In honor of Halloween I have decided to explore Ghouls as a player option. The ghoul is one of the classic monsters of horror. Don't believe me? Watch Night of the Living Dead and pay attention to what the zombies are called. That's right, ghouls. So what is the ghoul?
In its earliest mythical roots it is a murderous spirit which lurks in graveyards, eats the dead, and shapeshifts into the forms of those it eats. Reminiscent in ways of vampires; one is the recently dead arisen to prey on mortals the other is a demon that takes the form of the recently dead to prey on mortals. Not too dissimilar. That said I am no expert on the mythical ghoul, or its Arabic roots. In fact the oldest reference to a ghoul I have personally read might be Poe's "The Bells" which I am uncertain if I have read, or perhaps "Pickman's Model" and The Dreamquest of Unknown Kardath by Phillip K. Lovecraft.
Now Lovecraft's ghouls are creatures once human (Pickman himself did become a ghoul) which feast upon human flesh but are not necessarily all bad. In the Dreamquest they are the loyal allies and supporters of our protagonist after all.
Clark Ashton Smith presented us with ghouls as well. While Wikipedia only lists "The Nameless Offspring" which I, for one, have never read, in his Zothique stories depicting the final continent of Earth's dying days they make an appearance as well. Mordiggian, the eponymous "Charnel God" of the tale, is served by a clergy of ghouls was actually something of a benign god, protecting the city that proffered him worship in exchange for them placing the dead to burial in his temple. The ghoulish priests perhaps ate these corpses, but what we do see is them protecting them from desecration by necromancers, and Mordiggian himself taking action. Even so they spared the foolish narrator who had desecrated their sacred sanctum with his presence, simply threatening him into silence of what he had seen and not enacting the semi-official death penalty for such an act, because he was not there to desecrate the dead but for other reasons. Mordiggian is officially a Great Old One (meaning later writers decided because he was creepy he was evil) and can be fought in Arkham Horror as an Ancient One.
Fritz Leiber's Lhankmar stories present the ghouls as an anthropophagous offshoot of humanity with strangely see through flesh so that they appear to be walking skeletons full of guts. Fafhrd has a thing for one of them and thinks she looks strangely beautiful.
This of course brings us back to Romero and The Night of the Living Dead and with it the combination of ghouls with the risen dead, and the creation of what we now call zombies. As I am no expert on actual zombies I will not get into them too thoroughly, except to say that the movie zombie has more in common with vampires than zombies or ghouls and with ghouls than zombies. It is this incarnation that causes ghouls to be the living dead (note how all the other versions were very much alive), and gives them their ghoul fever.
This brings us to Dungeons and Dragons and its ghouls. Now they are a curious mix of things. In 3.x they are far from Romero's unintelligent shamblers, as they possess more intelligence than your average human, yet they still bear its mark with undeath and ghoul fever to turn a bit foe into another ghoul. I choose to consider this intelligence a left over from Lovecraft whom Gygax admitted as a major influence and whose influence can be seen throughout the game especially in the older editions. Even so I have no proof of this, this is simply my own belief. Then they have paralysis which comes from nowhere I can fathom, and their stronger cousin the ghast even bears a stomach churning stench though it can easily be traced to the stench of carrion.
In 3.5 Libris Mortis promoted Doresain, the King of Ghouls, to demigodhood. Before this he had been a demonic or undead servant of the demonlord Yeenoghu and Libris Mortis did not retcon this relationship, just made him a demigod... who was routinely forcibly indentured to demon lords... this feels wrong to me. Even so this gave a ghoul god and with the gravetouched ghoul template which represents his chosen a playable ghoul. That's right a playable ghoul. As a deity Doresain takes cues from Mordiggian above (under ground temples man) but is... boring.
Everything here is intended primarily for use with this template. Doresain may be used or not, divorced from Doresain the template can still be used to represent a ghoul which retains more of its humanity and thus its levels. For the purposes of this thread I am ignoring that the template lists Always Chaotic Evil; just like they did for their sample True Neutral Gravetouched Ghoul Monk. Instead I am assuming that it is a usually. I also advice not including the diet dependence trait as presented in Libris Mortis because it was poorly thought out for PCs, I'd suggest increasing the time needed between meals to at least a week.
