Darkling

A darkling was once one of the wandering fortune-tellers, banished for some crime and steadily soured by the gloom of the misty dread realm until nothing good remains. He still resembles his former people, though his skin tends to be darker and his body is nearly always thin to the point of starvation, with hollow, haggard features. The bright clothes of his kin give way to dull browns and earthy grays.

Darklings avoid the clans that exiled them but happily feed on ordinary folk and their towns. Besides the human common tongue, each knows 3 to 6 further languages or dialects.

A darkling keeps a fragment of his old gifts, and it makes him both dangerous and cunning. His foreseeing tells him what enemies are about to do, so he is never surprised and succeeds at every saving throw automatically. Foes also take -2 on their own surprise rolls, which is why darklings love to strike from ambush.

In close fighting he prefers daggers, short swords and other light blades, which deal normal weapon damage. Their real threat is poison: darklings are known for coating their edges, so even a shallow cut may be fatal. The venom works like type E poison (injected, immediate onset, death/20), and the recipe is a guarded secret that, rumor says, even the fortune-tellers cannot reproduce.

When he gains surprise, a darkling often turns his evil eye on a victim. This twisted form of the clans' curse inflicts -2 on attack rolls and saving throws unless the target saves vs. spells.

An exile usually collects a gang of human toughs and turns to cruelty, theft and roving violence. He cannot cross the misty borders between domains, yet he knows every rock and tree of the one he is trapped in. For a people born to wander, that confinement is torment, and it feeds his hunger for revenge.

Many darklings scheme to break out of their domain, or out of the dread realm entirely, and pay back the clans that cast them out. The fortune-tellers live far more in tune with the land than their outcasts do, so such plots nearly always come to nothing. Darklings like to claim more prophetic power than they truly have; any prediction from one is a lie or an educated guess.

A darkling lives alone or at the head of a small gang. He sees his old people as cruel betrayers and everyone else as pawns or prey. In his mind the world has wronged him and owes him, so he takes whatever he wants without a thought for consequences.

When a darkling dies, the nearest band of fortune-tellers learns of it 90% of the time. Within a week they come, bury the body if anything is left, and perform an old rite to quiet their lost kinsman's spirit. If the rite is not finished, there is a 90% chance the darkling rises 1-6 weeks later, as a ghast if the body survived or as a wraith if it did not. The undead then hunts down the men who followed him in life and slays them; they rise as ghouls under a ghast or as wights under a wraith, and the gang resumes its terror.