Maven Mosslight

Defense

Offense

Statistics

Description

Female human ghost sorcerer 9

Corrupting Touch (Su) By passing part of its incorporeal body through a foe’s body as a standard action, Maven inflicts 10d6 damage.

This damage is not negative energy—it manifests in the form of physical wounds and aches from supernatural aging. Creatures immune to magical aging are immune to this damage, but otherwise the damage bypasses all forms of damage reduction. A Fortitude save (DC 19) halves the damage inflicted.

Grave Trappings (Su) Maven bears a ghostly lantern that sheds an unnerving glow. This light functions like a candle of invocation, causing all evil creatures that come within 30 feet of Maven to gain a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks. Once per day she can use the candle to summon 1d4 will-o’-wisps. Maven can interact with the lantern as though it were incorporeal. If Maven is destroyed, the lantern is destroyed as well, and reforms with her upon rejuvenating.

Rejuvenation (Su) If “destroyed” through combat, Maven restores herself in 2d4 days. She can only be put to rest if her sunken, fish-eaten remains and the richly interred corpse of Lady Sylnia Whitchaste have their places swapped.

Telekinesis (Su) Maven can use telekinesis as a standard action once every 1d4 rounds (caster level 12th).

Pathfinder Chronicles: Classic Horrors Revisited “The subsidence was evident in every grave. A sunken scar marked many of the town’s burial sites, each filled with a muddy puddle from the afternoon rain. Yet more disturbing were those graves without puddles—for these graves were scarred instead by gaping holes into the darkness. A terrible smell rose from those holes, a smell of death and decay far too pungent and strong to come from the relatively small number of bodies likely buried in the boneyard, and far too fresh to come from anything more than a week dead. Yet worst of all were the sounds coming from those graveyard holes, sounds of a sloppy, frantic feasting punctuated all too often by screams.” —Officer Vade Andermen’s testimony recounting the aftermath of the Clover’s Crossing tragedy Chapter Five Ghoul Ghoul T he lonely graveyard that looms on the outskirts of the rural town has long been a place to haunt nightmares. By day, such sites carry with them an air of loss, mournful memory, and somber gloom. Those who visit usually seem eager to leave, either in hopes of leaving their grief for departed loved ones behind or out of fear of being caught within the yard after sun’s ebb. Animals spied amid the tombstones and graves seem to carry with them a lurking threat, be they feral dogs merely passing through the yard in search of prey or dark raucous crows and ravens perched on statue angels and stone markers. Even trees seem more ominous when they grow from amid the stones of a graveyard, as if they might draw foulness from the surrounding soil, drinking deep with hungry roots. Yet these subtle terrors are nothing compared to what many graveyards hide. Stories of lone mourners going missing when a trip to pay respects occurs too close to nightfall, of graves mysteriously sagging as if collapsing from within, of uncounted tunnels and warrens winding maze-like below the graves themselves, and darker tales of hauntings and hideous coffin-births are unnervingly common as a traveler moves from township to township. In many cases, these legends and tales are simply the by-product of the grim power of a graveyard’s mystique, but in a few, there is a very real and very dangerous source for the graveyard’s ill reputation.

For not all the dead remain dead.

Tales of necromancers instilling a fell unlife in dead bodies and sinister ghosts with a vengeful hatred or jealousy of the living are common, yet undead created in this manner are, for all the horror their shambling frames hold, limited in number and hampered by madness or mindlessness.

Zombies and skeletons are little more than the tools of evil, and possess no drive of their own. Golems crafted from the dead have something more of a mind, yet most remain under their creators’ control, and of those who escape, most do not carry in their lumbering hearts an intrinsic evil. And wraiths and wights and spectres, for all their haunting malevolence, do not range far from the sites of their mortal end, bound to bone by lingering madness or mystic decree.

Viewed in this light, those among the undead who retain free will and a driving hunger for destruction are perhaps the most horrifying of the lot. And while the vampire might carry all the hallmarks of such horror, its evil is often of a more subtle nature—a vampire can mask its predation behind a veneer of civility and calm. Not so the ghoul, a feral, constantly ravening glutton whose hunger compels it to seek out the living and whose curse is so horrifyingly fecund. Here, one sees the perfect synthesis of undead blasphemy and living cruelty—a death that brings no peace from madness or hunger.

