Memento Mori

Most undead are evil mockeries of life, but a memento mori is a priest's creation, a lasting memorial to a dead person and a watchful guardian of the body. It appears as a see-through likeness of the dead, frozen as the body looked at the casting, which is usually after embalming, though one made in haste could show a mangled, rotting form.

Lacking a body, it can be hurt only by magic weapons, which deal just their enchantment bonus; a weapon that is +1, or +2 versus undead, inflicts 2 points. Most spells fail against it except undead-specific magic like invisibility to undead, magic that affects the dead (a successful raise dead destroys it) and magic that affects enchanted beings (dispel magic deals damage equal to its caster's level).

Being a feeble undead, it relies on intimidation. It appears before its body and warns robbers off; if they stay, it fills the air within 20 feet of itself or the body with harmless static that lifts hair and prickles skin, then, crackling with blue light, warns of worse. If they advance or attack, it fights, never risking its own body or treasure. Damaging the corpse does not harm it but makes it angry.

Its weapon is a shocking grasp touch fueled by a fixed store of energy, typically 1 to 100 Hit Dice, set at its creation and never replenished. Before each touch it chooses how many dice to spend, and a hit deals that damage and drains it from the store. To conserve energy it opens with one or two dice, pulls back to repeat its warning, and escalates only as needed, never chasing anyone who retreats. Yet it will burn its last die to stop even one theft, and when empty it still bluffs with static beside the scorched remains of past thieves.

Body and treasure are one to it, and it refuses any deal that sacrifices either. If part of the hoard is stolen, it stays with the larger share; if most is lost, it fixates on what remains, even traveling far to find a trinket taken long ago, then guards it where it lies.

Because the ritual needs careful preparation, these spirits are found near where the person lived, in lands of ancestor worship or mummification, always in tombs or shrines. The name means 'remembrance of the dead'. Its treasure is the grave goods the family could afford, from trinkets to a hoard of treasure type B or E.

Made from a fragment of the soul, it remembers its whole life, and families visit to take comfort or let children hear history from ancestors who lived it. It will speak with anyone who respects its body and goods. It forms no new memories, however, and has no more personality than a recording, so every visit is its first. Spirits sharing a tomb never converse, and one will not help another unless intruders come within 20 feet of its own goods.

It eats nothing, produces nothing and hunts nothing, standing further outside nature than even evil undead.

The spell create memento mori is a 3rd-level necromantic priest spell: range touch, components V, S, M, permanent duration, casting time 2 hours plus 1 hour per die of energy, area of effect the body touched, saving throw special. It returns a shard of the soul to the Prime Material to guard the corpse. A soul can yield only one, since losing more would harm it, and the body must be present and neither body nor soul already undead. The spell is not evil if the deceased's culture accepted the custom. Its material component, herbs, oils, spices and precious substances worked into the body, costs 500 gp plus 25 gp per Hit Die of energy (550 gp for two, 1,000 gp for twenty) and is consumed.