Manscorpion Spawn

A manscorpion spawn looks like a scorched, ragged manscorpion. Its blackened, crisp hide crackles and sheds flakes as it moves, and an unnatural fire glows in its red eyes.

Any manscorpion of 11+ Hit Dice that perishes in sunlight has a 1% chance for each Hit Die of rising at sunset as one of these vengeful undead. It keeps all the fighting skill and spellcasting it had in life but can never gain levels. Priests turn it as a lich.

Every spawn's sting carries a lethal venom: the victim saves vs. poison at -3 or dies on the spot, and even a successful save permanently costs 1 point each of Strength, Dexterity and Constitution.

Sleep, hold, charm, poison, cold, death magic and mind-affecting spells do not affect it, and only crimson steel or magical weapons of +1 or better can hit it. Sunlight harms it as it would a living manscorpion, but cannot destroy it for good: the spawn re-forms when night falls. Darkness restores 1 hit point per turn, and it can even reassemble itself from dust. Having already suffered the full curse of a vengeful god, it has little more to fear from the sun.

To prevent a sun-killed manscorpion from rising, or to end a spawn permanently, sprinkle its ashes with holy water taken from that vengeful god's temple, bless them, and cast them to the four winds.

In the warped society of the highland manscorpions, a spawn is greatly honored. They admire any will strong enough to survive the god's fire and return, and they believe spawn enjoy the favor of a lady of darkness who is one of their patrons. Most spawn are consumed by the need to wreak awful revenge on whoever caused their scorching death and rebirth.

Only exceptionally powerful manscorpions endure the burning to become true spawn, and they hunt as terrible predators by night.

Ziggurat horrors look exactly like spawn but are far weaker. Manscorpion priests create them deliberately, under careful conditions, to guard the darkest crypts of their temples, often under a spawn's command. They turn as zombies, never regenerate, can be struck by ordinary weapons and are basically mindless. As with most undead, cold-based spells, death magic, poison, hold, sleep and charm cannot touch them. Their sting deals 3d8 points of damage, halved with a save vs. poison. The priesthood keeps quiet about the difference, and few outsiders could tell the two apart.