I'm going to keep the name Karakhai until and unless I decide to monetize my fantasy setting. Even then I'm not sure this would violate a trademark since Karakerion is practically the same as the Greek word for shark. Can you trademarks "shark"?
I'm not closing off further discussion on Karakhai or any other previous post, but I feel like moving on.
Aquatic Undead
First off, Scarterran/Scaraquan Undead pop up for one of several reasons.
1) A mortal necromancer created them
2) Greymoria (or some other deity) created them
3) A Void demon created them
4) An uncommon and unlucky set of circumstances accidentally creates undead.
The line between these categories are blurred. Void Demons, mortal necromancers, and Greymoria all will try to nudge events to trigger #4. A lot of mortal necromancers use method #1 in Greymoria’s name or with the aid of Greymoria spirits.
The First Dead (#2)
On land or sea, Greymoria is the Mother of Necromancy. In Scaraqua, I mentioned the First Dead in passing in my little fluff story. The First Dead are the result when Greymoria and her sisters tried to create life before the sun was a thing. All these experimental life forms died, and Greymoria gathered up the corpses. I have no idea what the first life forms looked like but these creatures are so long dead that their undead remnants would not necessarily resemble their living forms.
An incorporeal version of the First Dead would probably be like an amoeba made of shadow that swims around and latches on to life forms to suck their energy. That’s scary but it’s not very clever, and I kind of want to avoid having too many incorporeal monsters.
I’m thinking the First Dead would be like a mass of writhing undead flesh that feeds on the living. I’m not sure whether to give the First Dead an energy draining attack or just have them literally eat their prey. Either way their writhing mass of flesh would take on physical characteristics of the living creatures they kill. A gross combination of Cronenberg and Frankenstein monsters. After millennia of feeding indiscriminately on anything they can catch, the First Dead no longer resemble whatever they looked like when back when they were the First Life. I guess the First Dead are similar in concept to D&D’s
Vasuthant though my undead have a better backstory and they involve more have more unspeakably awful body horror involved. Maybe I can/should make the process for the First Dead absorbing a victim slow enough that a party of heroes could theoretically save their friend if they cut apart the First Dead fast enough.
Land Greymoria’s early experiments of undead creatures slipped the leash and became random destroyers rather than obedient servants. I figure that can hold Sea Greymoria too. The First Dead don’t answer to Greymoria and they are very resistant to mortal necromancers attempt to control them. The closest thing you can do to necromancer is to do the equivalent of wave a metaphorical carrot in front its nose and try to get the First Dead to swim in the general direction of the necromancer’s enemies.
I’m not sure what the small and large ends of the spectrum would look like but the First Dead will scale in power, so a big blob of flesh is going to be much more deadly than a small one. They can reproduce by budding. I’m not sure what the maximum size of a First Dead blob is going to be. In theory they could grow to unlimited size, but at a certain point a First Dead blob would grow so large that it could not exist in secrecy and a bunch of heroes and theurgists are dispatched to destroy it since
no one wants a powerful First Dead near their home territory.
Grunt Level Undead (#1)
I didn’t change much for how D&D handles zombie and undead. Divine casters can summon undead at ●●, ●●●● and ●●●●●. Arcane casters can create zombies and skeletons at ●●, ●●● and ●●●●●. I may change things to make them match but that’s how the spell list fell out. Anyway. First tier skeletons and zombies are not that scary. Second tier, you get to pick two out of the three: smarter, faster, stronger. Third tier skeletons and zombies are smarter, faster, stronger and tougher.
At the third tier, instead of creating extremely powerful zombies and skeletons, wights and ghouls can be created. The latter of which have special abilities. Wights have an energy drain attack and ghouls have a paralyzing poison. Wights and ghouls will try to resist a necromancer’s control. They are not great at resisting, but a lot of necromancers do not accept a 1% chance of their minions slipping the leash. Wights and ghouls also transform can transform their victims into wights and ghouls. Because of this, only a small portion of wights and ghouls are under the command of a necromancer.
