This non-corporeal parasitic entity from another dimension is one of a number of creatures that feed upon very powerful human emotions. This particular variety desires the feelings of profound loss and mourning. The first Beloved Dead was summoned to earth by a reckless wizard seeking to restore their beloved to life. They opened a gateway to another dimension and invited the soul of their lost love back into its body. What they got instead was a powerful, malevolent parasite which played upon their grief and ultimately claimed their life.
These spirits linger in places where death, grief, and feelings of tragic loss are strongest. Cemeteries, funeral homes, hospices, emergency rooms and intensive care units of hospitals are likely hunting grounds. The feelings must be resent as the corpse of the lost love one must be intact enough to become animated. Once a target is selected The Beloved Dead enters the corpse of their recently deceased loved one.
At some point The Beloved Dead animates the corpse and travels to their target. This can be difficult, but the creatures sense human thought and emotions, giving them a knack detecting and sneaking past people. Once they reach their target they make contact, using their powerful psychic abilities to mask their undead nature. Unless their target makes an extreme roll on a POW check they fall victim to the creature’s influence. Those few who resist are either driven mad or attacked by the animated corpse. If successfully charmed the target believes the person they lost has returned to them, healthy and whole, as if their loss was just a bad dream. However,
to everyone else, The Beloved Dead looks like an animated corpse.
Once contact has been made The Beloved Dead urges their target to isolate themselves. They explain other people won’t understand and will only try to separate them again. Targets then drop everything they usually do and break off contact with everyone they know. They either hunker down at home or flee to a more secure isolated location with The Beloved Dead, such as a family vacation cabin or an abandoned building.
Once the target and The Beloved Dead are isolated and secure the feeding begins. The creature typically rests somewhere central to the location and projecting an image of the deceased love one into the mind of the target. This works so long as the target remains within five hundred feet of The Beloved Dead. The target then enjoys a long fantasy of spending special time with their loved one, doing the things they enjoyed together in life. However, this is just a dream. The target is alone with the rotting corpse of their loved one, and the parasitic spirit possessing it.
During this time target neither eat, or drink, or sleep. They may believe they do such things as part of the fantasy projects into their mind. Typically targets die from dehydration after about ten days of this, as The Beloved Dead feeds on their emotions and diminishing life force. Once the target dies The Beloved Dead leaves the corpse, divides into two new parasitic spirits, and the whole process starts all over again.
The creature uses its target for defense as long as possible. It allows other to think the target is simply someone insane with grief who’s stolen the corpse of their love one. If pressed the target does anything possible to protect The Beloved Dead, including murder and self-sacrifice. Should this fail The Beloved Dead animates and defends itself. The only way to stop The Beloved Dead from killing its target is to drive it from the corpse it inhabits.
In combat these creatures are quite feeble. They’ll use weapons if possible, or claw and bite with their rotting fingers and teeth. However, they are quite hardy and cannot be dispelled from a corpse until it is almost totally destroyed. Once The Beloved Dead is reduced to zero hit points it becomes immobile, yet still inhabits the corpse and maintains control over the target. To fully free the target from control by The Beloved Dead the body the creature possesses must be rendered uninhabitable. This can be done by burning the corpse, dissolving it in acid, dismembering it, or inflicting damage to the motionless corpse equal again to its original hit points. Even then the spirit itself is not destroyed, only driven from that particular corpse. To permanently destroy the spirit of A Beloved Dead damage must been inflicted by either spells or enchanted weapons.
The Beloved Dead, Parasitic possessors of the departed
Char. Averages rolls
STR 50 (3D6 x 5)
CON 100 (4D6+6 x 5)
SIZ 65 (2D6+6 x 5)
DEX 35 (2D6 x 5)
INT 80 (3D6+6 x 5)
POW 80 (3D6+6 x 5)
HP 16
Av. Damage Bonus: 0
Average Build: 0
Average Magic Points: 16
Move 6
ATTACKS
Attacks per round: 1
Fighting attacks: The Beloved Dead attack with either boney claws, bites, of an available weapon.
Fighting 40% (20/8), damage 1D3+DB / or by weapon type.
Dodge: 17% (8/3)
Armor: None.
Skills: Listen 90%, Spot Hidden 50%, Stealth 90%.
Sanity Loss: 1/1D8 for Sanity points to see The Beloved Dead.
