Dune Runner

Dune runners are elves who perished while running to finish a quest or deliver a vital message, now undead and doomed to repeat their hopeless run night after night. At a distance one looks like a powerful elf racing across the sand; up close, thin gray skin is pulled tight over a bony frame. It remembers every language it knew in life and is said to chat with its victims as they run.

A runner keeps its old class, level, gear, spells and psionics, and gains extra undead abilities, so no two are alike. It also gains the telepathic sciences mass domination and mind link and the devotions attraction, contact and life detection; of these, attraction, life detection and mass domination run constantly at no cost.

Elves in a party may make a Wisdom check as it approaches to recognize it as undead. Anyone it passes, of any race, must save vs. spell or be compelled by attraction and mass domination to run with it that night, up to five victims per level the elf had at death. Runners cannot stop and lose 1 Constitution per turn until restrained or until they reach 0 and collapse. A collapsed victim must make a system shock roll or die; success means 1d6 turns unconscious, then recovery of 1d8 Constitution per day only if he gets water, or he collapses again and dies. An elf who dies on the run becomes a dune runner too, its eternal companion.

Each runner was once an individual with its own loves and goals. Now they haunt any traveler crossing their path, running for sheer joy, so obsessed that they drag the living into their mad dash toward oblivion. Few have ever run until dawn to learn what happens then, and survivors refuse to talk about it.

Runners are a curse on caravans. Small trains have been found abandoned on known runner paths, their traders dead of thirst and exhaustion miles away, and seasoned caravan masters will lose half a day rather than cross, or make camp along, a runner's trail near nightfall. Some believe completing a runner's quest would lay it to rest, but no one has proved it.