Monstrous Foes: Elvish Tomb Wraith

Wraith, Elvish Tomb

CLIMATE/TERRAIN: Elvish Tombs

FREQUENCY: Very Rare

ORGANIZATION: Military Unit

ACTIVITY CYCLE: Any

DIET: None

INTELLIGENCE: High (13-14)

TREASURE: Incidental

ALIGNMENT: True neutral

NO. APPEARING: 2-8

ARMOR CLASS: 2

MOVEMENT: 13

HIT DICE: 5

THAC0: 15

NO. OF ATTACKS: 1

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-8 (melee) or 1-6 (missile)

SPECIAL ATTACKS: constitution drain

SPECIAL DEFENSES: magical weapon required to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: Nil

SIZE: M (5’-6’ tall)

MORALE: Fearless (20)

XP VALUE: 975 (melee), 1,400 (missile)

Tomb wraiths, while bearing some relation to the other classifications of spirit that elves may leave behind, are generally created as a result of certain powerful necromantic spells being used on the living. In times past, since elves could not create corporeal undead, powerful elvish sorcerer-princes devised spells to call forth the spirits of the departed from the Gardens of Edellä to fight on the material plane. These warriors are summoned forth from their afterlives when the tombs of their monarchs are pierced, and they patrol those tombs fiercely.

Elvish tomb wraiths appear to be, in every way, the pinnacle of health and vigor. They are dressed in vibrantly colored arms and armor, streaming with banners and resplendent as they were in life. Only bright light will show them to be semi-translucent and wraithlike.

Combat: Like all ethereal undead, tomb wraiths are terrifying in battle. Unlike other wraiths and spirits, the tomb wraiths are not deterred by bright light nor are they weakened by the daytime, though pure sunlight threatens their link with Arunia. When in direct sunlight, they have a -2 penalty to-hit (THAC0 17) and a -2 penalty to all damage dealt. They are clearly transparent in daylight and cannot use their constitution draining attacks.

Tomb wraiths appear to use the arms they were skilled at in life, though they always deal 1d8 damage, regardless of the weapon. Being struck with a spectral weapon causes the target to lose 1 point of constitution; this loss persists for 24 hours. If, as a result of this, anyone ever drops to 0 constitution or below, they enter a cursed and dreamless sleep until their entire constitution score has been recovered. They must then make a system shock check, or permanently lose 1 point of constitution.

More Monsters from Arunia: The Salt Lich

CLIMATE/TERRAIN: The East

FREQUENCY: Very Rare

ORGANIZATION: Solitary or Enclave

ACTIVITY CYCLE: Night

DIET: Nil

INTELLIGENCE: Supra-genius (19-20)

TREASURE: A

ALIGNMENT: Any evil

NO. APPEARING: 1 (or 2-4)

ARMOR CLASS: 0

MOVEMENT: 5 walk, 15 (hover maneuverability A)

HIT DICE: 15+

THAC0: 6

NO. OF ATTACKS: 1

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1d10 or by weapon +3

SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below

SPECIAL DEFENSES: +1 or better magical weapon to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: Nil

SIZE: M (6' tall)

MORALE: Fanatic (17-18)

XP VALUE: 11,000

The so-called Salt Liches of the East are rarely found outside of the Plain of Sorrow and the isles of Aellonia. Legend has it that they were an ancient order of magicians that was founded during the Pillar Age and that they owe their origins to the city of Byblos when it was still an island and the Plain of Sorrow was still a shallow sea.

If myth can be believed, many of this order (who history has called the Aidic Magi, the Serpentine Order, or the Asocrians) gathered together on the island of Sintarra in the Sword Age and made of it a haven for wizards, where ultimate authority was portioned out according to mental acuity. Sintarra, itself perhaps only a myth, represents the ultimate end of all wizardly enclaves: it supposedly consumed itself in the petty struggles of vain mages and vanished from Arunia forever.

Those of the Aidic Order left behind became cruel and withdrawn, insistent upon controlling the city-states of Aellonia and the kingdoms of Llernea, Old Lllynder, and Byblos. Ancient Aellonian texts describe the fear of Aidics as so great that their symbols were stricken from the monuments they had once helped to raise and the Byblian Republic expelled all the Serpentine Magi in a great edict.

As their numbers dwindled, the Aidic Order sought ever to preserve itself so that they could one day recover the glory that had been theres before the vanishing of Sintarra. The final end of these Classical Era efforts was finally found in the golden breath of Khewed: the adoption of Lichdom.

Unlike the continental Liches of the north, the salt-liches of the Aidic Order have been preserved in brine and nitre and spent centuries in seaside caverns. They are an ancient brood, with access to spells not seen since the Classical Era in Arunia.

