Bone-Caller [Human]

Bone-callers are a reclusive human people who dwell nowhere but the misty dread realm. Some claim they descend from the wandering fortune-tellers, but nothing proves it, and they never speak of their past. Homeless as a people, they settle on mountaintops, in deep caves or in the hearts of trackless swamps, always somewhere hard to reach; anyone wanting their services must first win through whatever stands in the way. The best-known, a hermit called Old Rattlestaff, stands in for them all.

Old Rattlestaff looks like any withered old man: short, frizzy hair that has never met a comb, gray eyes deep under a heavy brow, a long, narrow nose and a clean-shaven face apart from a few wiry whiskers on the chin. He wears loud, gaudy colors. He hobbles on a tall staff hung with countless small bones from lizards, birds, squirrels, fish, snakes and other little beasts. He talks like the local bayou folk and claims to speak with the dead, living or undead, whenever he wishes; if the bone-callers have their own tongue, no outsider can say.

Physically he is a frail cripple: his staff connects only on a roll of 20 and deals 1d2. His real defense is the dead. A ritual of 1 hour calls 2d6 zombies, of which 85% are normal, 10% monster zombies and 5% ju-ju zombies, useless in a sudden ambush. However, any undead of Low intelligence or less that sees him attacked rushes to defend him at once.

Given time, any spell from the Greater Divination, Enchantment/Charm or Necromancy schools is within his reach. Each takes a ritual of at least 1 hour per spell level, during which he must not be disturbed, involving candles, incense and the sacrifice of small animals to some power he will not name. On top of normal components, he requires a personal token of the client and another of the victim, such as hair, nail parings, blood, a favorite blade, a lucky charm or a wedding band. With these, range does not matter. The tokens survive the casting, and he keeps them as part of his fee, so he can turn the same magic on any client who later threatens him or refuses to pay.

No one knows where he came from; it is said even he has forgotten. Two decades back, under the year's last full moon, word spread across the bayou domain that a stranger had raised a reed, bamboo and cane hut on an island in a black swamp lake west of the port town. A rickety pole-driven raft appeared on the shore for anyone who wished to cross.

He would strike down enemies for a price: not coin, but a service. Most tasks are minor, a few are extreme, and their severity bears no relation to what he did. He names the price only after the ritual ends and the spell takes hold, claiming the rite itself reveals it; the game master should decide it in advance to suit the story. Those who fail to pay sicken and die beyond the reach of any natural or magical healing, then rise as ju-ju zombies wandering the marshes around the lake, serving him forever to settle the debt.

The swamp around his island teems with deadly beasts, so simply reaching him is an adventure. Yet none of these creatures, magical or ordinary, ever harm him, and most will defend him, so a killer of the old man would have little hope of escaping the marsh alive. Rumor adds that a powerful curse falls on anyone who harms a bone-caller; whether that is true, and what form it takes, is for the game master to decide.