Creation Myth holds that the first man to feed upon the flesh of his brother was seized by a most uncommon malady of the intestinal tract, and after lingering for days in the throes of this painful inflammation of the belly, he died, only to rise on the Abyss as Kabriri, the first ghoul. Whether the demon lord of graves and ghouls was indeed the first remains the subject of debate among scholars of necromancy, but certainly the methods by which bodies can rise as the hungry dead are myriad.

Necromancers have long known the secrets of infusing a dead body with this vile animating force. With the spell create undead, a spellcaster can waken a body’s hunger and transform it into a ravenous ghoul. Stories abound as well of spontaneous transformations when a man or woman, driven by bleakest desperation or blackest madness, resorts to cannibalism as a means of survival. Whether the expiration that follows rises from further starvation or the death of the will to carry on in light of such atrocity matters not, for when death occurs after such a choice, a hideous rebirth as a ghoul may occur.

In the Darklands, yet another route to ghoulishness exists—lazurite. This strange, magical ore, thought to be the remnant of a dead god who staggered through the Darklands and left behind black bloodstains upon the caverns of the Cold Hell, appears as a thin black crust where it is exposed. The white veins of rock in which it often forms are known as marrowstone. Lazurite itself exudes a magical radiation that gives off a strong aura of necromancy. Any intact corpse left within a few paces of a significant lazurite deposit for a day is likely to rise as a ghoul or ghast, often retaining any abilities it had in life. The vast majority of non-humanoid “ghouls” in the Darklands rise from such conditions. Ghouls often build lairs near lazurite deposits, for its radiation bolsters them against holy energy.

Yet the most common route to transformation is through violent contact with other ghouls. Called by a wide variety of regional names (such as gnaw pangs, belly blight, or Kabriri’s curse), this contagion is known in most circles simply as “ghoul fever.” Transmitted by a ghoul’s bite (or, more rarely, through the consumption of ghoulish flesh), ghoul fever causes the victim to grow increasingly hungry and manic, yet makes it impossible to keep down any food or water. The horrific hunger pangs caused by the sickness rob the victim of coordination and cause increasingly painful spasms, and eventually the victim starves to death, only to rise soon thereafter as a ghoul. That those who perish from ghoul fever invariably animate as undead at midnight has long intrigued scholars of necromancy—the general thought is that only at the dead of night can such a hideous transformation complete its course. Fortunately, ghoul fever can only be transmitted from ghoul to victim, not between the infected and the rest of their community—for if the ailment could be so spread, the ghoul apocalypse could be but one bite away.

Necrology Ghouls are somewhat unusual among the undead in that they have a strangely lifelike defining feature—their hunger. No Pathfinder Chronicles: Classic Horrors Revisited natural biological functions continue within a ghoul’s body, and to a ghoul, hunger is a constant sensation. Only during the actual act of consuming humanoid flesh does the hunger abate, and it returns immediately upon the end of the grisly meal, typically forcing the ghoul to seek out new prey immediately. A ghoul forced to go without food does not suffer for its fasting— its hunger remains as constant as ever, but does not grow in power. A ghoul could dwell in a crypt for ages with nothing to feed upon without suffering for the passage of time. Effectively, a ghoul’s hunger represents the limit to which the sensation can go—there is no greater hunger than that of a ghoul. Fortunately for the living, the ghoul is also an intelligent creature and not a feral beast or mindless automaton. As a creature of intellect, a ghoul has other needs than satisfying its hunger. It does not constantly seek to satiate itself, for hunger is such an abiding reality that, to a ghoul, it is the norm. Ghouls spend long hours decorating their underground lairs, tormenting prisoners, reading ancient texts, or simply exploring the remote corners of their territories. As a general rule, a ghoul seeks to satiate its hunger once per day, often emerging from its warren at nightfall to seek out prey. Even then, each ghoul’s tastes can vary widely, and these preferences can further limit violent interactions with the living. The question of what exactly happens to all the meat ghouls eat has fascinated necromancers for ages. No natural digestive process operates in a ghoul’s dead body, just as a ghoul has no need to breathe and its heart pumps no blood through its veins, thus ghouls do not excrete solid or liquid wastes. Nor do they become bloated with undigested food building in throats and bellies. Something happens to the meat. Although the exact process is still not understood, it seems that the act of swallowing carrion or fresh flesh causes the meat to be absorbed directly into the ghoul’s decaying flesh. As a ghoul exists, it constantly sheds bits of flesh as its undead body endlessly rots away, yet over time, a ghoul’s size does not diminish. Thus, the necromantic animating force somehow uses consumed flesh to replace what drops away in corruption. A ghoul forced to go long without feeding is correspondingly less likely to have parts of its body drop away, as if the process of decay were, ironically, fueled by the same mechanism that replaces spent flesh.