One side effect of the Aidic preservation process is that their slumber is longer and more difficult to penetrate that that of other liches. Every several decades they must enter a sleep of 1d10x10 years to replenish their life-energy. If an Aidic lich refuses to enter its slumber, it loses 1 hp for each month of activity until it drops to 0 and is forced into a catatonia. It must then spend 10 years for each lost hit point in sleep before it may awaken.

Aidic Liches all share a single type of phylactery, which is the legendary serpent-collar that they wear. These are powerfully enchanted magical items that appear as a double-headed serpent coiled around their necks made of bronze with chips of tourmaline as eyes. The collars can be hacked apart, but if they come into contact with anyone but an Aidic wizard, they will spring to life as fully formed and venomous double-headed snakes of bronze.

Though they are stick-thin and often twined with strips of red cloth, Aidic Liches may move with great speed. They are rated as having a hover movement, but they cannot rise more than a half inch from any surface. This does allow them, however, to surprise their foes with great bursts of speed.

All Aidic wrappings are magical in some way or another, and most of these liches are in possession of numerous powerful magical items. Staves from ancient Byblos and wands from the forgotten North are common.

Combat

In combat, Aidic Liches are fearsome foes indeed. They do not radiate a fear aura like Aquilian liches. Rather, when roused to anger they can cause the very air around them to become suckingly, parchingly dry. This affects an area of some 50' in diameter. Moisture is drawn out of all objects in that region, causing leather to crackle and become useless after 1d6 rounds, cloth to become brittle, and all living beings to suffer a -1 penalty on all combat related rolls.

Their very touch drains moisture from the living, dealing 1d10 points of damage. In addition, the victim must save vs. spell or find a limb or extremity touched in this way withered as though by a Staff of Withering.

The Aidic Liches retain all the former power of their living spellcasting might, and none were less than 12th level upon assuming their undying forms. Additionally, their command of Classical Era magic is augmented by the knowledge of a some Elder Magic (which cannot be dispelled or saved against) though the particulars of this knowledge are left to the DMs discretion.

Avaridus and the Soul

Avaridus the Philosopher was born in Mercantis; this particular fact chafes Milean pride, for the ancient Mercantine City was a great competitor of Miles in the Sword Age. However, by the time Avaridus was born the freedom of Mercantis had been captured, swallowed up, by the great imperial ambitions of the Pillar-City. Thus, it is with only a little self consciousness that Mileans can lay claim to ancient Avaridus and his well-known texts. There are many legends about him; from the myth that he was a sorcerer, to the legend that he brought in Demons from the nether world and bound them to his will. The only truths we know of Avaridus, however, is that he was born a slave in Mercantis, was trained by his master Thorios, and then purchased his own freedom at the age of thirty five. By then he had already written De Structura et Forma and was beginning his treatises on the nature of magic.

Today we're going to examine the Synthesis and how Avaridus explained the nature of the soul. This is important both for the development of philosophical thought in Arunë and also for mechanics within AD&D as they're expressed in the game.

Avaridus writes...

Motion cannot begin without prior motion. Therefore, we must consider that all living things contain a manner of interior motion. This mover-within the Ancestors referred to as a soul. However, it is clear from their behavior that all things which live do not possess the same nature or number of souls. The most basic element is that of growth and change; this is the vegetative soul, which all living things possess. Most plants possess this soul alone, for they cannot move. They are confined simply to the process of breaking down food and transforming it into themselves. All souls interact with the environment thusly: they must take in, and what they take in they make into themselves. This is the process of integration and digestion.

The second form of soul is possessed by some mobile plants and all animals; this is the animalistic soul, which guides creatures to mate, to eat, and to fulfill other base urges. A limited form of cognition appears to be a symptom of this soul, but its movement in that regard is quite restricted.

The third form of soul is the rational soul, possessed by all things which can think and regard. The rational soul is the maker of thought and reason, the progenitor of that mental mental movement which leads to understanding.

These souls are not separate from the body, as the Ancients wrote. Neither are they necessarily immortal (though they may achieve this state accidentally). They are, in fact, a form of reified material that is housed in the humoral composition of the body. When the bodily humors are disordered, so too is the soul. Without the soul, the body is simply flesh without will or force. A soul without flesh would be too fragile to exist, being shredded by even the lightest breeze or the pattern of sunlight striking it. One cannot exist without the other.

