. Eventually, Salazar Vladistone sacrificed himself to save his allies and the people of Hammer fast from an unknown danger in the Dawnforge Mountains. Vladistone's spirit did not rest quietly after his sacrifice, however. He became a ghost, haunting the Nentir Vale as be made pilgrimages to the grave of his wife in the ruins of Inverness. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
Ghost, Voolad: His victory was short-lived, however. Halflings from the Lluirwood surprised Voolad and killed him. Whatever fell purpose drove the druid enabled him to rise as a powerful ghost. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Ghost Argent Haunt Ghost: ?
Ghost Caller in Darkness: A caller in darkness is created from the spirits of dozens of victims who died together in terror. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghost Dawnwar Ghost: ?
Ghost Dwarf, Cherndon the Mad: He died trying to prevent the orcs from learning where several rich dwarf lords were buried. (Hammerfast)
Ghost Dwarf, Grolin Surespike: Grolin Surespike, a dwarf ghost who died in the Trade Spire back when it served as living quarters for Hammerfast's priests, appears elderly and frail. (Hammerfast)
Ghost Dwarf, Telg: ?
Ghost Dwarf Spirit: The dwarf spirits are the remnants of loyal defenders that once protected the necropolis and each other from orc depredations. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
Ghost Drowned Ghost: Drowned ghosts are the spirits of those who died watery deaths. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghost Famine Spirit: Famine spirits are spectral remnants of people who shortened their lives through gluttony, who hoarded food while others starved, or who died of starvation. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghost Goblin Fire Phantom: A trio of ghostly goblins, killed by the flame vent trap long ago, protects this chamber. (Seekers of the Ashen Crown)
Ghost Goblin Flame Vent Haunt: A trio of ghostly goblins, killed by the flame vent trap long ago, protects this chamber. (Seekers of the Ashen Crown)
Ghost Goblin Ghost Boss: Ghostly goblins, the spirits of warriors slain here millennia before, protect this area. (Seekers of the Ashen Crown)
Ghost Goblin Phantom: Ghostly goblins, the spirits of warriors slain here millennia before, protect this area. (Seekers of the Ashen Crown)
Ghost Harmless Phantom: Long ago, dark ones, shadowborn humans, and other slaves languished in this room. Now the room holds only ghosts, figments from another time. (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Ghost Legionnaire: SLAIN IN LONG-AGO BATTLES, these soldiers' fight for forgotten causes, distant memories, or a fierce loyalty to each other. Although they appear as separate soldiers, their spirits have fused into a single entity that lives and dies as a single soul. (Monster Manual 2)
Ghost Mad Ghost, Vontarin: ?
Ghost Malicious Ghost: Malicious ghosts arise from children who die frightened or alone. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead) Enraged that no one saved its life, the ghost of the child becomes a creature of unquenchable malice. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghost Orc, Kralick: ?
Ghost Orc Spirit: ?
Ghost Phantom Warrior: ?
Ghost Poltergeist: ?
Ghost Raaig: IN AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE VIOLENT DEATH is so common, ghosts frequently haunt sites of great significance or terrible slaughter. Among them are an array of spirits bound to the service of long-forgotten gods. Called raaigs, these ghosts defend ancient shrines, temples, relics, and secrets. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
In life, raaigs were devout priests or holy warriors charged with protecting sacred sites or relics. In death they still keep watch, though their charges have crumbled into ruin or vanished. They have been twisted by their ancient oaths into merciless, hateful apparitions that swiftly slay any living intruder. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Ghost Raaig Crypt Lord: ?
Ghost Raaig Soulflame: A few guardians were so favored by their gods in life that they were granted a tiny spark of divine essence. Called soulflames, these raaigs still embody their gods’ will. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Ghost Raaig Tomb Spirit: ?
Ghost Sage Ghost, Jakro Vrin: ?
Ghost Sage Ghost, Willum Vrin: ?
Ghost Servile Ghost: A servile ghost arises when a servant or lackey dies an ignoble death as a consequence of its master’s actions. Such deaths are often a result of betrayal or carelessness on the master’s part. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghost Terrifying Haunt:
Ghost Trap Haunt: ?
Ghost Tormenting Ghost: Numerous creatures died during the battles in Death's Reach, and a few endured in spirit despite the place's dark power. Some were allies of Timesus; others were servitors of the gods. The soulfall into Death's Reach has caused the shells of some of these ancient creatures to shudder back to animation. (E1 Death's Reach)
Ghost Wailing Ghost, Banshee: ?
Ghost Worg Packmate: ?
Ghost Watchful Ghost: Watchful ghosts are the spirits of guards killed in the line of duty while failing to protect their charges. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The apparition is the restless spirit of Ammaradon, a member of the old king’s guard who failed to prevent the king’s assassination. Tormented by this unforgivable lapse, he now guards the king’s sarcophagus. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghost Wrath Spirit: A wrath spirit arises when a violent individual dies while enraged. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghoul: Humanoids that indulge in or resort to cannibalism become ghouls when they die. Ghouls are also created through rituals. (Monster Manual)
Humanoids that indulge in or resort to cannibalism become ghouls when they die. Ghouls are also created through rituals. (Monster Manual)
As the progeny of cannibalism and other less than savory practices, ghouls are creatures of pure evil. (Monster Manual 3)
They were once cannibalistic humanoids, but their actions caused them to be cursed in death with ravenous appetites that cannot be sated. (Monster Vault)
When an intelligent humanoid resorts to cannibalism or lives a life of gluttony and greed, it can be cursed to transform into a ghoul upon its death. Unlike a zombie or a skeleton, a ghoul retains sentience and many of the memories of its life. The creature’s perspective is twisted by its death, though, and as a result, it recalls with torment a time when it was not driven by a gnawing hunger for living flesh. (Monster Vault)
In the past, some of the resident duergar rested here to recover from wounds caused by the Silver Company. Before they could heal, the magic of the Time Trap ritual took hold. However, the magic of the stasis field was weak in this area of the monastery, and the living duergar were imperfectly preserved. Over the last sixty years, their bodies have wasted away while remaining trapped in the chamber, causing them to become ghouls. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
The ghouls that have been trapped in this chamber for so long were once duergar, but decades of slowly dying of hunger and thirst have left them with nothing but a supernatural need to eat. These ghouls are driven by pure hunger, and are almost zombie-like in their unthinking desire to eat the flesh of the heroes. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
A character can make a DC 13 Arcana check to determine that the ghouls were created by the decaying stasis field resulting from the Time Trap. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
Ghoul Abyssal Ghoul: Sometimes ghouls are graced by Doresain with power greater than their fellows. These so-called abyssal ghouls are the Ghoul King’s favorites and make up a goodly portion of the king’s Court of Teeth. (Monster Manual)
The so-called Ghoul King commands his servants to empower some ghouls with additional strength, speed, and durability. The ghouls that receive these abyssal blessings are more powerful and are beholden to Doresain and his demonic master. (Monster Vault)
Ghoul Abyssal Ghoul, Balthrad: ?
Ghoul Abyssal Ghoul Devourer: The so-called Ghoul King commands his servants to empower some ghouls with additional strength, speed, and durability. The ghouls that receive these abyssal blessings are more powerful and are beholden to Doresain and his demonic master. (Monster Vault)
Ghoul Abyssal Ghoul Horde: ?
Ghoul Abyssal Ghoul Hungerer: The so-called Ghoul King commands his servants to empower some ghouls with additional strength, speed, and durability. The ghouls that receive these abyssal blessings are more powerful and are beholden to Doresain and his demonic master. (Monster Vault)
The Dead Arise power. (Dungeon Master's Guide 2)
Ghoul Abyssal Ghoul Myrmidon: Red Glyph/Ghoul Transformation Ritual (Dungeon Delve)
The Dead Arise power level 26. (Dungeon Master's Guide 2)
Ghoul Abyssal Madness Ghoul: ?
Ghoul Adept of Orcus: In the dark shrine, they spoke in whispers of the fallen priest who had died with a prayer to Orcus on his lips. He might have remained dead, his soul to become a plaything of Orcus, except that he had killed and consumed a priest of Bahamut when he was alive. After his death, he underwent a horrid and unholy transformation. (Monster Manual 3)
Ghoul Darkpact Ghoul: Darkpact ghouls are the product of corrupt individuals who are cursed to return in undeath. They lose all sanity in the transformation, replacing it with predatory cunning. A few darkpact ghouls are dead warlocks who made pacts with sinister forces to extend their lives without realizing the form they would take upon death. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghoul Drow Horde Ghoul: A group of undead led by an abyssal ghoul overran the slaver complex and killed its inhabitants. A few of these victims were transformed into ghouls by the abyssal power surging through Phaervorul, and now they work alongside the undead invaders. (P2 Demon Queen's Enclave)
Ghoul Eyebiter: The Ghoul King, Doresain, created ravening underlings called eyebiters to serve him in the White Kingdom. (P2 Demon Queen's Enclave)
Ghoul eyebiters are creations of Doresain, bred to spawn and support the Ghoul King’s undead legions.
Ghoul Flesh Seeker: The sage had warned of these creatures—mortal followers of Orcus that had undergone a horrific, cannibalistic initiation into the demon lord’s cult. (Monster Manual 3)
Ghoul Frost Giant Abyssal Ghoul: ?
Ghoul Gatherer: ?
Ghoul Ghast: The rogue thought herself clever when she opened the leaden doors to the lost tomb, saw a dozen slavering ghouls in the antechamber, and quickly sealed the sepulcher. Ten years later—long enough for the ghouls to starve to death, according to her research—she returned to the place. True, the ghouls had met their end. However, their transformation into ghasts was something she hadn’t accounted for. (Monster Manual 3)
When ghouls go too long without humanoid flesh, they rot away from the inside out. The insatiable hunger that accompanies this transformation grants ghasts a desperate strength and ferocity. (Monster Manual 3)
Ghouls starved of flesh. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Ghoul Horde Ghoul: Beholder Undead Beholder Death Tyrant Reanimating Ray power. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Beholder Death Emperor Reanimating Ray power. (E1 Death's Reach)
Reanimating Ray (Necrotic): Ranged 10; +27 vs. Fortitude; 2d10 + 8 necrotic damage. If the target is reduced to 0 hit points or fewer, the target rises as a horde ghoul under the beholder death emperor's control at the end of its next turn. (E1 Death's Reach)
Ghoul Plaguechanged Ghoul: THE SPELLPLAGUE KILLED INDISCRIMINATELY, but it apparently raised some of those it slew, in a hungering form. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Ghoul Ravenous Ghoul: In the past, some of the resident duergar rested here to recover from wounds caused by the Silver Company. Before they could heal, the magic of the Time Trap ritual took hold. However, the magic of the stasis field was weak in this area of the monastery, and the living duergar were imperfectly preserved. Over the last sixty years, their bodies have wasted away while remaining trapped in the chamber, causing them to become ghouls. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
The ghouls that have been trapped in this chamber for so long were once duergar, but decades of slowly dying of hunger and thirst have left them with nothing but a supernatural need to eat. These ghouls are driven by pure hunger, and are almost zombie-like in their unthinking desire to eat the flesh of the heroes. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
A character can make a DC 13 Arcana check to determine that the ghouls were created by the decaying stasis field resulting from the Time Trap. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
Ghoul Ripper: ?
Ghoul Skullborn Ghoul: ?
Ghoul Sodden Ghoul: A sodden ghoul arises when an aquatic humanoid that engages in cannibalism dies. Sodden ghouls are also created through deliberate rituals by evil aquatic creatures, such as bog hags, kuo-toas, sahuagin, and aboleths. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghoul Sodden Ghoul Wailer: ?
Ghoul Stalker: ?
Ghoul Stench Ghoul: A stench ghoul is the result of a cannibalistic humanoid who dies after consuming the rancid flesh of another humanoid. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ghoul Wretched Stench Ghoul: ?
Ghoul Warrior: ?
Ghoul Whisperer: ?
Giant Shadow Giant: Shadow giants are remnants of giants killed by the sorcerer-kings in ancient wars. Their hate-filled spirits have found a home in the deathly substance of the Gray. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Gibbering Head: This head is all that remains of one of the leaders of the long-ago battle, impaled here as a trophy of sorts and a warning to other enemies. Long exposure to the taint of this area has infused it with malefic abilities. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Gnoll Hyena Spirit: A hyena spirit is the undead vestige of a prized gnoll war beast. Bound to a tribe by dark magic, it continues to fight on after death. (Monster Manual 3)
Gorgimrith, The Hunger in the Mountain: ?
Gray Company Fallen Hero: ?
Griefmote: ?
Haunted Armor Animus, Fiendish Armor Animus: ?