Beyond its hunger and the virulent disease it can inflict on the living, one other quality defines the dangers a ghoul presents: its paralytic touch. Mere touch is not enough to visit this doom on a foe, the ghoul must pierce flesh with tooth or claw and actually inflict damage before the paralysis can seize the victim’s body. Victims of this hideous affliction who survive describe it as a sudden and overwhelming hunger that causes the limbs to go limp with weakness—while paralyzed by a ghoul, a victim can do little but lie in a nerveless heap of incapacitating hunger. Unfortunately, the paralysis afforded does not deaden physical sensation, and the despair and horror of those who are eaten by ghouls while paralyzed must be terrible indeed. The fact that elves have an unusual immunity to this paralysis is curious indeed, but most point to Kabriri’s form (and to the almost elven features of most ghouls) as the answer. They say that before he succumbed to his cannibal urge and became a demon, Kabriri himself was an elf. The long ears and slender bodies that most ghouls develop, despite their original race, is thus an echo of Kabriri’s legacy—and the fact that their paralytic hungers have no effect on elves is but another manifestation of this strange bit of history. It should be noted that not all who begin the transformation into ghoul become actual ghouls. Particularly hearty humanoids (often those with racial Hit Dice, or who in life were already gluttons or cannibals by choice) often become ghasts, which are similar in many ways to ghouls but are generally more powerful and more aggressive. This increased aggression has the side effect of forcing them into confrontations with the living, and as a result, ghasts generally do not exist for long once created. Lacedons are another variant, ghouls who rise from the bodies of starving humanoids who died from Facets of Fear Two particularly hideous fears lie at the rotten core of ghoulish genesis: the fear of cannibalism and the fear of disease. That a ghoul’s bite can transform the victim, through a strange disease, into one of the ravenous undead plays to primal taboos and gut-churning horror. Being eaten alive is bad enough, but what about being eaten alive by a person? What if that person were a loved one, like a mother or wife or child? And would it be worse if you were the one doing the eating?

While ghoulish traditions have roots in Arabian folklore, where they were demons who haunted graveyards, the classic concept of what a “ghoul” is often has more to do with vampire or zombie myths. Stories like Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model” and “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath” (which introduces the concept of ghoul nations and powerful ghasts) and many of Clark Ashton Smith’s stories of Zothique (a realm where necromancers rule ghoul empires) give us great sources of inspiration. Yet it is to filmmaker George Romero that the game’s ghouls owe their greatest debt. Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are popularly known as zombie movies, but the monsters featured in them have less to do with zombies than they do with ghouls. Zombies in this game (yes, even the fast ones) are really little more than mindless automatons, yet these movies have starving undead creatures that not only hunger for the flesh of the living, but whose bites result in a terrible infection that causes the victim to rise as one of the undead. While the mechanic of why the dead come back to life in zombie movies is often never explained, the end result is the same.

You cannot trust the dead.

