cause Dracula owes us money

Image © Matthew Meyer, accessed at Yokai.com here

[As Edo Japan had very strong gender roles, an obsession with sex and with policing it, it's not a surprise that brothel yokai are a whole subgenre. The last time I wrote one was the kerakera-onna way back during the original Year of Yokai, and my interpretation was much more sympathetic than the original. The taka-onna goes the other direction, from spooky-but-harmless into actively malicious. Baseless harassment campaigns have been on my mind lately; can't imagine why.

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Taka-onna CR 4 NE Undead This woman has grayish skin and snaggly teeth, but appears otherwise unremarkable until her torso extends, tripling her height.

Shame is a powerful emotion, and women that die in the throes of deep shame may rise as a taka-onna. Having felt small in life, they can grow to great heights in their unlife, and use this ability primarily to peer through windows and over walls to watch people. They haunt bars, brothels, gambling halls and other places where vice and secrets go hand in hand. This voyeurism is not just to indulge the taka-onna’s curiosity—a taka-onna ferrets out dirty secrets in order to inflict shame on others. The initial shock and disgust at having been found out is only the first course to a banquet of shame, as the taka-onna then goes on to share what they’ve learned while disguised as a mundane person. A victim’s life can fall apart rapidly and dramatically upon having their hidden lusts and fears revealed. And if a taka-onna chooses a victim who hasn’t actually done anything wrong? Then she makes something up and spreads rumors about it anyway.

Taka-onna have sharp teeth and nails, but their strongest weapon is shame itself. Those that meet a taka-onna’s eyes can have their deepest shame magnified in their mind, reliving it for hours and leaving them distracted and flailing. Taka-onna typically use their look of shame against the strongest-looking combatant, then flee, using their ability to extend and contract their bodies to clamber over rooftops and walls. Taka-onna are much more likely to stay and fight if they’re in groups, and more than one poor fool has attempted to pickpocket from a gaggle of gossiping women only to be torn to pieces by a gang of taka-onna in disguise.

Taka-onna remember their lives before undeath, and often make their still-living enemies their first choice of victims. If a taka-onna has a fondness for a living friend or relative, that manifests even more cruelly—a taka-onna will often harass them to the point of suicide, hoping that they die with sufficient shame to rise as a taka-onna themselves. Many taka-onna go out of their way to seek out others of their own kind, giving them a perfect opportunity to vent their grudges and stoke each other’s bitterness. In groups, taka-onna are more likely to dream big, turning their individual inflicting of weaponized shame into harassment campaigns that can take over whole communities. The form of undeath that creates a taka-onna manifests most frequently among those who suffer prejudice from the society where they live. Unfortunately, this does not make them any more sympathetic to the living victims of prejudice, instead seeing them as a pool of victims about whom revealing secrets and spreading scurrilous rumors are likely to do more damage. Male taka-onna, called taka-otoko, are also possible and more common than taka-onna in certain societies.

"Alfonsine" © Jakub Jagoda, accessed at his ArtStation here

[The European fascination with the undead has always had a sexual component. The first vampire fiction, "The Vampyre" by John Polidori, posits the vampire as a rake who seduces women and murders them after marriage. So many ghost stories are about tragedies befalling beautiful women. Mummy fiction started as an erotic fantasy about "exotic" princesses returning from death; the image of mummy as shambling murderer was a Code-Era Hollywood creation. And speaking of Hollywood, both the first voodoo zombie movie (White Zombie) and the best (I Walked With a Zombie) take the premise of "what if a pretty white lady got turned into a zombie?"

So the lack of any seductive or even just beautiful undead in original D&D is a little strange in light of greater trends. I suspect Gary Gygax himself didn't like the trope: for all the succubi and weretiger sideboob in the Monster Manuals, even the vampire is profoundly chaste (note that classic D&D vampires punch people to drain their life, and blood drinking is decidedly secondary). On the other hand, casual sexualization of the undead is common in modern pop culture; I'm thinking of the female forsaken in Warcraft, who are gray to purple and maybe have some cosmetic rot on their faces, but universally have great cleavage. So I wanted to course correct; write an undead about sex rather than sexy-as-default and I wanted to take it seriously.

The name "crypt concubine" has been rattling around in my head for a while, inspired by tales of women immured with their husbands on death that are found throughout the world. They're part of my recent push to make monsters linked to their living selves in an explicit and horrific way. The mechanics are inspired by Legend of the Eight Samurai, a Japanese fantasy movie I saw recently thanks to @bowelfly. I can't fully recommend it (our "heroic" lead tries to rape our heroine multiple times before they become love interests), but the many monsters and sword fights are fun. The villains of the piece are an undead empress who stays young by bathing in blood, and her undead son who stays young by grafting skin to his own. Once they're done with the parts, they animate their victims as undead vishkanya, who despite having being bled and skinned just look like pretty women. Incidentally, the normal appearance and severe toxicity, plus the connection to royal malfeasance, makes the crypt concubine a more legend accurate vishkanya than Pathfinder's snake people. The idea that they enhance the senses of the undead comes from @coolclaytony, who suggested it on the Patreon.

