Chosen One

Chosen ones began as human slaves. Torture and the vilest arcane rites have made them savage guardians bound to the will of their makers, most notoriously a nation's slaver-wizards. The magic warps each into a grotesque mockery of a human: the face twists, the teeth grow long, the skin toughens into a leathery protective hide, and the hands stretch into gnarled, filth-crusted claws.

Each chosen one burns to avenge its suffering on those who caused it, but its creators have redirected that rage so that it blames everyone except its maker and his companions, and attacks all others with relentless fury. In battle it fights without fear, biting with its fangs and raking with its dirty claws; some are given weapons that replace the claws. Its bite carries venom: a victim who fails a save vs. poison suffers 1d8 more damage each round for 1d6 rounds. If its creator is coerced or taken hostage, a secret code word sends the chosen ones after the captor.

The conditioning is not perfectly reliable. From the sixth round of a fight onward, there is a cumulative 1% chance per round that old memories, including who truly caused its pain, come flooding back (5% after ten rounds, for example). The chosen one shrieks, abandons the fight, and races off in search of its master to take vengeance, battling only those who block its way.

Chosen ones make effective, if savage, guards, and are at their most useful and frightening when turned loose to hunt down a trespasser or wrongdoer. White-hot rage against everyone nearby fills them, held in check only by their master's authority, and if disturbed they may strike out unless their creator firmly orders them back.

Their makers accept this unreliability as the price of useful slaves. One slaver-wizard, Vorzhul, died along with several guests when all 20 of his chosen ones went berserk at once during a dinner party. His peers call it a fluke, though some suspect an enemy of his learned how to break the magical conditioning.

The slaver-wizards post chosen ones to guard homes and vital sites such as dungeons, vaults and laboratories. Once made, a chosen one can return to humanity only through a wish or similarly mighty magic. Escaped chosen ones nearly always terrorize the innocent for a time before they are tracked down and destroyed.

Many of these wizards dream of whole legions of chosen ones loosed on neighboring lands with no commanders at all. Political turmoil in their homeland has so far blocked the plan, and the prospect of masses of them going berserk and seeking revenge at home may shelve it until the creatures can be made more stable.

The chosen one spell is a 5th-level wizard alteration usable only by evil wizards. It has a range of touch, needs verbal, somatic and material components, takes 1 hour to cast, has a special area of effect, lists no saving throw, and is permanent. It is a sequence of rituals and torments that turns an ordinary human of no more than 3 HD into a crazed killer. The subject must be bound and helpless, and when the casting ends it rolls a save vs. death magic; on a failure it becomes a chosen one, obedient to the caster.