Lich, Acererark: If Acererak is defeated, his body disappears. He rises in 1d10 days as a lich, thus starting Acererak's path to ultimate darkness and evil. (Revenge of the Giants)
Headless Corpse: When Karavakos decapitated Vyrellis, he placed her body here, within a powerful field of arcane magic. Over time, the magic within this room has waned. Vyrellis can now reclaim her body, but there is a catch. Karavakos animated the corpse and filled it with necrotic energy. (H3 Pyramid of Shadows)
Hook Horror Rotting Hook Horror: ?
Hound Death: SOME TYPES OF HOUNDS ARE ANIMATED canine corpses, and a few are creatures of shadow that have canine forms. The association these creatures have with death has gained them the name death hounds. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Hound Death Charnel Hound: Charnel hounds are the unholy result of necromantic experiments. Evil ritualists fuse corpses together to create this vicious, predatory dog. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Hound Death Famine Hound: Famine hounds arise when dogs are abandoned by their masters and left to starve. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Hound Death Rot Hound: These creatures are the result of dogs that dig up and eat rotting corpses. The dogs grow sick and slowly rot from the inside out, eventually dying and reanimating due to necromantic energy in an area. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Hound of Ill Omen: Once the loyal companions of the hill clans, who now rest beneath the barrows of the Gray Downs, the hounds of ill omen howl to awaken and avenge their long-dead masters. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Ghosts of Long Ago: The Gray Downs were once inhabited by indigenous hill clan people reputed far and wide for their fierce hunting hounds. But when the empire of Nerath began to bloom, greedy generals sought to expand the empire into the Nentir Vale and across the hill clans’ territory. The clans resisted. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Hopelessly outnumbered, they stood with their faithful hounds against the mighty armies of Nerath, even as the Tigerclaw barbarians and other native tribes abandoned the vale and retreated far into the northern wilderness. Although the hill clans fought bravely, they were annihilated in a final desperate battle upon the downs. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Long after the battle, the hounds of the hill clans prowled the battlefields, howling over the corpses of their masters and refusing to leave their sides. The Nerathans built a great barrow in honor of the warriors that fought and died—and after the last of their bodies was interred, the hounds vanished. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
But on dark nights when the fog rises, it is said that the hounds can still be seen coursing across the downs, their ghostly forms pining for their lost masters. The common folk call them the “hounds of ill omen,” because calamity and misfortune follow in the wake of their fearsome howls. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Harbingers of Death: As legend would have it, on nights when the skull-white moon hangs low and the downs are silent as a corpse’s dream, the ghost hounds come forth to hunt mortals. Who sends the hounds and for what purpose, none can tell. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Hound of Ill Omen, Bregga: It’s said that Bregga was the first hound, having lived on the downs since before the hill clans arrived. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Hound of Ill Omen Hill Clan Apparition: When Bregga’s hounds sound their lonely howls for the hill clans, the spectral apparitions of their dead masters—cold and black as the grave—rise again from their barrows. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Howling Spirit: ?
Huecuva: HUECUVAS ARE FOUL UNDEAD that are created by an ancient divine curse. Originally intended as punishment for a priest who horribly violates his vows and responsibilities, the rite is occasionally used by evil churches as a means of empowering their clerics. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
Huecuva is a template you can apply to humanoid NPCs or monsters. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
Although the Ashen Covenant did not originally create huecuvas, many belong to the movement. Huecuvas were originally the spawn of a divine curse meant to punish priests who violated their vows. Now, a ritual exists to confer this status on powerful evil priests. (E1 Death's Reach)
Huecuva, Elder Arantham, Exarch of Orcus: Elder Arantham’s notoriety began when he set out to uncover a copy of the ancient ritual that transforms apostate priests into foul undead creatures called huecuvas. In a ceremony witnessed by his fellow cultists, Arantham shed the last of his humanity— and, as he proclaimed, “the last lingering stench of my prior misguided beliefs.” (Dragon Magazine Annual)
Elder Arantham’s notoriety began when he set out to uncover a copy of the ancient ritual that transforms apostate priests into foul undead creatures called huecuvas. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
Huecuva, Elder Arantham: He is a rare form of divinely empowered undead known as a huecuva, which he became to purposely shed his humanity. (E1 Death's Reach)
Huecuva Rakshasa Noble Huecuva: ?
Karrnathi Skeleton: Blood of Vol devotees first spawned Karrnathi skeletons and zombies from the corpses of elite warriors. These undead retain their cunning and training, making them far superior to the regular soldiers in Karrnath’s legions. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Karrnathi Zombie: Blood of Vol devotees first spawned Karrnathi skeletons and zombies from the corpses of elite warriors. These undead retain their cunning and training, making them far superior to the regular soldiers in Karrnath’s legions. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Koptila the Acursed: In this chamber long ago, the ogre king Koptila sacrificed himself to the gods to save his tribe from an overwhelming threat. His people were transported forward in time, and Koptila was transformed into an undead creature. (Dungeon Delve)
Larva Mage: WHEN A POWERFUL EVIL SPELLCASTER DIES, his spirit sometimes takes control of the wriggling mass of worms and maggots devouring his corpse. This mass of vermin rises as a larva mage to continue the spellcaster’s dark schemes or to seek revenge against those who slew him. (Monster Manual)
Only the most evil spellcasters return to unlife as larva mages. (Monster Manual)
An elder evil being called Kyuss created the first larva mages to guard vaults of forbidden lore. (Monster Manual)
Numerous creatures died during the battles in Death's Reach, and a few endured in spirit despite the place's dark power. Some were allies of Timesus; others were servitors of the gods. The soulfall into Death's Reach has caused the shells of some of these ancient creatures to shudder back to animation. (E1 Death's Reach)
Larva Mage, Espera: The Spellplague destroyed many of these in gouts of blue fire. Espera, a genasi necromancer, had already tied herself to Shar’s power of shadow. She died in the conflagration but was resurrected as a larva mage. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Larva Mage, Kyuss, The Worm that Walks: Kyuss began as a mortal and attained such power and stature that he has become a legendary being. He leveraged his way to a corrupt apotheosis through powerful rituals and a series of deadly betrayals. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Kyuss was born a mortal in a city where evil walked freely, and where sacrifices were made nightly to honor dark gods. The boundaries between life and death were blurred in this place, and the living and unliving mingled freely. As the seventh of seven children, Kyuss was despised and brutalized by his family. They called him “the worm,” and Kyuss fed on their contempt, turning it into dark resolve. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Gradually and imperceptibly, Kyuss drove the members of his family to self-destruction. When all were dead, he took on the identity of a cleric serving the Raven Queen. Aided by alliances with undead ecclesiasts and an instinct for betrayal, he rose through the temple hierarchy, eventually becoming a high priest who attracted followers from far and wide. When his congregation was bloated with followers, Kyuss performed a great ritual that he promised would bring power over neighboring realms. Instead, the ritual slew them all, rotting the flesh from their bones. Kyuss, too, was consumed, but days later, as the maggots and insects fed on the rotting bodies, they came together to form a writhing larva mage—Kyuss’s new form. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Larva Mage, Magrathar: ?
Larva Mage, Matrathar: ?
Larva Undead: Individuals who have relentlessly pursued evil might return as larva undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Larva Undead Larva Assassin: A larva assassin is a conscienceless killer that arises when a humanoid dies after spending his or her life murdering without pity. When the individual’s body begins to decay, a swarm of hornets and centipedes gathers to devour the corpse. Necrotic energy merges the vermin with the consciousness of the former humanoid, creating a larva assassin. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Larva Undead Larva Sniper: Larva snipers are the result of dead humanoids who took sadistic delight in their ability to slay foes from afar. Upon such a creature’s death, masses of yellow, segmented wasps and hornets gather and give the creature’s consciousness a physical form. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Larva Undead Larva War Master: Larva war masters are the undead progeny of powerful warriors who become unhinged by bloodlust, commit strings of atrocities, and then die. Upon the subject’s death, its body is consumed by devouring beetles that strip flesh from bone and then form a new body. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The ancient undead entity Kyuss rewarded his most faithful and remorseless warriors with eternal existence as larva war masters. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The bodies of larva undead are wholly composed of rotting flesh, fragments of bone, and maggots, centipedes, beetles, and other vermin. (E1 Death's Reach)
Larva Undead Larva Warlord: ?
Lich: A LICH IS AN UNDEAD SPELLCASTER created by means of an ancient ritual. Wizards and other arcane spellcasters who choose this path to immortality escape death by becoming undead, but prolonged existence in this state often drives them mad. (Monster Manual)
“Lich” is a monster template that can be applied to nonplayer characters. (Monster Manual)
A mortal becomes a lich by performing a dark and terrible ritual. In this ritual the mortal dies, but rises again as an undead creature. Most liches are wizards or warlocks, but a few multiclassed clerics follow this dark path. (Monster Manual)
A lich’s life force is bound up in a magic phylactery, which typically takes the form of a fist-sized metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases have been written. (Monster Manual)
A dark spellcaster who covets immortality and spend his or her life in pursuit of necromantic power might gain the ability to become a lich. A lich ties its life force to a phylactery, ensuring that its body will coalesce in a hidden location even if some creature were to slay it. (Monster Vault)
To become a lich, a spellcaster must be devoted to evil and adept at performing unspeakable acts of violence. Few spellcasters have a shred of morality remaining after their transformations into liches. The process of attaining lichdom bends the mortal mind in unnatural and crippling ways. Many liches rise up insane, but even they enact cunning plans; they just do so for incomprehensible reasons. (Monster Vault)
A spellcaster must travel far—even across the planes—to collect the scraps of lore and esoteric components needed to enact the ritual to transform into a lich. (Monster Vault)
The act of becoming a lich encases a mortal’s life force in a specially prepared item called a phylactery. The most common type is a metal box that contains strips of parchment with arcane writing. Any small item, such as a gemstone, a ring, or a statue, can be a phylactery. (Monster Vault)
Death knights, liches, mummies, and vampires are created by rituals or processes that tie the soul to an unliving form. Similar creatures could be created in different circumstances. Such diversity among undead reflects the fact that death touches every part of existence. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Some obsessed knowledge-seekers pursue the spark of life too far, and thereby discover the dark fruits of undeath. They seek death’s secrets because of their fear of death, thinking that if they can come to understand mortality, their fear will be extinguished and their survival assured. Those who tread this road to its conclusion sometimes embrace death completely, and do not become so much immortal as simply enduring. Spellcasters who adopt this existence are commonly known as liches. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
MANY CREATURES HOPE TO ESCAPE DEATH. When such creatures are powerful and corrupt, they sometimes turn to rituals that can transform them into liches. However, immortality comes with a price, and these creatures lose the remaining shreds of their humanity in process. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Most undead animate spontaneously or arise through profane rituals. A few mortals willingly become undead, though, viewing the condition as a form of immortality. These liches gain resilience from the transformation. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Liches are evil arcane masterminds that pursue the path of undeath to achieve immortality. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
“Lich” is a template you can add to any intelligent creature of 11th level or higher. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Prerequisite: Level 11, Intelligence 13 (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Vol’s methods created creatures such as vampires and liches that required life energy or blood from living creatures. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Undead fuel their minds and protect their corpses from dissolution through powerful necromantic rituals—especially liches, whose never-ending acquisition of arcane knowledge has propelled some into contention with the gods themselves. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Lich, Acererak: Horrid as these ruins are for the living, the place bears an unholy attraction for the undead. Such is this allure that the mighty lich Acererak, master of the Tomb of Horrors, once laid claim to the City That Waits and used it as a conduit to transcend his mortal form and ascend to greatness. (Manual of the Planes)
Lich, Harthoon: ?
Lich, Lady Vol: Through her arcane powers, her indomitable spirit, and a burning hatred for the elves and dragons that had wronged her, Vol has endured for long centuries in the ranks of the undead. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Lich, Lich-Lord Melif: ?
Lich, Lord Dust: ?
Lich, Parthal Archlich: ?
Lich, Raja Thirayam of Dukkharan: ?
Lich, Vargo the Faceless: ?
Lich Aboleth Overseer, Pavan: ?
Lich Alhoon Lich: Alhoons are magic-using outcasts from mind flayer societies who have defied the ruling elder brains. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Lich Archlich: Archlich epic destiny. (Arcane Power)
Lich Baelnorn Lich: Eladrin become baelnorn liches for a variety of reasons. Many choose this path so they can act as guardians of ancestral vaults and tombs. Unlike most liches, baelnorns are not necessarily evil. The creatures are less power-hungry and covetous than other liches, and they often keep their phylacteries in close proximity to the places they guard. A few baelnorn have no phylacteries at all; rather, their prolonged existence is achieved through a powerful ritual or the blessing of a deity. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Lich Castellan Wizard, Harthoon, Castellan of Everlost: ?