This does not spell the certain extinction of the soul upon death. The spirits of Akem, the pscyhopomps, may guide the soul to the Nether World where it is then preserved and protected from such unkind forces. Or, great trauma may cause the soul lodged in a dead or dying body to form a powerful connection to this world. It must then draw energy from somewhere to maintain its cohesion, and thus we have the treacherous houseless souls we refer to as ghosts, haunts, spectres. [Editor's Note: magi studying Avaridus later deduced this "connection" to be a conduit with the Negative Material Plane, which allows the spirit to maintain cohesion outside the body also generates the "suction" effect by which the apparition may draw away fragments of the souls of the living]

The soul is separate from the function of Memory, which is a physical process that occurs within the body. It is a pattern by which the physical body is built and moved, but it is also patterned in turn by the physical nature of the body; changes to the living form may restructure the soul just as a magical transplantation of one agent-soul into another body may cause the agent-soul to lose awareness of itself and function as the natural soul of the body. Here I refer to the ancient adage of the wizard who transforms himself into a chicken and forgets he is a man.

What does this mean in context to actually playing? Not only does it bring some real Classical philosophy into the circuit of the game, it also endeavors to explain the soul as life-energy (ie, levels), the ability of the undead to drain that life-energy, and several other magical effects. It is integral to the 10th Age conception of magic as a motive force (once again, another article!) and forms the very core of thought about immortality, death, and funerary rites. The appearance of ghosts and spectres rely on the Avaridian understanding of the soul, as does their inability to form permanent new memories, leaving them to in a state of confusion about temporality.

It also separates processes of "mind" and "soul," one of which is a mechanical engine of change, the other which is more sublime and exists in what we refer to as "spirits" or reified liquid that flows through the caverns of the brain and is pumped along with the blood to all portions of the body. It informs medical practice in the setting, as well as helps explain madness and the disordered mind, which otherwise might be incomprehensible to a classical/medieval sensibility.

Beyond all that, though, it's damn fun to talk about and speculate on, and even more fun to create. I know there are those who will warn that adding extra depth to a setting can turn people off... but those are probably not the people I wanted to game with anyway.

Super Ghouls 'n Ghasts

On tuesday night the Hounds confronted a number of ghouls in the Eastern Wood of Tyrma. They were hired by the gruff dwarf Vagr Blackstone, the dockside representative of the Shadow Temple in the city. The ecumenical elvish priests of the Shadow had slain a mannish adventurer and his companions in the wood; they had been getting too close to the temple's activities. However, his horrific corpse had been wandering around and devouring travelers in the Wood.

They've been planning to kill Blackstone in order to protect the master smith Galdri Harnmr (who has a bounty on his head from the Arinnfal for, long ago, sleeping with the sister of a prince without his permission). It was a general decision that they would take care of the undead for Vagr in order to gain his trust and then murder him when the time was appropriate.

The relevant information here, though, is that they had decided to go after the undead and formulated a plan to deal with them. They knew that Tareus the Wanderer (the adventurer who was slain) and his companions had appeared in embodied form, so they could nary be any kind of specter. Furthermore, Vagr revealed that though they seemed to be stupified, Tareus would become enraged whenever a member of the Shadow Temple was within his eyesight, and that would drive him onward in a frenzy.

This led them to hypothesize that they were dealing not with zombies or revenants, but with the spawn of Kypselus: ghouls and ghasts. Myndil the Merry, knowing that he could protect the party with spells that would keep them at bay, went to the Temple of Noronia to ask if there was a way to increase that protection to extend to ghasts. Discovering that iron filings would do the trick, he purchased some from Galdri's Hammersong Forge and they went to their task.

They had decided to use the protection to shoot crossbow bolts and throw knives at the creatures and, after Myndil spoke with animals to have a chipmunk lead them to the grove where Tareus lurked in exchange for a few acorns and nuts, they enacted their protection spells. Now, in our games each combat round takes 15 seconds... but spells last a number of minutes. Thus, the 9 minutes of his protection spell were instead 36 combat rounds and availed them well. In that time they dispatched seven of the ghouls and two ghasts.

Some of Tareus' clan had skittered off during the fight, realizing their attempts to strike the Hounds were hopeless. Here is where the story gets interesting. The Hounds set off to look for them, and their protection spells silently wore off. When they found the three ghouls that had escaped, the creatures nearly killed the entire party.

Let's count that up again: preparedness? 7 ghouls, 2 ghasts. Unprepared? Nearly dead at the hands of 3 ghouls.

That is theory in action, gentlemen.