Ghoul drowning, often as a result of a shipwreck. (See the nearby sidebar for an exploration of other variant forms of ghouls.) Habitat & Society Although a ghoul’s basest urge, to feed on humanoid flesh, might seem savage and bestial, the ghoul itself is an intelligent and often imaginative creature. They temper their insatiable hungers with other desires that are all-too-human: a need for companionship, entertainment, education, and comfort. Yet one would be foolish to assume that these traits instill in the ghoul a chance at redemption or peaceful coexistence with the living. For a ghoul, companionship means either time spent with others of its kind or time spent conversing with prisoners the ghoul fully intends to feed on. Entertainment is focused on grisly “dinner parties” where meals are served raw or rotten direct from coffin, or from tombstones serving as platters and plates. Education manifests as an urge to study the dark secrets, be they necromancy, demonology, torture, or some other vile pursuit. And comfort, to a ghoul, means the pursuit of the most grisly and hideous accouterments imaginable—chairs made of bones, curtains made of flesh, and decorations made from parts of the body a particular ghoul might find distasteful to eat.

Ghouls have a discerning taste. Despite (or perhaps because of) their horrific diet, all ghouls have favorite flavors of flesh. Some feed only on the most rotten of corpses, while others prefer flesh stripped fresh from living bone. All ghouls maintain that the nature of a creature’s death infuses the flesh with a different flavor—and among most ghouls, flesh salted with fear and despair is the most delicious of all. Ghouls dwell in large communities, a mocking parody of the societies to which they once belonged. A ghoul warren can extend for miles underground, although most are limited by the size of the graveyards under which they become established. In the Darklands, though, ghouls build towns or even cities in which they dwell, often around prominent repositories of lore or temples devoted to the worship of Kabriri. The greatest of these cities is deep under the nation of Osirion, a city of bone-white towers called Nemret Noktoria.

In rare cases, ghouls (particularly those who prefer the flavor of bodies who died of natural causes or old age, or that have been given ample time to ripen) can establish peaceful alliances with living evil allies. The ghouls of Nemret Noktoria maintain trade with several living cities, as an example. Ghouls are often unusually literate for undead, and many learn multiple languages as a result. Obscure languages of the Darklands (such as Gug or Orvian) are popular choices, as are ancient languages like Aklo or Draconic. The ghouls of the Darklands even speak their own language, a tongue called Necril that mixes elements of Aklo, Undercommon, and Osiriani with a long tradition of ghoulish interests and development. Variant Ghouls The typical ghoul is assumed to have come from a Medium humanoid like a human, half-elf, dwarf, or elf. Yet some humanoids have remarkably different characteristics that make these ghouls more or less powerful.

Larger Ghouls: A giant that succumbs to ghoul fever retains its larger size, its higher natural armor bonus, and all of its racial Hit Dice, but is otherwise treated as a ghoul advanced to its new Hit Dice and size.

Smaller Ghouls: Small humanoids who become ghouls have 1 HD and all of the appropriate bonuses and penalties for dropping from Medium to Small size (–4 Str, +2 Dex, +1 size bonus on attack rolls and to AC, reduced natural attack damage, etc.). A Small ghoul is CR 1/2.

Unusual Ghouls: Some humanoids transformed into ghouls have unusual advantages.

Boggard, Merfolk: These races always spawn into lacedons. Bugbear, Lizardfolk, Troglodyte: These races always spawn into ghasts.

Ettin: An ettin ghoul has two bite attacks, in addition to being advanced to Large size and 10 HD.

Fire Giant: A fire giant ghoul gains the Fire subtype. Frost Giant: A frost giant ghoul gains the Cold subtype. Lycanthrope: While a ghoul cannot become a lycanthrope, a living lycanthrope who succumbs to ghoul fever could rise as a ghoul. In most cases, this transformation removes the lycanthropic curse, resulting in a standard ghoul, but in rare events the resulting monster is a true ghoul lycanthrope. To create stats for such a creature, simply apply the lycanthrope template to a ghoul—this is an exception to the general rule that you can normally only add the lycanthrope template to a humanoid.

Pathfinder Chronicles: Classic Horrors Revisited Campaign Role Ghouls make excellent foes for both low- and high-level play. At low level, they serve as horrifying foes for their mix of disease and paralysis abilities, and a single ghoul can remain a dangerous foe for even the largest of parties. Ghouls’ intellects and natural predisposition toward necromancy make them excellent subjects for advancement via class level, particularly as clerics, rogues, sorcerers, and wizards. Finally, a nation of underground-dwelling ghouls can make for a refreshing change from the norm. (See Pathfinder Chronicles: Into the Darklands for an extensive discussion of such a ghoulish society.) Known Ghouls Although one might expect the majority of powerful ghouls to rise from the naturally more dangerous legions of ghasts, in fact the opposite is true. Ghouls seem more capable of retaining the shreds of civilization and sanity required to look beyond the constant hunger and seek more out of their unlives. This is particularly true of those who dwell in the Darklands, where ghasts are little more than man-sized feral beasts and the ghouls themselves rule an empire.