Lich Demilich: Particularly powerful liches that learn the secret of fashioning soul gems often shed their bodies and evolve into demiliches. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Lich Demilich Acererak, The Devourer: Having escaped death through lichdom, he houses his intelligence in a bejeweled skull and his soul in a hidden phylactery. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Lich Demilich Acererak Construct: Acererak’s skull, which dwells in the mithral vault of the Tomb of Horrors, is a construct created by the demilich. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Lich Dwarf, Barrthak, Dwarf Lich: ?
Lich Eladrin, Ghovran Akti: ?
Lich Eladrin, Valindra Shadowmantle: ?
Ravenous Undead: Some believe that Castle Nowhere is occupied by the spirits of people eaten by the city’s ghouls and vampires; others say that these spirits are the ghosts of aberrant entities from the Far Realm. (Neverwinter Campaign Setting)
Lich Eladrin Wizard: ?
Lich Human, Mauthereign: ?
Lich Human, Osterneth the Bronze Lich, The Supreme Seed of Darkness, Heart of the Whispered One: Osterneth had a surprise for the invaders, though. In her quest for eldritch might, the queen had tracked down and slain the leader of the cult that had captured her. From the fallen cultist she claimed the Heart of Vecna, a powerful relic that granted everlasting life. Through a secret ritual, she placed the heart inside her chest cavity, and, with its power, became a powerful lich in the service of Vecna. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Lich Human Wizard: ?
Lich, Human Wizard, Szass Tam: ?
Lich Lord Vizier: ?
Lich Necromancer: ?
Lich Remnant: ?
Lich Soulreaver: ?
Lich Thicket Dryad Lich: Sometimes a dryad’s desire to protect its woodland twists into dark obsession. In rare instances, one of these fey creatures crosses the threshold into undeath and becomes a thicket dryad lich. The dryad transforms a favorite tree into a phylactery. The corruption in the dryad’s soul then causes the tree to become warped and rotted. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Lich Vestige: A LICH VESTIGE IS THE ARCANE REMNANT OF A DESTROYED LICH. (Monster Manual)
Raven Consort epic destiny Death's Companion power. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
Lich Void Lich: A void lich is an antediluvian horror from the Far Realm that seizes control of the body and phylactery of someone performing a lich transformation ritual. Lured into the world by the eldritch power unleashed during the ritual, this aberrant entity shunts the ritual performer’s soul off to the Far Realm and possesses the host body as its own. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A void lich is created when the soul of a lich-to-be is shunted off to an aberrant realm and is replaced, changelinglike, by a foul entity that possesses the lich's body as its own. (E1 Death's Reach)
Mourner: Mourners are undead spirits of soldiers who were killed by the Mourning. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Mourners are the disconsolate spirits of soldiers killed in Cyre on the Day of Mourning. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Mourners are the remnants of a single company of Thrane soldiers who died when their captain led them into a Karrnathi ambush three days before the Mourning. Buried in a mass grave, the spirits of the betrayed soldiers rose as one on the Day of Mourning. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Mummy: Soulless beings animated by necromantic magic. (Monster Manual)
THESE VORACIOUS KILLERS, tomb spiders, are true creatures of the Shadowfell insofar as they create undead as a part of their life cycle. (Monster Manual 2)
A tomb spider lays its eggs in a humanoid corpse, creating an animate mummy in which hundreds of tiny tomb spiders reside until the creature splits open. (Monster Manual 2)
Whether created in the dry desert heat, the sucking moisture of a desolate bog, or the frozen heights of a lofty mountain, a mummy exists for vengeance. A number of sins can awaken a mummy, from disturbing its tomb, despoiling a place sacred to it in life, or the theft of a prized object. Some mummies seek to avenge less material offenses, such as a loved one marrying someone the mummy loathes or an unwelcome alliance of the mummy’s enemies in life. Sometimes, a dead master’s servants awaken it to continue its life’s frustrated ambitions. Great kings and queens of malign power have returned as mummies to extend their reigns in undeath. (Monster Vault)
Albeit rare, some mummies arise spontaneously from dry corpses when a particularly provocative transgression touches their souls in the afterlife. Most mummies, however, possess the power to act after death because someone wanted them to have it. The long rituals of burial that accompany a mummy’s entombment help protect its body from rot. Soft organs are removed and placed in special jars, and the corpse is created with preserving oils, herbs, and wrappings. Less common means of preservation include freezing a body, baking it in dry heat, or using magic. (Monster Vault)
In general, any creature can become a mummy as long as its purpose is to guard an important location. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Death knights, liches, mummies, and vampires are created by rituals or processes that tie the soul to an unliving form. Similar creatures could be created in different circumstances. Such diversity among undead reflects the fact that death touches every part of existence. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Powerful members of cults and secret organizations are responsible for their creation. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The Dungeon Master’s Guide indicates that mummy champions and mummy lords should be humanoids, but not every mummy has to follow this guideline. Certain nonhumanoid creatures make excellent mummies. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Mummy Champion: A mummy champion is created through a dark ritual intended to sustain a creature past its mortal life span, or revive it after death. Such rituals are typically reserved for important religious champions and warriors, but they could also curse an unfortunate soul to a prison of undeath. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
“Mummy champion” is a template you can apply to any humanoid creature. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Prerequisites: Humanoid, level 11 (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Mummy Coldspawned Mummy: ?
Mummy Dark Pharaoh: The dark pharaoh is an eidolon infused with the souls of lords and kings and then animated through a divine ritual. This intelligent construct might have once existed to guard great treasures or secrets, but when the divine spark becomes corrupted, it twists the souls within the creature, turning the undead construct against mortals. The souls become a singular consciousness that believes itself to be a deity of death and tyranny, and so the creature searches the world for worshipers, killing all who refuse to follow it. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Mummy Darkflame Taskmaster: Darkflame taskmasters are the undead leaders of rogue groups of azers that worship Asmodeus. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Mummy Decaying Mummy: ?
Mummy Deranged Champion: Deranged champions are foulspawn hulks that were turned into mummies by cultists who worship beings from the Far Realm. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Mummy Forsaken Heierophant: Forsaken hierophants are mummies of priests that were so depraved that the subject’s fellow death cultists killed and embalmed the priest. Rather than let the priest’s power be wasted, though, the other cultists instead transformed the subject into a guardian to watch over their most valuable stores of treasure and knowledge. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Mummy Forsaken Hierophant Elder: ?
Mummy Giant Mummy: Positioned around the opening in the floor are four giant mummies, each the remains of a death giant that angered the Golden Architect. (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Numerous creatures died during the battles in Death's Reach, and a few endured in spirit despite the place's dark power. Some were allies of Timesus; others were servitors of the gods. The soulfall into Death's Reach has caused the shells of some of these ancient creatures to shudder back to animation. (E1 Death's Reach)
Mummy Guardian: Mummy guardians are created to protect important tombs against robbers. (Monster Manual)
Mummy Lord: “Mummy lord” is a monster template that can be applied to nonplayer characters.
A mummy lord is usually created from the remains of an important evil cleric or priest. A mummy lord might guard an important tomb or lead a cult. Yuan-ti often create mummy lords to guard temples of Zehir. (Monster Manual)
The Dungeon Master’s Guide indicates that mummy champions and mummy lords should be humanoids, but not every mummy has to follow this guideline. Certain nonhumanoid creatures make excellent mummies. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A mummy lord is created through a dark ritual intended to sustain a creature past its mortal life span, or revive it after death. Such rituals are typically reserved for important religious leaders, but they could also curse an unfortunate soul to a prison of undeath. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
“Mummy lord” is a template you can apply to any humanoid creature. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Prerequisites: Humanoid, level 11 (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Mummy Lord, Ssra-Tauroch: As Ssra-Tauroch’s reign extended into decades and the rigors of time weakened his once mighty frame, he requested a great boon from Zehir: the gift of immortality. Ssra-Tauroch, the empire, and its yuan-ti citizenry were devout followers of the god of poison and serpents. The monarch’s lifetime of service to the serpent lord had not gone unnoticed. Zehir sent a dark angel to the aging monarch who taught him the secret knowledge of mummification. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Upon completing the ritual, Ssra-Tauroch retreated to his inner sanctum. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Mummy Lord Human Cleric: ?
Mummy Lord Yuan-Ti Abomination: ?
Mummy Moldering Mummy: ?
Mummy Mummified Yuan-Ti, Children of Ssra-Tauroch: ?
Mummy Necrosphinx: ?
Mummy Royal Mummy: ?
Mummy Scourge of Baphomet: A select few members of the minotaur cult of Baphomet are chosen to undergo the process that transforms a minotaur into this formidable kind of mummy. As a symbol of its dedication, the mummy’s horns and weapon are etched with runes of devotion to Baphomet. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Mummy Shambling Mummy: The shambling mummies are not Vadin Cartwright's creation but were formed by the unholy fusion of the restless spirits of two great champions of the order and the lifegiving energy of the Feygrove. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Mummy Tomb Guardian: ?
Naga Bone Naga: ?
Naga Bone Naga, Lod: ?
Naga Bone Naga Arcanist, Marrow: ?
Naga Bone Naga Corruptor: ?
Naga, Undead Entity, Terpenzi: The naga Terpenzi, slain by the Shadowking, returned as a powerful undead entity. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
ONCE A GREAT IMMORTAL NAGA, the founder and longtime ruler of Najara, Terpenzi lost its life and status long ago. After its demise, horrifying rituals bound its soul into its skeletal body. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Nighthaunt: MALICIOUS, SINISTER CREATURES OF DARKNESS, nighthaunts are the cursed souls of those who have consumed food infused with necrotic energy.
The commonly held belief is that nighthaunts are bodiless souls whose progress across the Shadowfell was interrupted. Instead of dissipating, these itinerant spirits cloaked themselves in bodies of shadow.
The truth of nighthaunts’ creation lies in the history of the Black Tower of Vumerion, a former den of necromancy. Before Vumerion was destroyed, it produced many horrors, including an addictive black weed called corpse grass. When consumed, the weed infuses the eater with strength and joy. However, foul nightmares always follow the consumption of the grass. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Corpse grass has spread throughout the Shadowfell and into the world, and many have become addicted to its properties. Those who eat even a little of the grass—no matter what they achieved in life—become nighthaunts in death. The curse of the corpse grass fills these creatures with a raging hunger in death, a hunger that can be sated only through sucking the life out of living creatures. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The name “corpse grass” is a bit of a misnomer now, for since the initial creation of nighthaunts, the curse of the corpse grass has spread into other vegetation. When a nighthaunt has ingested enough life force, it finds a twilight-lit meadow or field and releases its energies into the grass, weeds, grains, nuts, and other vegetation. The vegetation continues to grow, gaining the properties of corpse grass and perpetuating the nighthaunt cycle. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Nighthaunt Shrine: ?
Nighthaunt Slip: ?
Nighthaunt Whisperer: ?
Nightwalker: Nightwalkers are the shades of extremely strong-willed and evil mortals who died and refused to pass from the Shadowfell to their eternal reward. Only the ancient, unyielding will and malice of the long-dead spirit holds a nightwalker in its corporeal shape. (Monster Manual)
Beings formed from the stuff of shadow and possessed of an incomparable maliciousness, undead stalkers roam the fringes of the Shadowfell, slaughtering mortals and shadow creatures alike. (Manual of the Planes)
The nightwalkers trace their origins to a group of powerful, disembodied souls who refused to pass on. They used the supernatural energies of the plane to forge new bodies out of the raw stuff of shadow. Their selfishness and the influence of their new forms forever stained their souls, perverting them into the monstrous entities they are to this day. (Manual of the Planes)
Nightwalker, Askaran-Rus: Askaran-Rus was once a mortal necromancer, but when his time ran out and his soul drifted to the Shadowfell, he refused to surrender to fate and instead gathered the stuff of shadow to construct a new body for himself—an obscene thing filled with cruelty, spite, and endless malice. (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Nightwalker, Porapherah: ?
Nightwalker, Yannux: ?
Oni Howling Spirit: Howling spirits are the souls of depraved oni that become trapped in the Shadowfell. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Oni Souleater: Oni souleaters are oni that have traded the warmth of life for longevity in death. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ooze Blood Amniote: BLOOD AMNIOTES ARE COMPOSED OF the congealed blood of hundreds of creatures that died in close proximity. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Scholars debate whether the blood amniote arises spontaneously or is crafted intentionally through necromantic rites and mass sacrifices. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Legend has it that priests of Orcus once unleashed a storm that rained burning blood on two opposing armies. The storm slew the soldiers, and from the blood-soaked ground arose blood amniotes. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ooze Bloodrot: BLOODROT OOZES ARE UNDEAD JELLIES that form when humanoids are melted by acid. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ooze Bone Collector: ?