Speaking of... if you want to support smart writing about monsters, come check out the Creature Codex Patreon! If you're interested in the stuff mentioned in the first paragraph, might I suggest the essay I wrote for Halloween: Strahd, Vampires and the Reincarnated Love Trope]

Crypt Concubine CR 5 LE Undead This woman is beautiful and voluptuous; the only sign of anything unusual is in her blank eyes and the black stains under her pale skin.

One of the most infamous cruelties inflicted by tyrants is taking their household with them when they die. Slaves, servants, wives and concubines are ritually killed to serve their lord in the afterlife, or worse left alive to slowly die of suffocation or thirst. In lands where necromancy is common and tyrants rule beyond the grave, an even worse fate awaits some of their “favorite” lovers—animation into a crypt concubine, an undead creature that combines eternal beauty with dark and deadly powers. Crypt concubines are rarely found alone, instead serving a mummy lord, lich or other powerful undead. A crypt concubine's very presence enriches the senses of the undead, allowing them to experience smell, taste and touch as if they were alive.

A crypt concubine radiates unholy power—other undead are invigorated just by staying near her. Crypt concubines can attack with their bare hands, but usually carry small weapons that are easily concealed, such as daggers or darts. Her saliva and other fluids contain a lethal toxin derived from black lotus extract, and even a kiss from a crypt concubine can cause severe internal bleeding. Crypt concubines typically lick their weapons between uses. When a crypt concubine is slain, the crypt lotus poison is released in a burst, rupturing from beneath her skin for one last deadly surprise.

To all appearances, a crypt concubine is still a vital living person, usually but not always female. Only by touching her does the chill of death and the necrotic energy flowing in her veins instead of blood become apparent. Crypt concubines are charming and deceptive, and may claim to be living prisoners or sacrifices in order to lure enemies into a sense of false security. They may even leave the crypts of their masters as diplomats, spies or assassins. The status of a crypt concubine within an undead court depends on her master; some are trusted lieutenants, whereas others are little more than animate decorations. Most crypt concubines are unflinchingly loyal, as devoted as the most faithful spouse or lover could be. If their master is especially cruel or neglectful, however, crypt concubines have been known to turn on them, even recruiting adventurers into doing the dirty work.

A crypt concubine can be created with a create undead spell at caster level 15th, but a dose of black lotus extract must be used as an additional material component.

Image © Randi Sánchez Verduga, accessed at his ArtStation here

[Commissioned by @cupofsorrows. The trick with finding art for Gengar is I wanted something more realistic than the official game art, but still maintaining the basics of the design. There are various attempts to do a Gengar as a real animal (a weasel or a flightless bat, etc.), but I wanted it to maintain being a weird grinning blob.

Also, I know that in the anime, Gengars typically want to play and make friends, even while being scary. But the Pokedex entries, especially in more recent editions, make it clear that a Gengar will straight up murder you if it gets the chance. Hence it being CE. If you want a friendlier, CN Gengar, that’s totally your prerogative. It’s like Slimer from the Ghostbusters movie versus The Real Ghostbusters]

Gengar CR 14 CE Undead This creature appears to be a fat purple-black humanoid composed of pure shadow. Its head and torso seem to be the same piece, with triangular ears, red eyes and a huge leering grin.

When fey die, they are typically reborn somewhere in the First World, albeit in perhaps a diminished state. If the soul of a fey gets misdirected and enters the Plane of Shadow by mistake, it can incarnate as a sinister undead being, a gengar. Also known as feyshadows, gengars are malicious and mischievous, going out of their way to vex and torment mortals and feed on their panic. Fey creatures with a relationship to fear, such as bogeymen and brollachans, are most likely to manifest in this fashion.

A gengar is a thing of shadow, capable of distorting its form. Its favorite prank is to follow a mortal disguised as its shadow, before splitting away and either attacking the poor dope or simply giving them a good scare. They feed on the mental energy of sleeping creatures, and delight in inflicting nightmares, which they then savor using their dream eater ability. All gengars know a variety of debilitating curses. It is said that the only way to be sure of a gengar’s presence is to notice the air cooling around it—but this has led to lots of sleepless nights in areas with a light draft. Gengars find various rumors for how to detect them or ward them off hilarious, and often spread them.

