Ghoul Lord

A ghoul lord resembles an ordinary ghoul or ghast. Its body is still roughly human, but its skin has gone the gray of spoiled meat, its tongue is long and rough as a rasp, and its nails and fangs are now wicked tools for tearing flesh and breaking bone. Even undead experts have a 90% chance to mistake one for a common ghoul, at least until it attacks.

It still speaks whatever languages it knew in life, but it gives orders to its servants silently, through a telepathic bond that needs no words.

Each claw deals 1d6 points of damage and each bite 1d10. A claw hit forces a save vs. paralysis, and failure locks the victim in place for 1d6+6 rounds. Elves are not immune.

The bite carries a hideous rotting sickness unless the victim saves vs. poison. The sufferer loses 1d10 hit points daily, along with a point of Constitution and a point of Charisma, and dies if hit points or either score reaches 0. Unless the body is destroyed, it rises as a ghast three nights after death, enslaved to its maker until that ghoul lord is destroyed, after which it becomes free-willed. Nothing less than heal cures the disease. Afterward Constitution returns at 1 point per week, but the lost Charisma never comes back, for the illness scars body and soul alike.

Ghoul lords ignore sleep and charm and are not hurt by holy water or holy symbols, though they are turned as 7 HD creatures. Only magical weapons or weapons of pure iron can damage them. A circle of protection fails against them unless cast with cold iron, and even then the creature can break through on a 10% chance per round and attack those inside.

It lacks the ghast's stench but radiates evil so strongly that good characters within 30 feet suffer -4 on attack rolls. Fear and horror checks it provokes are made at -2. Remove fear negates this aura.

Graveyards, ruins, and other lonely places reeking of death are the ghoul lord's chosen lairs, and it feasts on living and dead flesh alike. Each is always attended by lesser undead whose loyalty is absolute: 2d6 ghasts, each leading 2d4 ghouls, all obeying the lord's silent commands.

Thankfully, ghoul lords exist only in the misty dread realm. Rumor says a mad necromancer on another world first made them, and that they were so wicked the dark powers of the realm noticed at once. Its mists swallowed every ghoul lord in existence and scattered them among the domains. Some insist the necromancer was taken too and that his twisted soul now rules the nightmare realm, but nobody has ever proven it.