Ooze Spirit Ooze: Spirit oozes are ravenous, incorporeal creatures that are created when wisps of matter from insubstantial undead congeal into a single amorphous entity. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Ooze Undead: INFUSED WITH NECROTIC ENERGY, undead oozes are the congealed, slimy effluvia of living creatures that died horrible deaths. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Oreiax: Doresain the Ghoul King found hints of Syvexrae’s plans in her deteriorating mind as he fed upon her mind daily. After millennia of collating clues from her mind, Doresain discovered the location of the massive egg in the mortal world. Doresain infused the egg with demonic ichor and necromantic vitality. The child in the egg tore out of the shell ages before his time, emerging as a stunted sliver of the enormous entity he should have been. Doresain named the child Oreiax, from the Abyssal words for “always hungry.” (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Pale Reaver: Pale reavers are the undead spirits of humanoids that were killed because they betrayed a person or organization who trusted or relied upon them. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The spirits of seven knights of the abbey haunt this chamber, drawn to the power of Bahamut's altar but also bound to the will of the mad priest Vadin Cartwright Their leader is Havarr of Nenlast, the knight captain who sealed the abbey's fate when he drew from the Deck of Many Things. His companions are other knights who died beside him in battle, now linked to his fate. All have become undead spirits cursed by their betrayal of duty and their ideals. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Pale Reaver Creeper: The spirits of seven knights of the abbey haunt this chamber, drawn to the power of Bahamut's altar but also bound to the will of the mad priest Vadin Cartwright Their leader is Havarr of Nenlast, the knight captain who sealed the abbey's fate when he drew from the Deck of Many Things. His companions are other knights who died beside him in battle, now linked to his fate. All have become undead spirits cursed by their betrayal of duty and their ideals. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Pale Reaver Lord: ?
Pale Reaver Lord, Havarr: The spirits of seven knights of the abbey haunt this chamber, drawn to the power of Bahamut's altar but also bound to the will of the mad priest Vadin Cartwright Their leader is Havarr of Nenlast, the knight captain who sealed the abbey's fate when he drew from the Deck of Many Things. His companions are other knights who died beside him in battle, now linked to his fate. All have become undead spirits cursed by their betrayal of duty and their ideals. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Penanggalan: According to legend, the first penanggalan was a young baroness of Harkenwold, plain of face and scant of suitors. But what she lacked in beauty she made up for in wit, and the maiden discovered arcane texts of Bael Turath in the vaults of her father’s estate. She invoked the rituals therein and conjured a devil, which promised her matchless beauty and eternal life if only she would serve it forever. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
The devil’s bargain was not so glorious as it had appeared, for such was the maiden’s beauty that armies clashed for her hand, and her father was forced to lock her away in a tower to protect her. Alone in her wretched beauty, the maiden begged the gods to forgive her vain folly, and she swore to do penance before them. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
But the devil had other plans. It whispered the secret of the maiden’s unlikely beauty into the ear of the high priest, and before she could do her penance, the maiden was seized from her tower and hanged as a devil worshiper. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
The maiden’s body dangled from the gallows until midnight, at which time it slid to the ground, leaving her head behind in the noose, gory intestines dangling beneath. Then the maiden opened her eyes and saw what her vanity had created. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Each penanggalan’s origin involves a female who bargains with devils for immortal beauty and tries to renege, but perishes before she can complete her penance. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Penanggalan Bodiless Head: Unless her maiden’s body has been destroyed (causing the creature to become a bodiless head permanently), a penanggalan’s monstrous form does not manifest by light of day. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Penanggalan Head Swarm: ?
Phantom Brigade: Many of the knights of this order died during the chaotic time of the collapse of the empire. Some perished trying to defend the empire and prevent the onrushing disaster. Others met a more ignoble end. Of those who died in the pursuit of duty, a significant number found that death was not the end. Some mysterious magical effect or unknown curse turned the dead and dying Imperial Knights into undead guardians. They were suspended in an existence that tied them to the empire forever. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
The Phantom Brigade consists of the spirits of ancient Knights of the Empire, who were sworn to protect the secrets of Nerath and its emperor. So committed were these ancient knights that they became ghostly soldiers, standing a never-ending watch over the vale, after their deaths during the chaos surrounding the empire's fall. (March of the Phantom Brigade)
Phantom Brigade Armiger: ?
Phantom Brigade Banneret: ?
Phantom Brigade Justiciar: ?
Phantom Brigade Knight-Commader: ?
Phantom Brigade Squire: ?
Phantom Brigade Templar: ?
Plaguechanged Maniac: ?
Portal Thing: The thing in the cavity is an animated mass of coagulated black blood drained from hundreds of defeated opponents. (E1 Death's Reach)
Ragewind, Sword Spirit: Also called sword spirits, ragewinds are the embodied wrath of dead warriors who perished in battle. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
The Nentir Vale is strewn with ancient battlefields where the armies of Nerath once clashed with orcs, primitive hill folk, and barbarian tribes, and where the tieflings of Bael Turath fought the dragonborn legions of Arkhosia. Among the ruins of these bygone conflicts lurk creatures of lingering malice—the spirits of despondent soldiers whose lives were thrown away for no satisfying purpose. These spirits can muster enough will to animate their ancient weapons and strike back at the living, whom they both envy and despise. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Reaper: Common folk regard reapers as embodiments of death that escort souls to the Shadowfell, but their true nature is more sinister. Reapers are servants of Vecna, and they are sent out by the god and his followers to collect souls for profane rituals. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Reapers are failed undead imitations of the Raven Queen’s sorrowsworn. Although Vecna did not succeed in copying the powerful servants, he has nonetheless found use for reapers. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Reaper Abhorrent Reaper: ?
Reaper Abhorrent Reaper Terror: ?
Reaper Entropic Reaper: ?
Revenant: Resilient souls returned from death to do the work of Fate. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Death usually represents the gateway to the afterlife or the end of a natural existence. Sometimes, however, death can be just the beginning. For some select individuals, the Raven Queen or another agency of death bars passage to the next stage of existence, turning a soul back toward the natural world. In such instances, fate has other plans. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
A revenant arises not as an aimless corpse but as the embodiment of a lost soul given new purpose.
In all cases, a revenant purposefully returned to the natural world after succumbing to a cessation of lifc. Dead, but unable to find its way to whatever waits beyond death's dark gates, the once-living soul is reconstituted as a revenant. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
The gods of death and fate often require agents in the natural world, and they don't always have enough exarchs or aspects to deal with all the work they seek to accomplish. For this reason, revenants are called into existence. However, the rules governing the gods and how they can intrude upon the natural world are often mysterious and seemingly contradictory to mere mortals. For this reason, it seems that revenants enter the world without clear directions or even full memories of the life they once lived.
Revenants are souls of the dead returned to a semblance of life by the Raven Queen or some other agency of the afterlife. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Risenguard of Drzak: ?
Rot Harbinger: Long ago, the gods tried to slay the demon lord Orcus while he was traveling outside of the Abyss. They sent a host of angels to slay the demon lord, but Orcus ultimately prevailed, killing every last one of them. When he returned to the Abyss, the demon lord of undeath created the first rot harbingers and rot slingers as mockeries of those he’d slain and sent them to the natural world to wreak havoc on the gods’ creation. (Monster Manual)
Rot Harbinger Putrid Rot Harbinger: ?
Rot Harbinger Reaver: ?
Rot Harbinger Rot Hurler: ?
Rot Harbinger Rot Slinger: Long ago, the gods tried to slay the demon lord Orcus while he was traveling outside of the Abyss. They sent a host of angels to slay the demon lord, but Orcus ultimately prevailed, killing every last one of them. When he returned to the Abyss, the demon lord of undeath created the first rot harbingers and rot slingers as mockeries of those he’d slain and sent them to the natural world to wreak havoc on the gods’ creation. (Monster Manual)
Rot Harbinger Rot Slinger Captain: ?
Rot Harbinger Rot Slinger Decayer: ?
Rot Harbinger Rot Spewer: ?
Scaled Guardian: ?
Sceptenar: Adventurers wielding a great weapon that had been forged to destroy undead, some sort of stone scepter, made their way to the capital and killed Raja Thirayam. Lands near to Thirayam’s empire thought they had reason to celebrate when word spread of the emperor’s death. Elation turned to horror when it was revealed that upon the raja’s death, his life force divided and possessed the four audacious heroes. In turn, each adventurer was slowly consumed by the malevolent spirit of the emperor; the raja lives on, his body four-fold and harder to destroy than ever.
Sceptenar Vasabhakti: Sceptenar Vasabhakti, daughter of the late ruler of Khatiroon, rules the southern province of Hantumah. Once a kind and benevolent princess, Vasabhakti was possessed and corrupted by the undead forces that overtook her homeland. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Shadow Spirit: In the bleak, desolate corners of the Shadowfell, and in parts of the world where the Shadowfell bleeds over, sometimes death doesn’t represent the end of a creature’s existence. When a creature dies in one of these places, its soul is trapped, transforming the creature into a shadow spirit. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
“Shadow spirit” is a template you can apply to any living beast, humanoid or magical beast. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Prerequisites: Living beast, living humanoid, or living magical beast (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Shadowclaw: ?
Shadowclaw Nightmare: ?
Shadowskull: ?
Skeletal Arcane Guardian: ?
Skeletal Dragon: Skeletal dragons can arise from necromantic rituals or through the uncontrolled forces of the Shadowfell. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Draconic zombies arise under the same circumstances as skeletal dragons, either as necromantic creations or as the result of the Shadowfell’s encroachment on the mortal world. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Skeletal Dragon Bonespitter: ?
Skeletal Dragon Razortalon: ?
Skeletal Dragon Siegewyrm: THE LARGEST OF THE DRACONIC SKELETONS, a siegewyrm is made from the bones of mighty dragons. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Skeletal Mage, Yisarn: A band of elves ambushed and killed him, but an evil curse animated his bones, turning him into an undead horror. (Dungeon Master's Kit)
Skeleton: ANIMATED BY DARK MAGIC and composed entirely of bones, a skeleton is emotionless and soulless, desiring nothing but to serve its creator. (Monster Manual)
Skeletons are created by means of necromantic rituals. Locations with strong ties to the Shadowfell can also cause skeletons to arise spontaneously. (Monster Manual)
SKELETONS RARELY EXIST WITHOUT PURPOSE. Whether crafted through necromantic ritual or raised from a tomb, they relentlessly attack when compelled to kill. (Monster Manual 2)
Necromancy grants violent motion to these fleshless bones, letting them defy death and deliver it to others. (Monster Vault)
“ Nothing holds them together but magic, a necromantic binding that knits bone with scraps of soul and the merest hint of will.”—Kalarel, scion of Orcus. (Monster Vault)
A skeleton’s creation is considered a vile act, though, for it requires disturbing a creature’s bones in the most profane way. A skeleton raised into undeath moves through the power of a soul’s discarded animus; it is a primal force that binds the soul and body to make life possible. Without an animus, a skeleton cannot exist. (Monster Vault)
Many powers can cause a skeleton to rise from the grave: holy power, necrotic energy, a dark ritual, a necromantic spell or hex, a curse from the lips of a dying person. (Monster Vault)
ALL SKELETONS ARISE FROM THE BONES of once-living creatures. That basic truth says little about the details of a particular skeleton, however. The character of the living creature, the manner of its death, the requirements of a necromancer, and the deceased’s former relationships—all these factors affect the nature and purpose of a skeleton. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The carved skull buried in one of the old crypts has pulsed back to unlife. Its wakening will attract undead miles away from Col Fen. Unless the skull is destroyed, it will become a magnet for undead from distant places, while at the same time animating skeletons and zombies from the graveyard of Col Fen. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Alternatively, they might stumble across the bones of those who died during the Glintshield dwarves' civil war, awakening the warriors' angry spirits when one of them pries a magic weapon from the grip of one of the skeletons. (HS2 Orcs of Stonefang Pass)
Skeleton Archer: ?
Skeleton Blazing Skeleton: Vontarin unleashes his first deliberate attack. He animates skeletons from the Crypts beneath Saint Avarthil Monastery. ( Dark Legacy of Evard)
Alternatively, they might stumble across the bones of those who died during the Glintshield dwarves' civil war, awakening the warriors' angry spirits when one of them pries a magic weapon from the grip of one of the skeletons. (HS2 Orcs of Stonefang Pass)
Vadin Cartwright has animated several skeletons of fallen knights. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Skeleton Bloodblade Hobgoblin Skeleton: ?