Ghoul
Ghouls are known as flesh hungry predators which lurk in the darkness seeking to devour the unwary. Their charnel territories hide in the shadows cast by humanoid society, existing underneath it and throughout it, a menace which spreads its roots in the refuse and rotten corpses of mankind.
Personality: Ghouls' personalities are informed by their previous race. Those ghouls that retain vestiges of life, and thus are the most playable, show the most signs of their previous race but even they are changed by the transformation. Ghouls tend towards a predatory cast to their thoughts, judging things first and foremost by the hunger which gnaws at their very souls. Many judge things first and foremost by their quality as food, causing many ghouls to have better relations with animals than humanoids as their every instinct screams that a human not killed by ghoul fever is food, and it is rare that one cares deeply for a pig fattened for the feast. They retain their sapience, however, and although their instincts inform them that a creature is food a ghoul may find some kinship with a living humanoid, or a loved one of their blurred past life; this does not necessarily imply safety for the creature. A ghoul knows only one way to ensure that a humanoid is never eaten by if not them another, to make them into a ghoul as well. Ghouls are ultimately selfish creatures, banding together out of necessity to bring down the dangerous prey which is a living humanoid, and devoured by a gluttonous need to feast. They can form bonds of fondness, and even love, but it is an exceptional ghoul that is willing to self-sacrifice.
Physical Description: Ghouls appear much as they did in life, but with some notable changes. A ghoul will almost always have a gaunt, starved appearance; fitting an incarnation of hunger. Their jaws grow more prominent, teeth becoming almost fangs, and their hands twist in monstrous claws. Thus a ghoul is shaped like a starved corpse, twisted by the hunger that fills them. This thin, lean build gives ghouls a tendency to be significantly lighter than they were in life.
Relations: Relations between ghouls and living humanoids are extremely strained, like those between wolves and sheep. Native outsiders are treated very much like humanoids, with the further from humanoid form a creature becomes the less a ghoul sees them as food. Even other undead are not exempt from a ghoul's hunger; while they will not prey upon another ghoul a fresh zombie or a vampire is near enough to life to stir a ghoul's hunger, older zombies and wights tend to register more strongly as rotten corpses still edible but less appetizing. Plants and constructs are immune to a ghoul's hunger, and mostly immune to a ghoul's interest as well. Sapient specimens can develop close relations with ghouls as they neither trigger the hunger instinct nor compete for the same supply of food as other ghouls do.
Alignment: Ghouls are usually Chaotic Evil. The twisting of their personality which comes with their transformation into undeath leads them to be self-centered and amoral, disinclined towards caring about other creatures beyond how they are necessary to the ghoul. A ghoul is more likely to stray from Chaos than Evil; a Neutral Evil ghoul being fairly common, and a Lawful Evil ghoul being far more common than one willing to altruistically act in a way that could be considered Good.
Ghoulish Lands: Ghoul kingdoms exist within the lands of their prey, that is the humanoids from which they rise. These kingdoms exist to keep their own populations in check to the extent that the champions of the living do not move forward to eradicate the ghoul tribe. A small tribe is liable to be nothing more than a savage pack, which moves and attacks feasting upon whatever they can; these packs are often short lived as the forces of Pelor and other gods will rally to wipe them out. A full tribe will force its members to rise above their Chaotic nature, creating strict rules and regulations to keep its own members in check, and relying primarily upon grave robbing to feed, and only occasionally resorting to murder; these ghouls are strict, however, in killing and eating those who discover their tribe's location or existence.
A ghoul which actually tries to integrate into human society is typically hunted and reviled, treated like a savage monster to be killed and nothing more. They sometimes find acceptance as adventurers, but to do such is rare at best.
Religion: Most ghouls are far from heavily religious. Doresain is a common deity among those ghouls which choose to devote themselves to the gods as he represents the hunger that they feel, and is a patron of their race in particular. Nerull and Wee Jas as deities of death and undeath are other favorites, with Nerull being significantly more common than the more moderate Wee Jas. Vecna is often given worship by ghoul tribes in a request that he shelters their secret existence from the sight of mortals, offering him tribute and praise in exchange for it. Mordiggian is worshiped by ghoul tribes when the Great Old Ones are held in reverence, presented as champion and protector of the ghouls, encouraging the formation of tribes and enclaves over mere scattered tribes.