Couple other details. Most spells take one round (five seconds) to cast. Undead creation spells take between ten minutes and two hours depending on how big the corpse is. Tier one undead cost 5-50 gold worth of regents per spell, depending on how big the corpse is. Tier two undead about 15-150 regents. Tier three Undead cost 30-300 gold worth of regents. This is a one-time expense but wights and ghouls need to be fed periodically.
Almost any corpse can become a zombie or zombie variant. This includes animals, people, and monsters. Skeletons are more finicky. If there are too many bones broken or missing, they cannot be raised skeletons. With how many scavengers there are under the sea, this is a severely limiting requirement. Also, skeletons require the corpse to have had some combat training in life, or be a predatory animal.
I see no reason why Scaraqua could not have all of these rules with no modification. Zombies and skeletons are basic undead soldiers land necromancers animate to serve as grunt troops. Mohrgs and Bone Claws are souped up versions of zombies and skeletons respectively. I see little reason to change them for Scaraquan. Physics issues of corpses or skeletons under the sea notwithstanding the whole concept of a skeleton staying together without ligaments is so ridiculous it’s not that much of a handwave to say that skeletons animated from dead sea creatures can swim even if physics says they should not to. However, a creature without bones cannot be made into a zombie. So cephlapods are zombie only. A crustacean has an exoskeleton. There is really no difference between a crustacean zombie and a crustacean skeleton. The exoskeleton does the fighting either way.
Ghosts (#4)
I cover ghosts extensively on
page 18 of this thread.
I don’t see why these mechanics and rules would not work perfectly fine in Scaraqua. Mobility is less valuable because
everyone moves in three dimensions but none of the other powers are broken to be especially weak or overpowered as far as I can see. Though a Scaraquan ghost with Mobility can have fun haunting passing by ships or exploring the land.
Allips (#4)
Allips are basically a rare subspecies of ghost. Allips sometimes occur when a creature dies due to a madness based suicide. Some deranged Scarterran necromancers have tried torturing people to death to create new allips, but deliberately created Allips. No Scarterran necromancer has unlocked a method to reliably create allips. Scaraquan necromancers on the other hand…
Karakhai will sicken and die in about a week if imprisoned. Hypothetically, if a sadistic jailer used magical healing on a Karakhai to drag his period out longer, the Karakhai will fall into madness pretty quick. If they are given the opportunity to beat themselves to death against the walls of their jail, they have a pretty good chance of rising as an allip. Allips are usually indiscriminate killers, but Karakhai allips have an uncanny ability to find the people responsible for their condition, so this is a very risk strategy to employ.
Ephemeral Swarm (#4)
Another rare subspecies of ghost. If a large number of identical animals dies suddenly in great pain, they might leave behind an angry swarm of incorporeal animals. On Scarterra, ephemeral rats are the most common variant of this. I suppose a school of ephemeral fish would work just fine.
Vampires (option #1 via the most powerful necromancer the world has ever seen)
I have extensive lore for Scarterran vampires. Based on my lore, it would be unlikely that either Malthius, the original creator of vampires or any of the Vampire Lords that succeeded him would bother to create aquatic vampire. Though in theory, I suppose a Merfolk could be turned into a vampire. They probably wouldn’t last very long. It’d be hard for a Merfolk vampire to feed in secret and Scaraqua has fewer sapient creatures with drinkable blood than Scarterra and Scaraqua has a proportionally higher number of spell-casters and hero-class warriors.
I like the idea of blood sucking aquatic monsters based on lampreys or cookie cutter sharks, but I think they would work better as living monsters, not undead monsters.
Liches (option #1)
Scarterran liches do not differ significantly from D&D liches. They are basically free willed zombies or skeletons with the full intellect and spell-casting powers of a mage or theurgist. Scarterran liches do not have phylacteries though and their creation process is different.