Skeleton Bonecrusher Skeleton: Bonecrusher skeletons arise from the bones of ogres, minotaurs, oni, giants, and other large creatures. (Monster Manual 2)
Skeleton Bonecrusher Skeleton Hulk: ?
Skeleton Bonepile Hobgoblin Skeleton: ?
Skeleton Boneshard Mongrel: ?
Skeleton Boneshard Skeleton: Alternatively, they might stumble across the bones of those who died during the Glintshield dwarves' civil war, awakening the warriors' angry spirits when one of them pries a magic weapon from the grip of one of the skeletons. (HS2 Orcs of Stonefang Pass)
Skeleton Boneshard Troll Skeleton: Shortly after Skalmad declared himself king, these five lesser clan chiefs tried to seize power for themselves. After slaying them, the troll king had them turned into boneshard skeletons and placed as guards in this chamber. (P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens)
Skeleton Bonewretch Skeleton: ?
Skeleton Death Kin Skeleton: Death kin skeletons are siblings, kin, or lovers who died in a suicide pact or similar circumstance. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Decaying Skeleton: ?
Skeleton Decrepit Goblin Skeleton: ?
Skeleton Decrepit Skeleton: Vontarin unleashes his first deliberate attack. He animates skeletons from the Crypts beneath Saint Avarthil Monastery. (Dark Legacy of Evard)
Ninaran followed Kalarel’s instructions in creating this magic circle to raise the dead. (H1 Keep on the Shadowfell)
Skeleton Demonic Skeleton Defilade: ?
Skeleton Giant Skeletal Bat: Giant skeletal bats are the remains of riding bats that were abandoned by their masters in battle. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Hobgoblin Shadow Skeleton: ?
Skeleton Hobgoblin Skeleton: ?
Skeleton Horse Skeletal: ?
Skeleton Knight, Sir Keegan: As commander of the keep’s soldier, Sir Keegan held the responsibility of protecting the rift. In that duty he failed, and to this day, his spirit despairs over his failure. (H1 Keep on the Shadowfell)
“I failed in my responsibility. I allowed the influence of the Shadow Rift and my knowledge of the crumbling empire to distract me from my sworn oath. The corruption that lies on the other side of the rift touched me and triggered disaster.” (H1 Keep on the Shadowfell)
“Finally the alarm went up, and what remained of the legion banded together against me. Even in my rage, I knew I couldn’t best them all, so I fled into the crypts to hide from vengeance. Only then did the madness lift. I realized what I had done and despaired. I had killed my love and broken my oath. More than that, I had done so with my sword, Aecris, an implement given to me by King Elidyr when I was knighted. The remnants of my legion sealed the passage and trapped me here. I selected this as a fitting place to spend eternity.” (H1 Keep on the Shadowfell)
Skeleton Marrowshriek: Marrowshriek skeletons arise from victims of malnutrition and neglect, and they crave the marrow of the living. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Sentinel: ?
Skeleton Shadow Skeleton: A shadow skeleton, formed from shadows and the bones of the dead, is adept at hitting enemies that don't take it as a serious threat. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Skeleton Shattergloom Skeleton: Shattergloom skeletons are created in dark chambers where natural light cannot reach. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Skeletal Archer: Over a period of several weeks, skeletons can be trained in the use of bows to produce skeletal archers. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Skeletal Hauler: Skeletal haulers are the remains of humanoid slaves and physical laborers. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Skeletal Legionary: ?
Skeleton Skeletal Legionnaire: Vadin Cartwright has animated several skeletons of fallen knights. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Skeleton Skeletal Steed: Skeletal steeds rarely arise alone; they awaken from death with their riders or are created by rituals as mounts. (Monster Manual 2)
Skeleton Skeletal Tomb Guardian: Once Vadin is dead, trouble in the catacombs quickly fades away. Until that time, however, the priest takes advantage of any retreat by the adventurers to reinforce his undead guardians. He can't replace every monster the adventurers destroy, however. His ability to create undead is limited to the skeletal guardians and the flameskull. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Vadin Cartwright has animated several skeletons of fallen knights. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Skeleton Skeletal Tomb Guardian Thrall: ?
Skeleton Skinwalker Skeleton: Skinwalker skeletons are produced when a necromancer grafts skin to animated bones. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Soldier: ?
Skeleton Spine Creek: Spine creep skeletons are the result of unjustly beheaded humanoids or those torn to pieces by an angry mob. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Stonespawned Skeleton: Stonespawned skeletons are created when humanoids are crushed under tons of rock and left entombed in stone. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Skeleton Troop Captain, Elite Skeleton: ?
Skeleton Vizier's Skeleton: Lord Vizier's Plume of Death power. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Skeleton Warrior: ?
Skull Lord: The first skull lords arose from the ashes of the Black Tower of Vumerion. None can say whether they were created intentionally by the legendary human necromancer Vumerion or came forth spontaneously from the foul energies of his fallen sanctum. The ritual for creating new skull lords also survived Vumerion’s fall, eventually finding its way into the hands of Vumerion’s rivals and various powerful undead creatures. (Monster Manual)
Skull Spirit: ?
Slaad Putrid Slaad: Necromancers sometimes transform living slaads into undead slaads called putrid slaads. They preserve the slaads’ essential chaotic nature, making these creatures deadly but difficult to control. The slaad retains its hunger for wanton destruction, consuming life around it, which is then putrefied and later regurgitated upon foes. (Monster Manual 3)
Mages and necromancers create most putrid slaads, but some come into being on their own. Slaads destroyed in the Abyss can rise spontaneously. Such putrid slaads are often forced to submit to the wills of demon lords. (Monster Manual 3)
Elemental creatures are not immune to necromantic magic. Unlike other natives to the Elemental Chaos, slaads are formed from chaos, so when life flees one’s corpse, decay consumes the remains in a matter of hours. Thus, to create a putrid slaad, a necromancer must capture a slaad and infuse it with shadow magic while it’s still alive. The process is lethal, but the undead creature retains its shape and is as resilient as any other kind of slaad. (Monster Manual 3)
Spawn of Kyuss: LIKE A CANCER IN THE EARTH, spawn of Kyuss rise from the depths to spread suffering and anguish across the land. Driven by their maker’s obscene will, they infect the living and the dead with bright green worms that bend creatures to the will of Kyuss, the Worm that Walks. In frightened whispers, seers prophesize the presence of the spawn as heralding the Age of Worms, the world’s apocalyptic end. (Monster Manual 3)
Spawn of Kyuss come from the insane fools who heeded Kyuss’s diseased vision when he was mortal. After Kyuss slew them to fuel his apotheosis, the worms of his new body spread to their bloated corpses, awakening the creatures to undeath. These grim messengers then became carriers of Kyuss’s dark desires and added new victims to their numbers. (Monster Manual 3)
A spawn of Kyuss is created when an infection from a particular species of necrotic burrowing worms kills its host and transforms the creature into an undead monstrosity. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Akin to larva undead, spawns of Kyuss were the Bonemaster’s first experiments in the creation of larva- and worm-infused creatures. These larval zombies typically lack the subtlety and power of larva undead, but the strength and virulence of their attacks makes them nonetheless formidable. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
“Spawn of Kyuss” is a template you can apply to any beast, humanoid, or magical beast. Although the template is most often applied to living creatures, this is not a prerequisite. The infection can afflict virtually any kind of creature, but it typically infects strong subjects that can best spread the disease.
Prerequisites: Level 11, and beast, humanoid, or magical beast. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Spawn of Kyuss Herald of Kyuss: Kyuss created heralds from the legion angels dispatched by the gods to slay him. He infused each one with a profane worm plucked from his squirming body. (Monster Manual 3)
Spawn of Kyuss Son of Kyuss: Even when a host is destroyed, Kyuss’s worms tend to escape by burrowing into the earth or clinging to their enemies’ clothing. When the worms find a new carcass, they plunge into the corpse and infuse it with terrible power. After a few moments, a new son of Kyuss is born. (Monster Manual 3)
Touch of Kyuss disease. (Monster Manual 3)
Spawn of Kyuss Wormspawn Praetorian: PONDEROUS WARRIORS CRAFTED from the cast-off maggots and vermin of Kyuss and similar large larva creatures, wormspawn praetorians fight with unflinching devotion to their creator. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A humanoid killed by Kyuss rises as a wormspawn praetorian at the start of Kyuss’s next turn. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Spawn of Kyuss Wretch of Kyuss: Legends persist of ancient kingdoms of the walking dead, where an outbreak of the touch of Kyuss spawned thousands upon thousands of these wretches. (Monster Manual 3)
Spawn of Kyuss Burrowing Worm power. (Monster Manual 3)
Spawn of Kyuss Herald of Kyuss Writhing Pronouncement power. (Monster Manual 3)
Specter: In life, specters were murderous and vile humanoids, although they remember nothing of their past. (Monster Manual)
In the world, only the most horrific and ruthless murderers return as specters, but in the Shadowfell, any death might spawn such a wicked undead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Specters that arise from slain mortals twisted by insanity often produce auras that outwardly manifest the fragmented condition of their minds. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
When Saharelgard fell, a would-be looter was captured and slain in this chamber. This hateful thief returned as a specter. (FR1 Scepter Tower of Spellgard)
Others find the weight of their mortal deeds so heavy they cannot bear to move farther than the Shadowfell. In time, they are corrupted by the plane’s malaise, becoming specters, wraiths, and other insubstantial beings. (Manual of the Planes)
Specter Force Specter: ?
Specter Hobgoblin Specter: ?
Specter, Greysen Ramthane's Specter: ?
Specter Voidsoul Specter: ?
Spectral Servant: ?
Spider Husk Spider: Drow despise undead spiders, seeing in them a perversion they can not tolerate. Enemies often capture living spiders and animate them with fell magic to enrage the drow and cause them to act rashly on the battlefield. (P2 Demon Queen's Enclave)
Spirit-Animated Plant Monster: ?
Spirit Possessed: Some spirits can inhabit and control living creatures. These creatures hide among the living, aping the actions of the host. Under this guise, a spirit works covertly toward its malicious goals. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
“Spirit possessed” is a template you can apply to a living creature to represent a subject whose body is possessed by an undead spirit. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Prerequisites: Living creature, level 11, Charisma 13 (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Stirge Death Husk Stirge: Necromancers trap stirges in the cavernous bodies of giant undead. When the undead opens its maw, famished stirges come pouring out to attack the nearest warm-blooded creature. (Monster Vault)
Thrax: According to legend, Gerot’s people were great warriors, haughty and proud. They impressed Grand Vizier Abalach-Re, who offered the mountain community an alliance if its fighters would join Raam’s legions. In their arrogance, the Gerotians declined, and they killed Abalach-Re’s envoys. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Enraged, the sorcerer-queen unleashed a vicious curse against Gerot’s populace. The townsfolk were struck with an unquenchable thirst. The twisted brilliance behind her curse was that life-sustaining, pure water would bring death to any Gerotian. Within days, the entire town had died. What Abalach-Re hadn’t expected was that every cursed Gerotian would rise in undeath, becoming the first thraxes. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Timesus, The Black Star: An ancient island mote hanging deep within the Abyssal void. Known as the Forge of Four Worlds, it acts as a conduit for elemental and arcane energy-energy that Orcus plans to use to restore Timesus and convert the primordial into one of the undead. (E3 Prince of Undeath)
Treant Blackroot Treant: ?
Treant Petrified Treant: ?
Troll Ghost Troll Render: ?
Troll Undead Troll King, Vard King of All Trolls: Vard, king of all trolls, tied himself to the Stone Cauldron in life. Each time Skalmad uses the Cauldron, Vard inches closer to returning to life. Finally, with his second death, Skalmad provides the last push necessary to bring back the undead troll king. If Skalmad escaped at the end of Encounter W12, his return to the Cauldron also allows Vard to step through the veil of death and take possession of Skalmad’s body. (P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens)
Undead Aviary: Although some creatures of the undead aviary animate naturally, most are produced by necromancers. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Undead Aviary Accipitridae: Accipitridae are the corrupt product of vultures that feed on undead flesh. The undead flesh poisons and kills the vultures, and they reanimate as these cruel, avian monsters. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Undead Aviary Couatl Mockery: Couatl mockeries are masses of animated scales and feathers collected from slain couatls. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Abomination Discord Incarnate Create Couatl Mockery power. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Undead Aviary Fear Moth: A fear moth is composed of thousands of living and dead moths that all died simultaneously from some cataclysm. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Undead Aviary Paralyth: MADE SENTIENT THROUGH FOUL MAGIC, a paralyth is the animated spine and brain of a humanoid. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Paralyths are created when necromancers extract the brains and spines from recent victims. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Undead Aviary Skin Kite: Skin kites consist of skin flayed from torture victims that is spontaneously or intentionally animated. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Undead Dragon: Unlike evil chromatic dragons, which turn to the magic of shadow and undeath to prolong their existence (see the dracoliches in the Monster Manual and other undead dragons in Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons), metallic dragons use elemental magic to become eternal guardians of great treasures, ancient artifacts, and holy sites. (Draconomicon II: Metallic Dragons)
Undead Dragon Turtle: Necromancers created more than one undead dragon turtle from those slain in the lake. (Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide)
Undead Lamia, Meremoth: ?