Monstrous Foes: Battle Wraith

Burning or burying the dead is a major issue in the 10th Age; bodies must be properly disposed of lest they result in things like the battle wraith below. The soul's journey to the afterlife can easily be interfered with. It's not immortal, and the weak ties that bind it together can come undone like a linen shirt unraveling. But this is not a metaphysical dissertation, this is a chance to be ware of the BATTLE WRAITH, the result of untended battle-dead:

Wraith, Battle

CLIMATE/TERRAIN: Old battlefields

FREQUENCY: Very Rare

ORGANIZATION: Military Unit

ACTIVITY CYCLE: Any

DIET: None

INTELLIGENCE: Semi- (1-3)

TREASURE: Incidental

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil

NO. APPEARING: 2-8

ARMOR CLASS: 2

MOVEMENT: 9

HIT DICE: 3

THAC0: 17

NO. OF ATTACKS: 1

DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-8 (melee) or 1-6 (missile)

SPECIAL ATTACKS: strength drain, fear aura, con drain

SPECIAL DEFENSES: +1 or better to hit

MAGIC RESISTANCE: Nil

SIZE: M (5’-6’ tall)

MORALE: Fearless (20)

XP VALUE: 420 (melee), 650 (missile)

Battle wraiths are the spirits of those who have been slain on a battlefield and remain unshriven. Their remains tie them to this plane and the intense pain or sorrow in which they died ensures that their spirit does not loose coherence but rather forms a weak negative-energy bond. Only battles in which the most violent deaths were meted out or the most vigorous personalities were slain leave these wraiths behind. They are something like echoes of their former selves, ghostly shadows that desire nothing but to drag all thinking living things down into their own sorrow or else extinguish them forever.

Wraiths resemble the warriors they were in life, clad in the same armor and arms, whether or not these armaments are still present at the site of their demise. Their “flesh” is worn as though from constant exposure to the environment, and close at hand it is clear that it is in fact vaporous or wraithlike. Battle wraiths are normally invisible, only manifesting fully when their tombs are disturbed. 

Battle wraiths have no minds, having been driven insane by their imprisonment in Arunë. They will not parlay or talk, for they prefer to simply destroy. Unnervingly, they fight in whatever formation they used when still alive, though they clearly do not have the intelligence to do so. They will keen horribly as they draw near to their foes, generally completely silent until within 5’ of their targets.

It is possible that, upon discovering a site with battle wraiths haunting it, one may be witness to the last moments of that unit. These ghostly dramas do not end when the soldiers are slain, for the simulacra rise again as wraiths and immediately turn upon those who dared intrude upon their misery.

Combat: The spirits of the battle-dead are terrifying to fight in a stand-up battle. Merely approaching their grave site will, day or night, cause them to leap forth to defend their remains. Battle wraiths are substantially weakened during the day, taking a -2 penalty to-hit (THAC0 19) as well as a -1 penalty to all damage dealt. They are clearly transparent in daylight, and cannot use their constitution draining attacks or their keening song.

When encountered at night they are their most deadly. Every melee attack that lands from a battle wraith deals 1d8 points of damage, regardless of what spectral weapon lands the blow. Being struck by the weapon of a battle wraith causes immediate coldness and numbness to spread from the wound, resulting in a loss of 1 point of constitution. This constitu

The Magnitude of Spirits

As a follow-up to yesterday's discussion, here is an excerpt from Guilmar the Theologian's The Magnitude of Spirits, a book that was widely suppressed at the beginning of the 10th Age but has come to be accepted as part of the corpus on spirits and gods.

THE MAGNITUDE OF SPIRITS

Guilmar the Theologian

What separates the most humble of spirits from the very Gods themselves? Wherein lies the distinction between the Gods of men and the ancient Gods who ruled the world when the giants stood astride the whole north? It is not a fundamental difference, an essential difference, but rather one of power: that is, one of magnitude. A satyr is no different, elementally, from one of the Aelio themselves. What, then, of mere mortals? Is there something which separates them from the spirit world? We are inclined to answer both yes and no. For is it not blasphemy to suggest that man is on the same field as the very Gods? And yet, man possesses a reasoning soul and the capacity for immortality. Again, we are forced to answer that the truth lies along a continuum of magnitude.

Troubling the Dead: Dwarven Draugr

Today we have a discussion of the dwarven draugr, or tomb-spirits, that can sometimes be found guarding the treasures of their clans or even their personal wealth. It's important to note that dwarves of all stripes (but particularly iron dwarves) are buried with great stores of money. Their bodies are generally not interred into the earth but rather placed into sacred sarcophagi or otherwise bound up and preserved.

Dwarves and their Tombs

I had to go to a job interview this morning, which is why the hasty blogpost. As a reward for sticking through thick and thin and over 100 posts, here's a look at the Dwarven Catacombs of the ruined folkhall known as Pinehall that will be featured in the Halloween module Heart of Darkness: