Dowagu

A dowagu has a man's torso with four arms, a giant snake's lower body and great leathery wings. The tail is armored in thick, overlapping hide. Its face is starved and hideous, with long curving horns sweeping up from the brow and wicked tusks jutting from the upper jaw. The whole body is pure black except for small blue eyes that glint like stars. Away from moonlight or magical light it is seldom more than a shadow.

These creatures normally avoid fights because they are busy carrying out their master's strict commands. When they do engage, they are fearsome, swinging four weapons at once, typically a spear, axe, flail and scimitar, while lashing with the tail. A creature that glimpses one fully lit must save vs. paralyzation or run in terror for 1d12 rounds.

A tail hit, or bare-handed contact with its body, calls for a save vs. spells. Failure means 1d4 points of extra chill damage and the loss of 1 point of Strength. A second failed save, this time vs. poison, makes that Strength loss permanent. If the dowagu rolls a natural 20 to hit, its tail wraps around the victim. The coils deal no further damage, but each round the trapped victim must repeat the saves as if struck by the tail.

A 5-foot sphere of silence always surrounds the creature, and it can create darkness (10') at will. At night, with no direct light falling on it, treat a darkened dowagu as invisible. It can only be harmed while it stands in the full effect of magical light, such as light or continual light. The light deals no damage itself, but without it weapons pass harmlessly through the creature as though through a shadow. The prism of binding affects it fully, since that relic is both a magical light source and an attack.

Up to four times per day, a dowagu can cast a 1st-level Illusion/Phantasm wizard spell, with the power of a 10th-level caster.

Dowagu travel alone and obey only Kesh Morvayan, the raja who made them. They favor barren, dry country but can function anywhere. Their main task is to roam the world and mark chosen victims with his death-seal, a dark tattoo that not even a wish can remove. It always shows through: makeup rubs away, scarves and hats slip off, and concealing spells fail for no clear reason.

A marked person who dies rises as undead and marches to a southern mountain kingdom to join the raja's army. Most become zombies, but characters of 9th level or higher return as something stronger, such as a vampire, wight or groaning spirit. The only escapes are to avoid dying or to destroy the raja.

The dowagu are magical constructs, and only six exist at a time; if one is destroyed, the raja builds another. They feed by wrapping prey in their freezing tail and draining its strength, and they rarely stop before the victim is a hollow husk.