Undead Paladin of Moradin: ?
Undead Soldier: ?
Undead Vecna Cultist: Cultists of Vecna often undergo profane rites that transform them into undead. These cultists are the most dedicated followers of Vecna. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Undying Court: Worthy elves gain immortality among the undying. Whether sage or soldier, benevolent undead aid and advise the living in the hope that such service will one day qualify them to join the powerful undead elves that make up the Undying Court. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
The death of thousands of elves in the war against the giants of Xen’drik led to an elven obsession with preserving the greatest among their people. The elves’ exploration of the mysticism of death created the religion of the Undying Court, which involves the veneration of ancestors and the pursuit of personal perfection. The reward for success on this mystical path is immortality in an undying body. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Unrisen: RITUALS GO AWRY, AND WHEN the ritual is Raise Dead or a similar form of magic, the results can be grim. The ritual might appear to be a complete failure, yet the residual energy can sometimes raise the creature days after the initial attempt. When this happens, the subject emerges with its soul fragmented and corrupted. A pet comes back from the dead, but it is no longer the adorable feline the family once knew. A child returns, but it is vile and depraved, caring nothing for the people it once loved. No matter what form the creature took in its past life, it returns as a vile, twisted thing—it returns as an unrisen. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
An unrisen is the corrupt result of a failed attempt to resurrect a beast or a humanoid. After the failed ritual, a short time passes after the creature is buried before it rises up to take revenge on nearby living creatures, which it views as responsible for its death. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The most common types of unrisen are children, pets, mounts, and figures of prominence in a community, such as mayors or priests. These figures are sorely missed upon their deaths, so companions of the people or creatures often go to great lengths to attempt to resurrect them. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Unrisen Corrupted Offspring: ?
Unrisen Darkhoof: ?
Unrisen Tainted Priest: ?
Unrisen Vile Pet: ?
Vampire: SUSTAINED BY A TERRIBLE CURSE AND A THIRST FOR MORTAL BLOOD, vampires dream of a world in which they live in decadence and luxury, ruling over kingdoms of mortals who exist only to sate their darkest appetites. (Monster Manual)
Anyone who survives an attack from a vampire might fall prey to the vampire’s curse, entering into a deep, deathlike sleep. A person under this curse is often assumed dead and ushered through funeral rites. When that person awakes at the next sunset, he or she is a vampire. If confined within a coffin, this vampire might already be buried or could be awaiting burial in a temple or a family member’s home. Most vampires awaken as slavering spawn, but a few retain enough of themselves to emerge from death as true vampires. (Monster Vault)
And once a vampire has drained the life of a victim, it exhibits the most horrifying ability of all: The shell of its victim animates, turning into another of the walking dead. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Death knights, liches, mummies, and vampires are created by rituals or processes that tie the soul to an unliving form. Similar creatures could be created in different circumstances. Such diversity among undead reflects the fact that death touches every part of existence. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead, made the first vampires in the image of blood fiends, who are themselves made in the image of Haemnathuun. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
One vampire is usually the spawn of another, but more than one vampire has awakened with no clue as to his or her origin. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
You are a monster, fated and infected by a vile curse that transformed you into a creature of nightmare. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Most of those who become vampires are victims of monstrous attacks, created by a callous hunter who drained them dry of blood and life force, then cast them aside. Others seek out this path from their own fear of infirmity and death, discovering the arcane rites and alchemical formulas that promise dark power. In some cases, a character finds h is or her vampirism invoked by an ancient family curse, or that he or she is a member of an extended clan of vampires who pass their blood down to those they deem worthy- whether by choice or not. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Vrylokas take up the path of the vampire by undertaking a variant of the blood ritual given to their kind by the Red Witch long ago, modified with the help of Vistani mystics. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Vampire, Count Strahd von Zarovich: Filled with despair, jealousy, and a growing hatred for his younger brother Sergei, Strahd sought magical means to restore his youth in the hope of earning the love of Tatyana, his brother’s betrothed. In a moment of desperate frustration, he performed a powerful necromantic ritual that exchanged his mortality for enduring youth in a state of undeath: Strahd became a vampire. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Vol’s methods created creatures such as vampires and liches that required life energy or blood from living creatures. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Vampire, Ctenmiir Human Vampire: Ctenmiir was a paladin who chose to become a vampire in the pursuit of longevity. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Vampire, King Kaius ir'Wynarn III: The moment of Kaius’s transformation came when the Blood of Vol demanded he pay the price for its assistance in the Last War. The priests approached the king in the darkest days of the war, when Aundair pressed into Karrnathi lands, when food shortages threatened to starve out his people, and when disease ran rampant across the countryside. Helpless to refuse, he agreed to their terms. The Blood of Vol unearthed and disseminated stores of food and reinforced his flagging armies with undead troops and cultists of the Order of the Emerald Claw. The price, though, was far steeper than Kaius would have imagined. The ancient lich who reigned over the Blood of Vol intended to make Kaius her puppet. When he came before her, she performed a ritual to rob him of his humanity and transform him into a vampire. (Eberron Campaign Guide)
Vampire, Zirithian: Once a warrior-knight of Lolth in service to Matron Urlvrain, Zirithian made a pact with Orcus and turned against his mistress. He earned a great boon from Orcus, transforming into a vampire with a few of the lesser powers. (P2 Demon Queen's Enclave)
Vampire Corpse Vampire: A living humanoid killed by the blood drain of a corpse vampire or a spirit vampire rises as a similar vampire at sunset on the following day. The new vampire has the level it had in life. Burning the slain creature’s body, decapitating that body, or reviving the slain creature can prevent this transformation. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A corpse vampire is the result when a humanoid cadaver is buried improperly, robbed of its burial possessions, or left in a place polluted by evil energy. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Vampire Drow Vampire Spawn: ?
Vampire Elder Vampire Spawn: ?
Vampire Lord: A vampire lord can make others of its kind by performing a dark ritual (see the Dark Gift of the Undying sidebar). Performing the ritual leaves the caster weakened, so a vampire lord does not perform the ritual often. (Monster Manual)
Vampire lord is a monster template that can be applied to nonplayer characters. (Monster Manual)
The vampire lord template is one example of an undead created by life drain. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Some are former spawn freed by their creators’ deaths, others mortals chosen to receive the “gift” of vampiric immortality. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
“Vampire lord” is a template you can apply to any humanoid creature of 11th level or higher. (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Prerequisites: Humanoid, level 11 (Dungeon Master's Guide)
Vampire Lord, Gulthias: ?
Vampire Lord, Kas the Betrayer: ?
Vampire Lord, Lareen: ?
Vampire Lord, Saed: ?
Vampire Lord, Nexull: ?
Vampire Lord Eladrin, Kannoth: ?
Vampire Lord High Preceptor: ?
Vampire Lord Human Fighter: ?
Vampire Lord Human Wizard, Manshoon: ?
Vampire Master Vampire: ?
Vampire Muse: ?
Vampire Necromancer, Dayan: ?
Vampire Night Witch: ?
Vampire Priest of Bane, Barthus: ?
Vampire Snaketongue Vampire: ?
Vampire Spawn: LIVING HUMANOIDS SLAIN BY A VAMPIRE LORD’S BLOOD DRAIN are condemned to rise again as vampire spawn—relatively weak vampires under the dominion of the vampire lord that created them. (Monster Manual)
A living humanoid slain by a vampire lord’s blood drain power rises as a vampire spawn of its level at sunset on the following day. This rise can be prevented by burning the body or severing its head. (Monster Manual)
A living humanoid reduced to 0 hit points or fewer—but not killed—by a vampire lord can’t be healed and remains in a deep, deathlike coma. He or she dies at sunset of the next day, rising as a vampire spawn. A Remove Affliction ritual cast before the afflicted creature dies prevents death and makes normal healing possible. (Monster Manual)
Vampire Spawn Bloodhunter: ?
Vampire Spawn Bloodspiker: ?
Vampire Spawn Fleshripper: Barthus captured a group of ruffians in the ruins several years ago and transformed them into vampire spawn minions after feasting on them. (FR1 Scepter Tower of Spellgard)
Vampire Spirit Vampire: A living humanoid killed by the blood drain of a corpse vampire or a spirit vampire rises as a similar vampire at sunset on the following day. The new vampire has the level it had in life. Burning the slain creature’s body, decapitating that body, or reviving the slain creature can prevent this transformation. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
When a spirit vampire or a corpse vampire reduces a living humanoid to 0 hit points or fewer without killing it, the humanoid enters a deep coma. If treated with the Remove Affliction ritual, the humanoid can be healed normally. Otherwise, he or she dies at sunset the next day and becomes a spirit vampire. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Vampire Thrall: Vampire spawn are useful servants, but sometimes a vampire requires servants that are more hardy and subtle. By feeding on a subject’s blood over an extended period of time, a vampire can condition a creature to be a strong yet obedient servant. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
As a reward for good service, the former owner of the Mask of Kas becomes a vampire lord when it moves on. If the Mask is displeased with its former owner, it instead tries to cause the owner’s death by attracting hordes of undead to his or her location. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
“Vampire thrall” is a template you can apply to any living humanoid to represent that creature’s service to a vampire lord. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Prerequisites: Living humanoid (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Vampiric Dragon: The only way to create a vampiric dragon is through the same dark ritual that creates a vampire lord. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Vampiric Dragon, Tzevokalas: Who he was before becoming a vampire, or why he chose this region to hunt, nobody knows. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Vampiric Dragon Bloodwind: ?
Vampiric Dragon Thief of Life: ?
Vampiric Mist: These sanguine mists, the remains of a secret coven of vampires, prowl the Witchlight Fens in search of blood. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Long ago, a coven of vampires claimed the marshy expanse known as the Witchlight Fens as their secluded demesne, wherein was hidden the phylactery of their dark liege—a powerful lich whose name has been forgotten. If the old stories are true, the phylactery still lies somewhere in the swamp, well removed from more traveled areas of the region. The lich’s whereabouts are unknown, and its presence has not been felt for generations. As for the vampires in the lich’s employ, their corporeal bodies were consumed long ago, yet they linger still as deadly clouds of mist that turn crimson when flush with the blood of their victims. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
One of the lich’s many enemies, a powerful hag, came to the Witchlight Fens in search of the phylactery and performed a ritual to destroy the vampire coven. The ritual did not yield the expected results. The vampires’ bodies were destroyed, but their evil essence lingered. The nine vampire lords who led the coven transformed into a single force of pure hatred and malice called a crimson deathmist. The lesser vampires of the coven were reduced to roaming clouds of mist having an insatiable hunger for life. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Any vampire that becomes trapped in gaseous form (usually as a result of losing its sacred resting place) can transform into a vampiric mist by sheer force of will. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Vampiric Mist Chillborn Vampiric Mist: ?
Vampiric Mist Corruptor: ?
Vampiric Mist Crimson Deathmist: One of the lich’s many enemies, a powerful hag, came to the Witchlight Fens in search of the phylactery and performed a ritual to destroy the vampire coven. The ritual did not yield the expected results. The vampires’ bodies were destroyed, but their evil essence lingered. The nine vampire lords who led the coven transformed into a single force of pure hatred and malice called a crimson deathmist. The lesser vampires of the coven were reduced to roaming clouds of mist having an insatiable hunger for life. (Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale)
Vecna, The Whispered One, Master of the Spider Throne, The Undying King, Lord of the Rotted Tower, The Maimed God, Lord of Secrets: Vecna, the god of magic, necromancy, and secrets, pursued undeath as part of his rise to godhood. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Vecna Aspect of Vecna: CONJURED BY MEANS OF A RITUAL known only to devotees of Vecna, an aspect of Vecna heeds its summoner and resembles the Whispered One in cunning and intelligence. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Volnath: Scholars on the subject claim the Far Realm touches creation from the outside, like a foul skin of stuff older than all knowing. The unwise seek its encompassing madness and alien nature in the depths of the night sky, especially in the dark between the stars. The Shadowfell's nighttime firmament is, as a vast void with few dim or flickering lights, the perfect place to seek the realm also called the Outside. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Volnath, a wizard of old Nerath, sought such learning from Telkon, his observatory in the world. He discovered ancient texts on shadow and the Outside, and he invited dark beings into his ritual chambers to give him counsel. Living shadows whispered to him during his observations, speaking of the power of shadow magic and the nearness of the Far Realm in the Shadowfell's sky. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
The wizard, his sanity on the brink, summoned a shadowfall to take Telkon and the nearby village of Hadder into the Shadowfell. There, from instructions on ancient tablets and through the toil of the enslaved folk of Hadder, he remade the village and Telkon into a monumental arcane focus. Yolnath slew any who intruded in the area of his great work. He sacrificed numerous innocents and ultimately his own life for undead immortality. (Player's Option Heroes of Shadow)
Wight: SOLDIERS SLAUGHTER AN ELF TRIBE after a messenger fails to bring warning. A poisoned blade cuts down a dwarf before he achieves his life’s goal. Both die, but their intense yearnings resurrect soulless bodies, driving the corpses to endlessly pursue what likely can never be accomplished. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
As a soul passes into the Gray, its deepest unmet desire can splinter off to animate the physical form that its soul abandoned. The splinter accesses the memories, needs, and desires of the body’s former occupant. Those passions are married to an overwhelming hunger for life force, and a wight is born. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
A wight has a body and a feral awareness granted by the animus, but no soul. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Wight Ashgaunt: These foul creatures were created by a faction of Orcus worshipers called the Ashen Covenant, some of whom are focused on finding new ways to spread undeath. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
Wight Battle Wight: ?
Wight Battle Wight Commander: ?
Wight Chainfighter Wight: ?
Wight Champion Wight: ?
Wraith Frost Giant Sword Wraith: ?
Wight Deathlock Wight: One of the arcanists interred in this chamber was a wizard making secret preparations for becoming a lich. Though he was slain in a spell duel before he could complete the process, he had already suffused his being with an unholy power that allowed him to rise as a deathlock wight. (FR1 Scepter Tower of Spellgard)
Wight Drow Battle Wight: ?
Wight Drow Battle Wight Commander: ?
Wight Dune Runner Wight: ?
Wight Hobgoblin Wight: ?
Wight Hobgoblin Wight, Ashurta: ?
Wight Life-Eater: ?
Wight Oath Wright: Ruins pock the wastelands of Athas. Devastating attacks leveled cities and buried inhabitants where they stood, heedless of whether the victims were scoundrels or scholars, wastrels or artisans. The slain seldom rest easy, especially those who were on the brink of success, a historic discovery, or birthing a child. Oath wights crawl from the rubble. The creatures vibrate with rage and disappointment, throbbing with the futility of their former souls’ pursuits and passions. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Wight Shallowgrave Wight: ?
Wight Skullborn Deathlok Wight: ?
Wight Slaughter Wight: ?
Wight Slaughter Wight Overlord: ?
Wight Thrall: A charismatic ruler or commander is brought down, and the servants and trusted advisors who perished at her side rise up as wight thralls. These creatures’ devotion spills over into death. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Wight Unhallowed Wight: ?
Witherling: WITHERLINGS ARE UNDEAD CREATURES Created by gnolls to serve as shock troops and raiders. Gnoll priests ofYeenoghu use a ritual to fuse the essence of a demon with the body of a foe slain in battle. The result is a shrunken, emaciated creature that has a ghoul's paralyzing touch and a demon's relentless frenzy. (Monster Manual 2)
A WlTHERLING IS THE ANIMATED CORPSE of a Small humanoid with the head of a hyena.
Yeenoghu recently imparted to the gnolls the knowledge of the blasphemous process used to create witherlings. A war between Yeenoghu and Orcus is brewing, and the witherlings are but one of several new weapons that the Prince of Gnolls has given to his children. (Monster Manual 2)
Witherling Botched Witherling: ?
Witherling Death Shrieker: A DEATH SHRIEKER IS A LARGER, MORE FEROCIOUS form of witherling. (Monster Manual 2)
Witherling Horned Terror: A HORNED TERROR is AN UNDEAD abomination created from the specially preserved corpse of a minotaur. (Monster Manual 2)
Witherling Rabble: WHEN GNOLLS OR NECROMANCERS create witherlings, the process sometimes goes awry. The magic instead & creates witherling rabble, inferior forms of the creatures. (Monster Manual 2)
Witherling Mote: ?
Worm of Ages: Below Death's Reach burrows a great worm, long dead but roused from eternal slumber by the soulfall. (E1 Death's Reach)
Wraith: THIS RESTLESS APPARITION LURKS IN THE SHADOWS, thirsting for souls. Those it slays become free-willed wraiths as hateful as their creator. (Monster Manual)
When a wraith slays a humanoid, that creature’s spirit rises as a free-willed wraith of the same kind. With the aid of magic or ritual, and with the proper components, a necromancer can summon or even create a wraith. Other wraiths are born on the Shadowfell, and many remain there or enter the natural world through planar rifts and gates. (Monster Manual)
Common wraiths can also evolve into larger, more malevolent wraiths over time. (Monster Manual)
Any humanoid killed by a wraith rises as a free-willed wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Monster Manual)
When a person dies and his or her spirit departs, the animus can remain, clinging to a vestige of life. The animus can become a wraith, an insubstantial creature that emerges amid the vanishing memories of a person’s life; it becomes trapped in an endless afterlife, tortured by remembered sensations and driven mad by a hunger to reclaim the life it once had. (Monster Vault)
Life consists of three parts: body, spirit, and will. Without will, the body ceases to function and the spirit leaves. Sages call the will the animus, and they regard it as the shadow of the soul. When a body dies or a spirit departs, sometimes the animus remains in the world. Without the spirit, though, the animus has no purpose, and it runs amok. Like many undead, a wraith is the result of an unfettered animus. (Monster Vault)
When the wraith kills a humanoid, that humanoid becomes a wraith figment at the start of this wraith’s next turn. The new wraith appears in the space where the humanoid died or in the nearest unoccupied square, and it rolls a new initiative check. (Monster Vault)
When a wraith slays a living humanoid, another wraith emerges from that person’s body within a few minutes, or within a few seconds in areas of intense necrotic energy. Even when powerful magic returns a person to life, his or her wraith remains. A restored cadaver regains its soul and heals fatal wounds, but rather than it regaining its former animus, a new one forms to close the gap between body and spirit. (Monster Vault)
When a mad wraith slays a living humanoid, another wraith emerges from that person’s body within a few minutes, or within a few seconds in areas of intense necrotic energy. Even when powerful magic returns a person to life, his or her wraith remains. A restored cadaver regains its soul and heals fatal wounds, but rather than it regaining its former animus, a new one forms to close the gap between body and spirit. (Monster Vault)
Even the dreaded wraith is simply a soulless animus, deeply corrupted and infused with strong necromantic energy. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Wraiths have a similar thirst for mortal souls, using the resulting energy to spawn their dreadful progeny. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Areas tainted by necromantic seepage in the Shadowfell spawn wraiths. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Any humanoid killed by a wraith rises as a free-willed wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Most wraiths spawn more of their kind when they murder a humanoid. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Rarely does a humanoid wraith kill a dragon, and a wyrm so slain normally cannot rise as a wraith. Humanoids slain by draconic wraiths can, however, rise as wraiths themselves. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Any humanoid creature killed by a wyrm-wisp rises as a free-willed wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn; a dragon instead rises as a wyrm-wisp. The new wraith appears in the space where it died or in the nearest unoccupied space. Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Any humanoid creature killed by a soulgrinder rises as a free-willed wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn; a dragon instead rises as a soulgrinder. The new wraith appears in the space where it died or in the nearest unoccupied space. Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
Sometimes, though, the victims of a vampiric dragon rise as spiritual undead such as ghosts and wraiths. (Draconomicon I Chromatic Dragons)
A shadar-kai could live longer than any eladrin. Few do, however; the consequences of extreme living keep them from seeing old age. Some simply fade away, disappearing into shadow and death, perhaps leaving behind a wraith as the soul passes into the Raven Queen’s care. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
DEATH’S HUNGER (H3 Pyramid of Shadows)
The power of death is strong in this area. A bloodied creature anywhere in the area can score a critical hit on a natural die roll of 19 or 20. (H3 Pyramid of Shadows)
A character who falls to 0 hit points or fewer anywhere in within the area shown on the encounter map is immediately teleported into one of the empty coffins in the northeast room. The lid of the coffin slams shut and requires a DC 20 Strength check to open (from either side). Each time a character inside a coffin fails a death saving throw, each battle wight (if any remain) regains 24 hit points. A character who dies inside one of the coffins rises as a wraith at the start of the frightful wraith’s next turn, exactly as if the wraith had killed the creature. With phasing, the character can escape the coffin and rejoin the battle, now fighting on the side of the other undead. (H3 Pyramid of Shadows)
A zombie holds a struggling goblin in its hands and plunges the screaming goblin into the southeastern pool. Instantly, the goblin stops struggling and the pool turns red. A wraith emerges from the goblin's body. (Halls of Undermountain)
If a living creature enters or starts its turn in the pool, it must make a saving throw. If it fails the saving throw, the creature loses a healing surge. If a creature with no healing surges fails the saving throw while in the pool, the creature dies and is immediately turned into a wraith. (Halls of Undermountain)
If anyone disturbs the garter or the bones of Trestyna Ulthilor, the priestess's spirit rises as a wraith. (Halls of Undermountain)
The wraiths in this place were created by the chaos of the Deck of Many Thinas, though they lay quiescent for many years after the fall of the abbey. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Others find the weight of their mortal deeds so heavy they cannot bear to move farther than the Shadowfell. In time, they are corrupted by the plane’s malaise, becoming specters, wraiths, and other insubstantial beings. (Manual of the Planes)
Any humanoid killed by a wraith rises as a free-willed wraith at the start of its creator's next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Seekers of the Ashen Crown)
Wraith, Kravenghast: ?
Wraith Dread Wraith: When many people die abruptly, a dread wraith can coalesce from their collected spirits. (Monster Manual)
Any humanoid killed by a dread wraith rises as a free-willed dread wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Monster Manual)
At the start of Orcus’s turn, any creature killed by the Wand of Orcus that is still dead rises as a dread wraith under Orcus’s command. (Monster Manual)
Any humanoid killed by a dread wraith rises as a free-willed dread wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Any humanoid killed by a dread wraith rises as a free-willed dread wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Dungeon Delve)
Any humanoid killed by a dread wraith rises as a free-willed dread wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Dungeon Magazine Annual Vol. 1)
By the time the adventurers rush to the Raven Queen's aid, she is already staked to the floor of her throne room by the shard of evil. Although she is not yet destroyed. her power to judge souls and send them to their final destinations fails. (E3 Prince of Undeath)
The consequences of this have yet to propagate. Within Letherna, Raise Dead and similar rituals work normally however, each time a creature is raised to life, a dread wraith appears in a square adjacent to the raised creature. (E3 Prince of Undeath)
Any humanoid killed by a dread wraith assassin rises as a free-willed dread wraith at the start of its creator's next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (E3 Prince of Undeath)
Wraith Dread Wraith Assassin: ?
Wraith Figment: When the sovereign wraith kills a humanoid, that humanoid becomes a wraith figment at the start of this wraith’s next turn. The new wraith appears in the space where the humanoid died or in the nearest unoccupied square, and it rolls a new initiative check. The new wraith acts under the Dungeon Master’s control. (Monster Vault)
When the mad wraith kills a humanoid, that humanoid becomes a wraith figment at the start of this mad wraith's next turn. The new wraith appears in the space where the humanoid died or in the nearest unoccupied square, and it rolls a new initiative check. The new wraith acts under the Dungeon Master's control. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Wraith Filching Wraith: ?
Wraith Forge Wisp Wraith: Forge wisp wraiths are individual spirits that failed to join together to form a forgewraith. (Dungeon Magazine Annual Vol. 1)
Wraith Frightful Wraith: Any humanoid killed by a frightful wraith rises as a free-willed frightful wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (H3 Pyramid of Shadows)
Wraith Mad Wraith: Any humanoid killed by a mad wraith rises as a free-willed mad wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Monster Manual)
Any humanoid killed by a mad wraith rises as a free-willed mad wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Wraith Mad Wraith: Four Gardmore paladins-Engram, Dorn, Silas, and Hromwere assigned to guard and transport the Brazier. When the abbey was attacked, Engram, Dorn, and Silas carried the relic to the rendezvous point in the garrison. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
The wizard Vandomar sealed the three knights inside to protect them while they waited for their companion. However, Hrom fell in battle before reaching the others. Without him, they were unable to open the chest holding the Brazier. Driven mad by the relentless whispers of the evil spirits that invaded the place, the knights killed each other. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Vandomar was unable to save the paladins. To prevent the evil that had destroyed them from spreading, he reinforced the magical seal. So the garrison remains to this day, haunted by the mad spirits of the dead knights (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Wraith Moon Wraith: Any humanoid killed by a moon wraith rises as a free-willed moon wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Moon wraiths are floating, crescent-shaped apparition that are created when a lycanthrope dies during its transformation. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Wraith Oblivion Wraith: Any humanoid killed by an oblivion wraith rises as a free-willed oblivion wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
It is created when a person dies violently during an important life event, such as a wedding or a coronation. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Wraith Phane Wraith: ?
Wraith Shadow Wraith: ?
Wraith Sovereign Wraith: ?
Wraith Sword Wraith: Any humanoid killed by a sword wraith rises as a free-willed sword wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Monster Manual)
Any humanoid killed by a sword wraith rises as a free-willed sword wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Any humanoid killed by Kravenghast rises as a free-willed sword wraith at the start of Kravenghast’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Any humanoid killed by a sword wraith rises as a free-willed sword wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (P2 Demon Queen's Enclave)
Any humanoid killed by a sword wraith rises as a free-willed sword wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress)
Any humanoid killed by a sword wraith rises as a free willed sword wraith at the start of its creator's next turn. Appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Revenge of the Giants)
Wraith Time Wraith: ?
Wraith Vortex Wraith: Any humanoid killed by a vortex wraith rises as a free-willed vortex wraith at the start of its creator’s next turn, appearing in the space where it died (or in the nearest unoccupied space). Raising the slain creature (using the Raise Dead ritual) does not destroy the spawned wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A vortex wraith rises when a person dies in a tornado or storm and the victim’s body is never found. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The wraiths in this place were created by the chaos of the Deck of Many Thinas, though they lay quiescent for many years after the fall of the abbey. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
When the vortex wraith kills a humanoid, that humanoid becomes a vortex wraith the start of this wraith's next turn. The new wraith appears in the space where the humanoid died or in the nearest unoccupied square, and it rolls a new initiative check. The new wraith acts under the Dungeon Master's control. (Madness at Gardmore Abbey)
Wraith Wisp Wraith: wisp wraith is the result of a wraith that failed to form correctly when another wraith used spawn wraith. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Defiling Sigil trap. (Marauders of the Dune Sea)
Wrath of Nature: MOST PEOPLE LIVING IN CITIES MEAN WELL, but a certain amount of pollution is inevitable. Livestock overgraze, communities log and burn forests, and cities dump waste and alchemical byproducts into the streams. The land is forgiving, but sometimes when an area is so wrought with pollution and death, nature’s rage gives rise to a wrath of nature, a mindless embodiment of death. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Wrath of Nature Calvary Creekrotter: Calvary creekrotters arise as a result of extreme pollution in a river, lake, or part of the ocean. When the land dies away, nature rebels, animating the dead animals and vegetation to visit wrath upon civilization. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Some evil creatures, including corrupt druids, purposefully defile bodies of water in an attempt to create these monstrosities. They dump vile substances and waste into streams and rivers, killing life and upsetting the natural order. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Wrath of Nature Cindergrove Spirit: Cindergrove spirits arise at the edge of communities in which the verdant landscape was burned to make way for civilization. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Some corrupt creatures purposefully burn natural environments rich with life and beauty in an attempt to create these monstrosities. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie: A ZOMBIE IS THE ANIMATED CORPSE of a living creature. Imbued with the barest semblance of life, this shambling horror obeys the commands of its creator, heedless of its own well-being. (Monster Manual)
A typical zombie is made of the corpse of a Medium or Large creature. (Monster Manual)
Most zombies are created using a foul ritual. (Monster Manual)
Corpses left in places corrupted by supernatural energy from the Shadowfell sometimes rise as zombies on their own. (Monster Manual)
Fueled by dark magic, malevolent forces, dire curses, or angry spirits, zombies are animate corpses. Any corpse with flesh suffices to make a zombie. It might be a dead warrior from a battlefield, distended from days in the sun, guts trailing from a mortal wound. It might be a muddy cadaver of a woman recently buried and risen again, leaving maggots and worms in her wake. A zombie could wash ashore or rise from a marsh, swollen and reeking from weeks in the water. A zombie could instead appear alive, crafted from a recently deceased corpse. (Monster Vault)
A zombie need not be the size of a normal humanoid, or even humanoid in form. When a necromancer or a natural phenomenon causes a corpse to rise, the corpse could belong to the smallest beast or the largest giant. When a zombie plague infects a city, any size or kind of creature can be affected—horses, dogs, children, cats—anything that has a pulse. (Monster Vault)
For a zombie to be animated, a body’s soul must have departed. What remains in the corpse is an animus, a vital spark that drives the body without thought or conscience. Without a soul or memories, a zombie has no more humanity or intelligence than a simple animal. (Monster Vault)
In most cases, a zombie serves its creator or rises in response to the defilement of a sacred location. At rare times, zombies arise in the hundreds. These zombie plagues are provoked by cosmic, magical, or divine events. A zombie plague might be the result of an angry god, a magical experiment gone wrong, a powerful ritual, or a falling star. When the event occurs, the bodies of the dead claw out of their graves and attack the living. Anyone who dies as a result of such an assault soon becomes a zombie after acquiring the disease or curse that the zombies carry. These terrifying plagues can consume an entire civilization if left unchecked. (Monster Vault)
WHEREVER THE GRAY CARESSES THE NATURAL WORLD, an indelible stain spreads. Darkness bleeds into the land, the sun dims, and the dead rise. Much of Athas has shuddered now and again under the Gray’s touch, and the land sprouts a bountiful harvest of zombies. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Defiling magic and the Gray are Athas’s primary zombie producers. Whether a templar is raising an undead army for personal gain or the Gray randomly spawns a new pack, the result is much the same. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
The carved skull buried in one of the old crypts has pulsed back to unlife. Its wakening will attract undead miles away from Col Fen. Unless the skull is destroyed, it will become a magnet for undead from distant places, while at the same time animating skeletons and zombies from the graveyard of Col Fen. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
When a corpse vampire kills a living humanoid by a means other than blood drain, that humanoid rises as a zombie of its level at sunset the next day. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
As his cult grew, the foul huecuva returned to the temple of Bahamut where he once served. There, in a bloodbath of mythic proportions, he not only massacred the entire priesthood but also raised them as shambling zombies, whom he then set loose upon the surrounding city. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
With the aid of the powers beyond the rift, Kalarel has animated several corpses from the interred dead and transformed this area into a guard room. (H1 Keep on the Shadowfell)
Cemetery Rot disease. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
The Sea of Rot is so named because it is filled with a seemingly endless legion of zombies. Mortal creatures offered as sacrifices to Orcus have their spirits reborn here as conscripts in the Shambling Horde. (P2 Demon Queen's Enclave)
Justice is dire and unforgiving in Hordethrone. Intruders are placed in steel cages that hang above this plaza and left to starve to death. Later, they are raised to take their place in the Shambling Horde as new conscripts in Orcus’s undead army. (P2 Demon Queen's Enclave)
Zombie Ash Zombie: ?
Zombie Black Reaver Zombie: ?
Zombie Bladebearer Zombie, Chib Naresaar: ?
Zombie Blood Sea Zombie: Blood sea zombies are believed to have been a creation of the demon prince, Demogorgon. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Carcass Eater: It is the result of a rodent that gorges on the rotting, necrotic flesh of a canine. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Chillborn Zombie: The thousands of deaths that took place on the Downs transformed this battlefield into a place where the walls between the world and the Shadowfell are weak. People who die here reanimate as undead. This is what happened to Tirian Forkbeard. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Humanoid creatures in the Downs (the entire area shown on the full-page map) who are reduced to 5 or fewer hit points take on a pale, waxy complexion. Their veins darken and become visible through their increasingly translucent flesh. An opaque glaze dulls their eyes, and their eyes remain open even while they are unconscious. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Humanoid creatures who die transform into chillborn zombies. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
If any PCs die here, you can delay their transformation until after surviving PCs have defeated their current enemies or fled the field if things are going poorly for them. Otherwise, a dead comrade rises 1 round after death. It turns on living PCs, acting last in initiative order. It has full hit points as a chillborn zombie. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Victims of zombie transformation can, after being reduced to 0 hit points, be restored to life by a Raise Dead ritual. A player whose character became a zombie can choose to roleplay the character as haunted by hazy memories of the undead state or to shrug off the incident entirely. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Creature powers that raise slain enemies as undead (such as spawn wraith) supersede the zombie breeding ground effect. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Cinder Zombie: Zombies stir in burned-out husks of torched settlements and along the cracked slopes of the volcanic Sea of Silt islands. The kiss of fire preserved these scorched bodies from the elements. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Zombie Corpse Rat Swarm: A corpse rat swarm is created when vast quantities of rats die together and are then infused with necrotic energy. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Corruption Corpse: A living humanoid killed by a deathdog rises as a free-willed corruption corpse at the end of its creator’s next turn. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Deathdogs are creatures of the Shadowfell that transform their prey into corruption corpses. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Dread Zombie: ?
Zombie Dread Zombie: Dread zombies are created by powerful necromancers for war. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Dread Zombie Myrmidon: ?
Zombie Drowned One: Drowned ones are zombies that have been underwater for some time; their bloated and discolored flesh drips with foul water. Drowned ones are usually the animated corpses of humanoids who died at sea. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Feasting Zombie: Among cannibalistic halflings, inhabitants who fall ill with wasting diseases are not eaten. Instead, the people open the earth and place sick clan members inside. The diseased are covered with sod and left to die respectably—in the embrace of nature, the giver of life that offers succor in death. But even the far reaches of Athas are not spared from the undead plague. On certain nights, undead halflings walk again in the Forest Ridge. (Dark Sun Creature Catalog)
Zombie Flameborn Zombie: ?
Zombie Flesh-Crazed Zombie: ?
Zombie Grasping Zombie: ?
Zombie Gravehound: Once the Darano kennel master, Kalmo was searching the Spellgard ruins with his wolves when a magic trap slew the animals and animated them as zombies. (FR1 Scepter Tower of Spellgard)
Ninaran followed Kalarel’s instructions in creating this magic circle to raise the dead. (H1 Keep on the Shadowfell)
Zombie Goblin Zombie Archer: ?
Zombie Grave Drake: ?
Zombie Hobgoblin Soldier Zombie: ?
Zombie Hobgoblin Zombie: ?
Zombie Hulk: ?
Zombie Hulk of Orcus: ?
Zombie Hulking Zombie: ?
Zombie Infected Zombie: When a virulent plague rips though the land, sometimes the plague’s victims rise up from death. These creatures become agents of the plague, spreading infection through their diseased bite. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
“Infected zombie” is a template you can apply to any zombie. The template represents a specialized kind of zombie that spreads sickness and disease. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Prerequisites: Zombie (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
A few particularly abhorrent undead carry a powerful contagion that, when transferred to mortals, causes them to weaken and die at an alarming rate, rising as undead in a matter of hours unless a cure is rapidly administered. Once a creature is infected in this manner, little can be done to save him or her from becoming undead. The infected zombie template can be used to create undead that spread such contagion. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Kruthik Young Zombie: ?
Zombie Putrescent Zombie: Putrescent zombies are created when necrotic energy mixes with abandoned or lost corpses. Also, a necromancer can use a dedicated ritual to create putrescent zombies. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Rot Grub Zombie: Long after a victim has died from a rot grub infestation, the creatures continue to eat away at the rotting flesh. From time to time, the corpse reanimates into a dark parody of life, creating a zombie that acts as a carrier for a swarm of rot grubs. (Monster Manual 3)
Zombie Rotter: Ashgaunt's Wake the Dead power. (Dragon Magazine Annual)
With the aid of the powers beyond the rift, Kalarel has animated several corpses from the interred dead and transformed this area into a guard room. (H1 Keep on the Shadowfell)
Zombie Rotwing Zombie: ?
Zombie Salt Zombie: ?
Zombie Shambler: ?
Zombie Skulk Zombie: They are rumored to be animated by the will of Vecna, which gives them an abiding hatred for the living. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Skullborn Rotwing Zombie: ?
Zombie Skullborn Zombie: ?
Zombie Skullborn Zombie Husk: ?
Zombie Sodden Corruption Corpse: ?
Zombie Strahd's Dread Zombie: ?
Zombie Throng: The throng consists of the body parts and whole bodies of people killed en masse, often as a result of a disease outbreak. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
Zombie Tombwalker: ?
Zombie Weak Kruthik Zombie: ?
Zombie Wrathborn: A wrathborn is a decaying and ravaged victim of homicide. Wrathborn are undead avengers, returned from the grave to track down and kill their murderers. (Open Grave Secrets of the Undead)
