Mist Ferryman

Often confused with grim reapers, a mist ferryman resembles a twisted human skeleton whose jaws bristle with needle teeth still holding scraps of rotting meat. Swirling vapor hides most of it, so witnesses glimpse only a bony arm or grinning skull. It can speak with any thinking creature, in a hollow voice that carries the unmistakable feel of the grave.

Ferrymen haunt the misty edges of the heartland domains and the small isolated domains, hunting the lost. They are territorial loners that attack any intruder, even another ferryman or a camp of wandering seers. Outmatched, one gives a quavering wail like a weeping woman, summoning every ferryman within 2 miles (usually 1d8+1), who arrive in five rounds. Nobody has ever seen them travel; perhaps they become fog and reform at their goal, but they never do so in battle.

Claws and teeth tear at prey, and any wound demands a save vs. poison. Failure brings a disease that costs 1 Constitution per week until cure disease is cast, after which the points return at 1 per day. Anyone brought to 0 hit points rises as a ferryman three days later. They prefer to keep prey alive, relishing warm blood, so a pack pins its quarry by weight of numbers and feeds in turns.

They are turned as ghosts and, like other undead, ignore charm, sleep and hold. Holy water fails, but a lawful good holy symbol pressed against one sears it for 1d4.

Normally solitary, they gather only to hunt. Somehow they can reach any place in the mists. A subdued ferryman can be forced to guide captors anywhere inside the realm, but never out of it, though some swear these undead know the way.

Some think ferrymen are lesser pieces of the mists, now and then serving the domain lords. Their control of the fog supports this, but much argues against it.