Captain Irnesee: Irnesee didn’t begin her undead life as the captain of the Avenaria—she earned it. A stowaway aboard the merchant ship Red Razor, she was forced to abandon ship when it burned to the waterline. After many weeks adrift, the survivors in Irnesee’s boat were forced to draw lots to determine who would be executed and provide food for the survivors. Eventually Irnesee was the only survivor, a desperate woman in a boat filled with the gnawed bones of her onetime fellow survivors. When the whaler Avenaria found her adrift, she was strangely quiet—the whalers assumed her necessary cannibalism had broken her mind. In truth, she had died of starvation just before the Avenaria “rescued” her, and had transformed into a ghoul. That night, her hunger wakened fully and she slew the Avenaria’s crew but was unable to gorge on them all before they rose as ghouls themselves. The Avenaria never returned to port, but whispered stories of the “ghoul ship” continue to this day, with sailors predicting that the night the Avenaria makes call in a port shall presage the end of that city and the dawn of an empire of ghouls.

Kortash Khain: Priest-King of the ghoul city of Nemret Noktoria and high priest of the cult of Kabriri on Golarion, Kortash Khain is a towering figure of power and tradition. One of the most powerful creatures in the Inner Sea region, Kortash Khain rarely leaves the city he founded so long ago. Kortash maintains open trade with the nations of Thuvia and Geb, and secret trade with many others, and periodically wages war on his Darklands neighbors or the sands of Osirion above, but his true desire is to see Nemret Noktoria become an unliving copy of Kabriri’s Abyssal realm.

Sample Ghoul While the Priest-King of Nemret Noktoria only rarely leaves his haunted palace, the same cannot be said for his ambassadors, assassins, diplomats, and spies. These agents are universally powerful ghoul necromancers, and while they are common on the streets of Nemret Noktoria where they might also serve as judges, executioners, or seers, the most dangerous are those found beyond Nemret Noktoria’s walls. While some such ghouls might be on legitimate pilgrimages or missions to allies, the majority, like the one presented here, are dangerous exiles forced to relocate to the surface world.

In Ehrimun’s case, this exile was self-inflicted. Always discontent with what he viewed as a lingering existence in the bowels of the world, he longed to dwell on the surface and devour all the flesh that its diverse nations could offer. Ehrimun can be an undead warlord or master necromancer— using a powerful ghoul like this instead of a lich gives an adventure against an undead lord a different flavor and style. Ghoul Feats The following feats are intended to be used by ghouls (including ghasts and lacedons), but could make interesting options for many other types of undead as well.

Brain Eater You gain some of the skills and knowledge of a consumed foe by eating its brain.

Prerequisite: Ghoul, Intelligence 17.

Benefit: If you eat a portion of the brain of a creature with Intelligence 3 or higher, you gain a +2 insight bonus on all skill checks and Will saving throws for 1 hour. Eating a brain is a full-round action, and the target must be dead or helpless. If the target is living, you may attempt to eat its brain as a coup de grace attack on the target, but you gain the insight bonus only if your attempt results in the victim’s death.

Civilized Ghoulishness Although undead, you can easily pass as living.

Prerequisite: Ghoul, Charisma 18.

Benefit: Your appearance is such that, while pale-skinned and gaunt, you can pass as a living humanoid of your choice. You gain a +10 racial bonus on Disguise checks made to appear human, and your channel resistance increases by +2. Ghasts with this feat can activate or suppress their stench ability as a free action. Warren Digger You can burrow through soil and dirt.

Prerequisite: Ghoul, Strength 17.

Benefit: You gain a burrow speed of 10 feet through earth, sand, or soil.

Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time you take it, add 10 feet to your burrow speed, up to a maximum of your base land speed.

Source: Classic Horrors Revisited, p. 28