Casurua Ghost

Most of the time a casurua cannot be seen. When it shows itself, or when magic reveals it, the viewer sees dozens of eyes hanging in the air, burning with hatred, and dozens of fleshless hands gathering stones to throw. A smell of the grave rises when it stirs.

The casurua is bound to its focus, a site usually no more than 60 feet in radius and often much smaller, such as a single room, glade, clearing, or pond. It cannot leave, so it can often simply be avoided. To draw victims in, it can make phantom footsteps and rapping noises.

When it first attacks, every witness saves vs. paralyzation or runs in terror for one turn. Each thrown stone, or whatever else lies handy, deals 3d6 points of damage; the DM may reduce this for branches and other softer missiles or raise it for weapons. A standard casurua has 22 Hit Dice and one attack for every full 5 Hit Dice. Smaller ones have weaker powers and should be worth less experience.

It has 75% magic resistance and is very hard to turn. Priests of 9th through 13th level turn it only on a 20, and priests of 14th level or above on a 19 or 20. Like other ghosts, it takes half damage from silver and full damage from magical arms.

A casurua is not a thinking being. It is partly an ectoplasmic ghost and partly a psychic imprint, the shock of many deaths stamped into the place where they happened. It can arise wherever a group dies violently, especially by surprise or injustice: a massacre, a burned house, a natural or other disaster, and above all ruins that were sacked and burned. Battlefields rarely spawn one, since soldiers expect violent death, unless the slain were betrayed.

Defeating it takes more than force. Once a successful turning or the loss of all its hit points has quelled it, a priest of 9th level or more can perform the proper rites to put its dead to rest. Even so, the site should be broken up, its buildings pulled down, its trees felled, its ground dug over, or the casurua may reawaken in about a month. Stubborn cases may require special rites, detailed knowledge of how the victims died, completion of their unfinished tasks with proof brought back to the focus, or the use of empathic or psionic powers.

Most casurua attack any intelligent creature entering their site. Some sleep until someone of the killer's race, family, or bloodline comes near. Player characters can create one themselves, for example by detonating a powerful fireball in a crowded room, though it is unlikely to appear right away.