So waaaay back during the divine Rebellion the Nine hatched a plan to poison Turoch by feeding him poisonous souls. Greymoria manufacturing these poisonous souls by torturing several souls. A lot of these poisoned souls were not eaten. These fractured primordial souls flutter around the Void incapable of doing anything unless a lich magically lassos one of these broken primordial souls and merges it with his or own soul.
If a Scaraquan spellcaster learns the proper ritual he or she can become a very soggy lich through the exact same basic method. The only difference is a Scaraquan probably doesn’t believe he is capturing a soul used to poison Turoch because most Scaraquans don’t acknowledge Turoch. A Scaraquan lich probably believes he is harnessing the soul of one of the First Dead.
I might want to create an aquatic equivalent to vampires either based on lampreys or cookie cutter sharks though I suppose I could have Greymoria create a non-undead parasitic monster just as easily.
Drowned (#2)
D&D 3.5 has an undead monster called the Drowned. I haven’t stated them out yet for D&D10 but I am planning to include them. The Drowned are basically feral zombies of drowned humanoids that out of spite want to drown every living person they encounters. That works, but drowned are going to lurk near the surface of the water and try to find Scarterrans to pull under and drown them. They would probably most ignore Scaraquans, but
maybe if the Drowned are versatile enough they could try to drag Scaraquans
above the surface of the water and asphyxiate them.
They are mostly a creation of Land Greymoria. Land Greymoria
loves to drown her enemies or people who might become enemies at some future point. Drowned would largely ignore Scaraquans and Scaraquans would probably largely ignore Drowned, unless they are very altruistically minded towards helping Scarterran sailors.
I suppose a Scaraquan necromancer that really hated Scarterran sailors could manufacture Drowned. They would be a tier three undead as they are essentially super zombies with a very specialized niche.
Dark Kraken (#2 and/or #4)
As I alluded too before, I wouldn’t mind having an undead remnant of the original Great Kraken swimming around somewhere but I’m not sure what powers and methods to give them to make them interesting and scary. A giant squid zombie is pretty unoriginal and boring. A giant incorporeal zombie is almost impossible to fight.
I’ll probably stick with Kraken as being a
living menace, but I’m open to suggestions.
Witherlings (#2)
It’s unclear whether Greymoria intended this as a gift or a curse to the gnoll people since no gnoll wants to be a witherling but most gnolls will pragmatically weaponized their tribe’s dead when the situation calls for it.
A witherling that is buried intact rather than eaten, burned, or ripped apart will rise a witherling, which creates a flesh hungry undead creature like a ghoul.
I could easily use this same basic principle to make
any Scaraquan come back as a witherling under the proper burial conditions. If I choose to do this, it should probably be a fairly uncommon species that leaves behind witherlings.
Void Spawned Undead
Faceless (#3)
The most common Void spawned undead is the Faceless. A Faceless is an incorporeal life draining humanoid soul that drains the social attributes of sapient prey. They are relatively weak but if a person has zero means of striking incorporeal undead a Faceless cannot be defeated, only fled from.
Faceless are spawned when a Void Demon drains a mortal into a lifeless husk. There is a 50%ish chance of creating a Faceless. Faceless can create new Faceless but only about 10% of their victims rise as Faceless. During the Second Unmaking Faceless probably killed more people than the Void Demons themselves.
Void Demons still come to Scarterra (and Scaraqua) in small numbers, so new Faceless are still spawned. Faceless are extremely resistant to being controlled by mortal necromancers so pretty much everyone destroys Faceless when they can.
On Scarterra, the Nine created Silverwood trees to help mortals fight Faceless. I may have to give Scaraquans a Silverwood equivalent. Scaraquans can flee from Faceless noticeably easier than Scarterrans because Scaraquans can swim in three dimensions.
Bodak (#3)
Bodaks were in the 3.5 D&D Monstrous Manual. I might just toss them out and replace them with a creature of my own design. If a Void Demon drains a person’s life force and eats their soul and that person was an extremely potent badass with Willpower 10, they don’t create a lowly Faceless. They create a Bodak. One of the most powerful minions of the Void Demons known. I don’t see why Bodaks couldn’t swim.