Although gengars are typically evil, they are usually negatively disposed to other undead, and kill those that they cannot bully or cajole into service. All gengars maintains some of their fey whimsy, and some even are known to befriend mortals who are able to keep up with their jokes and amuse them. These relationships can be fractious, as gengars will hex even their allies if they are feeling bored or puckish.

Image © Wizards of the Coast, by Wayne Reynolds

[Sponsored by @mbg159. The hullathoin is a monster from the 3.0 Fiend Folio, and is actually one of two different huge undead that have acid attacks and fight alongside their spawn that appear in that book. The second is the ulgurstasta. I honestly preferred the ulgurstasta when I ran 3.x, because it's simpler to use compared to the odd ecology of the hullathoin. The hullathoin produces bloodfiend locusts, which have a separate statblock in that book, and those locusts cause their victims to rise as vampire spawn. This chain of events makes a CR 15 hullathoin difficult to use at a level where the CR 5 vampire spawn and CR 8 locusts actually make a difference in combat. Although to be fair, the stat block is a higher CR than I actually think it's worth. I lowered the CR of my version to 12, so that the spawn and locusts, while still not being major threats, could conceivably have an affect on the battle. I also modified its attacks to be based on the art; as written, the hullathoin has two tentacles growing from its shoulders, but Wayne Reynolds didn't get that memo. So, prehensile tail it is. And yes, this means there's two monsters for the price of one here: the "bloodfiend" locusts have been renamed to Abaddon locusts, and they're so mechanically simple and low on flavor text that I decided to just throw them in instead of giving them their own entry. Another thing that bugged me about the hullathoin/locust/vampire spawn scenario was the ambiguity about whether these vampire spawn could rejuvenate or not. After all, they don't have coffins. So I made that explicit, and used it as an excuse for just a little bit more body horror.

While pondering how to make the hullathoin fit into Pathfinder, and especially my version of Pathfinder, I realized that the art had been influencing me subconsciously for a long time. Deceid has been one of my favorite of the daemonic harbingers for a long time despite his obscurity: I used him in my RPG Superstar encounter entry, and one of the reasons I lost was because the judges didn't recognize him! He's described as a "rotting primordial lizard", and I have always pictured him as looking something like the hullathoin art. So, Deceid gets to be associated with hullathoins now.

If you'd like to support what I do, check out the Creature Codex Patreon here]

Hullathoin CR 12 NE Undead This creature resembles a rotting lizard the size of a house. Grey scaly skin has sloughed off from its skull, revealing a long snout with jagged teeth, and a pinpoint of white light in its eye sockets. Its body is coated with oversized boils, some of which erupt in pus, and the squirming of insects can be seen underneath its scales.

The hullathoin is an undead horror created as an engine of ecological destruction. They were created by the collaboration of three horrible demigods—the Vermilion Mother, Deceid and Briarpatch—and are shaped in Deceid’s image as a tribute to his vanity. Each hullathoin was once a dragon, tortured to death by strange botanical poisons and the ravenous jaws of Abaddon locusts. The process of creating a hullathoin causes the dragon’s wings to melt away into foul corruption, and the whole body of the creature seeps with disgusting and deadly fluids. Despite their bestial appearances, hullathoins are intelligent, and completely devoted to mass death.

A hullathoin’s body is an ever-shifting mass of putrescence, and they are capable of surprising speed despite their lurching gait. They usually begin combat by causing their sores to burst, spraying their toxic, acidic pus in all directions. They target those that succumb fully to weakness and nausea, tearing into them with savage natural weapons, grasping them in their prehensile tails, and warping their flesh in excruciating ways. A hullathoin can cause its body to erupt with Abbadon locusts, which drain the life force from their enemies. Hullathoins enjoy directing their locusts to finish off weakened foes in order to transform them into fiendish vampire spawn. After a winning battle, a hullathoin will linger on the battlefield, gathering up the fallen and producing accessory bones, oblong slabs of ribs and vertebrae with hollows in order to provide their new vampire spawn with a safe “coffin” to rest in.

A hullathoin is typically surrounded by a mob of miscellaneous undead, including the vampire spawn it creates, those controlled by its channeled energy and free-willed undead who respect its power and serve it willingly. As if by a memory of their draconic lives, hullathoins prefer to lair underground in caves and dungeons, emerging periodically to clear their territories of pesky life. As a hullathoin passes through an area, animal life flees, humanoids are warped into undead monsters, and plants are left virtually untouched. Hullathoins ignore plant monsters on their rampages, and the areas they haunt are often home to strange mutant plants as well as the walking dead.

“Perhaps you’d like to see my pets. They were ALL … rescues.” 

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