Dread Warrior

Dread warriors are improved undead devised by Vael Morthis, the master necromancer of the slaver-wizards. The ritual must be performed on the corpse of a fighter of at least 4th level who has been dead less than a day, which lets the creature keep a scrap of intelligence. Nearly all serve in Vael Morthis's own retinue, though he has lent a few to allies he trusts.

Death has not dulled their hunger for battle, and they remain strong and capable. Each has Strength 18/01, which grants no bonus to hit but adds +2 to damage, so an unarmed blow deals 1d8+2. They fight with whatever weapons they carried in life but lack the finesse for bows or crossbows. Ordered to throw spears or javelins, they do so poorly, at 4 to hit.

They obey simple commands such as 'hold this corridor against everyone' or 'advance and attack the enemy,' but complicated instructions confuse them. Orders of 12 words or fewer cause no trouble. Each word beyond the 12th adds a cumulative 5% chance that the warrior gets it wrong: doing the opposite, going berserk against anything nearby, or simply standing idle. That chance doubles in a cold eastern land whose powerful spirits of place undermine the slaver-wizards' necromancy, and dread warriors also attack at -2 against that land's nature spirits and its witches.

They are turned as shadows. Raise dead annihilates one outright. Resurrection forces it to save vs. spell as a 4th-level fighter: on a failure it is destroyed instantly, and on a success it returns to true life in its original form.

Dread warriors exist only to serve as soldiers and guards for the slaver-wizards, above all their creator. Between battles they are stored in dungeons or barracks, since he refuses to waste his prized troops as household servants. His associates have sometimes used them that way anyway, nearly always earning a sharp reprimand from a necromancer who finds no humor in it.

They make up part of one of his largest armies, a legion named for the god of strife. Lately he has been raising more in preparation for a possible civil war against the provincial governors and rival school-masters of his homeland who still defy him.

Everything about a dread warrior is bent toward defending its homeland and serving the wild ambitions of its rulers. The few that slip free of control drift through the countryside in grotesque imitations of their former lives, picking fights with travelers, breaking into houses to steal food they cannot eat, and generally frightening ordinary folk.

Their maker first raised them over 20 years ago for an invasion of that cold eastern land. A legion composed entirely of dread warriors, named for the god of the dead, was loosed on its berserkers and coastal towns and driven back after fierce fighting. The land's witches destroyed many with spells, its nature spirits destroyed more, and its strange place-magic seemed to work on the undead too: many garbled their orders, and some turned on one another, wiping out whole companies.