Death Shrieker (#4)
Death Shriekers spawn on the sites of battlefields and massacres on sites that happen to be repositories of Void energy. Deathshriekers were never deliberately created but the numerous large battles of the Second Unmaking created a lot of these. Some of these battles were underwater.
These undead are very powerful but very few new Deathshriekers have been spawned since the Second Unmaking so most of these ancient evils have been put down. Deathshriekers are nomadic and Scaraqua has more open space. There are probably considerably more surviving Deathshriekers in Scaraqua than Scarterra. Given that Deathshriekers are not required to feed on the living, a lot of them haunt very remote frigid waters or super deep waters which are sparsely populated.
Laboratory Undead (#3)
The Demon Lord known as the successor employed the Void Demon equivalent of mad scientists to create new warrior breeds of undead. A lot of extinct races were raised again as unique undead monsters.
I’m going to use the Bone Drinkers or a variant of them. Bone Drinkers in D&D 3.5 are hobgoblin zombies that literally liquefy their victims’ bones and then slurp them up.
Most Void Laboratory undead are very rare, especially a thousand years after the Second Unmaking. Most Laboratory undead are so rare you can count all the members of each species on one hand. Many are literally unique. What they lack in numbers, they make up for novelty. All other undead are known quantities. If you search through enough libraries or question enough magical academics,
someone should be able to tell you the strengths and weaknesses of a vampire, deathshrieker, bodak, allip, etc
The only way to take down an unknown undead monster is trial and error. Some of these abominations can swim.
EDIT: I forgot Salt Mummies (#4).
Salt Mummies occur when a corpse is mummified by salt in an area with lots of latent Void energy. If a corpse is mummified by salt without Void injury, you just get a gross mummified corpse, but it's not going to rise as a zombie and try to kill you, you get a salt mummy with no capital letters.
Since Void Demons turn into salt when they die, it's was not uncommon for large scale battles between Void Demons and mortals to create salt mummies. No salt mummies were seen during the Second Unmaking. The Void demons were probably not aware of Salt Mummies. Salt mummies are completely dormant until some unlucky ignorant salt miners digs them up. While Salt Mummies were created in ancient times, their appearance in the world is a modern phenomenon.
Lots of undead drain the vitality of living creatures in some way. Wights drain physical attributes, Allips drain mental attributes, and Faceless drain social attributes. Vampires literally drink blood. Salt Mummies kill the living by dehydrating them.
As far as I know, corpses cannot be physically mummified by sea water. Since Salt Mummies draw moisture from everything around them it stands to reason that if a Salt Mummy ever entered the sea the Salt Mummy would either explode or it would grow in power to a godlike degree. I'm leaning towards explode.
The odds of a Salt Mummy entering Scaraqua is pretty low, because they are very much a desert monster.
Undead Elementals
Along a similar vein, I'm not sure how Inverse or Twisted Elementals would work. Twisted Elementals are also called Undead Elementals though they aren't technically undead because they were not technically "alive" to begin. They are the result of a normal elmental being mutated by Void energy into a parody of their former self. Twisted elementals are quite rare though during the Second Unmaking the Void Demon armies had mystics that could create them, but none of these demons have been seen in modern times. Thus most/all "new" twisted elementals seem to be accidental creations that no one planned.
Salt elementals draw in moisture and dehydrate living creatures around them.
Vaccuum elementals draw in air and asphinxiate living creatures around them.
Ash elementals draw in heat and freeze living creatures around them.
Dust elementals are the redheaded step children of the Twisted Elemental family. They just like to break stuff and find all buildings and manufactured items offensive. They are indifferent to living creatures and will not normally attack them, unless they try to protect their homes and possessions.
They work great as Scarterran monsters, but I have no idea how
any of these would logically work in Scaraqua.
Anyway, I’m open to any and all suggestions on crafting interesting aquatic undead variants.
“...pearls of great price...”