Language: Ghouls speak the languages they spoke in life. Ghouls do not have their own language.
Names: Ghouls typically bear the names they bore in life, on occasion taking new titles to represent their new forms.
Adventures: Those ghouls which adventure often do so because they were adventurers in their lives before becoming ghouls. They do not necessarily do so for the same reasons, although sometimes a twisted version of their previous quest shines through. A paladin which adventured to protect a kingdom might now adventure to protect the same kingdom by transforming its inhabitants into immortal undead. A wizard who sought ultimate arcane power now has infinite time to do so. Ghouls balance their former desires with their overwhelming hunger, and it is this which drives some other ghouls to adventure. Their last vestiges of humanity drive them forth from the land they call home, even as their ambition which pushed them to become more than an average ghoul drives them to gain more and more power. These ghouls may begin by seeking out forces of evil to feast upon, but as the hunger gnaws away at their integrity they will turn to simply amassing power to find more and more succulent morsels and develop a herd to ensure they have a steady supply of food.
The Necropolis (Sample Ghoul Society)
The Necropolis is a sample ghoul tribe which lives beneath a human city of some size. The Necropolis is designed to either be a generic template from which to develop ideas, an archetypical example if you will, or to be customized slightly and dropped into a setting as it is.
Thorp: "Conventional"; NE; 10,000 GP limit; Assets 52,000 GP; Population 52; Mixed (82% human, 8% halfling, 4% gnome, 2% dwarf, 2% other ghouls, 2% other undead).
The ghouls of the Necropolis dwell beneath a human city in tunnels that have been painstakingly carved out from below and are carefully expanded to find their way into crypts and burial sites of the city above. The Necropolis is actually large by the standards of ghouls. While a small thorp by human standards, it is a stable ghoul population at roughly a third of a percent of the human population above. Though the ghouls in the tribe are unable to eat more than about half the interred corpses of the city, giving each only a corpse and a half each year, they are able to supplement their diet with a variety of animal meat and the occasional otyugh or other sapient aberration which makes its way into the tunnels that they dwell in.
The ghouls have made an alliance with the thieves' guild of the city above exchanging maps and access to the tunnels for assistance in maintaining their own secrecy and helping find a supply of food. The ghouls occasionally join in with the thieves on particularly bloody jobs, killing the guards and eating them later. The ghouls are not actually as secret as they believe, there are elements beyond the thieves' guild which know about the ghouls, but as they keep the city free of potentially troublesome aberrations and cause only few deaths themselves, preying instead on those already dead, they are ignored for the most part.
The ghouls live in enclaves of about 3 to 5, each enclave having one or two above average members. The necropolis's 13 enclaves are led by Epherum the Ascetic (Human Gravetouched Ghoul Warblade 7/Courtier 9, LE) who along with his two enforces Zorgith (Human Lich, Cleric of Vecna 12, NE) and Telpher (Human Gravetouched Ghoul Paladin of Tyranny 2/Rogue 9, LE). Epherum, whose title comes from the noteworthy periods he has gone without feeding, a side-effect of the Ring of Sustenance he wears which fulfills his actual need for flesh, and reduces it merely to a continual craving. Epherum created the Necropolis decades ago, cutting down foe after foe to establish himself as the pack's strongest ghoul and establishing a code of rules to regulate them. These rules promoted secrecy and stealth, demanding from the tribe a regulation of numbers. The tribe has grown only slowly since then, careful not to inflict the fever without need, with Epherum himself choosing targets for acquisition into the tribe. Telpher was one of the first he selected, a paladin of Pelor who was bent on finding and destroying the Necropolis but after his transformation he devoted himself to Vecna and helped Epherum and the ghouls find his fellows and end that push through force; one of the few consolidated hunts of the Necropolis.
PCs could interact with the Necropolis either hostilely or on semi-friendly terms. If given safe passage by the thieves' guild the PCs could possibly make some deal with the ghouls either seeking something that has made its way down to the tunnels, passage to lower levels, or perhaps simply the remnants of someone who has been eaten for resurrection. They could fight them due to blindly wandering into the tunnels, or actively seeking to exterminate the ghoul menace beneath the city.
