Pisacha Vampire

The pisacha never leaves its grave. It is always a dead male whose buried body refuses to decay, and its attacks are often blamed on an invisible ghost, though anti-ghost measures fail against it. It cannot move its body, which stays exactly as at death. Pierced, the corpse bleeds steadily for 3d10 rounds, and the blood is mildly poisonous: 4d4 damage on contact, 2d4 if the victim saves vs. poison.

It preys on sleepers of human, half-elf or half wandering-seer stock, of either sex and usually young, within five miles of its body, returning nightly to the same target until death or deterrence. Anyone already warded against scrying is never chosen, but later wards do not help.

It drinks each exhaled breath: the chest moves but no air leaves, the sleeper turns cold and cannot be woken. After an hour or more (once nightly) the victim makes a Constitution check. Success: -2 Dexterity for 2d4 hours. Failure: -2 Dexterity for 4d4 hours, no spells memorized or granted without six more hours of rest, and 1 Constitution lost permanently. Death comes at 0, without necessarily rising as a vampire.

On the second or a later night, feign death or similar magic, sleeping inside a shut (not necessarily airtight) coffin, or a ripe coriander fruit on the chest makes it pass to another sleeper. It returns to the first target the next night, and if foiled again it adopts the new one permanently. With no eligible sleeper in range it simply fasts, unharmed.

A priest who turns the attack within its first hour ends the feeding (treat the pisacha as a wraith), but becomes its next prey. If the victim is killed during that first hour by any means other than the drain, it stops and cannot feed for 2d8+1 days, after which it has an 80% chance to choose the killer, if eligible, minus 5% per day past the seventh.

Only burning every piece of the body to ash in ordinary flame destroys it; magical fire, spell damage and magical effects cannot hurt it, and it ignores sleep, charm, hold, poisons, paralysis, petrification and death magic. Two or more vials of holy water on the body stop it feeding for 2d4-1 days, nothing more.

A dismembered and scattered body lets any part serve as its lair, and every three months it can shift to another separated part inside the same domain. Whoever does the cutting must pass a Dexterity check each round or touch the toxic blood (care may adjust the roll), and the act itself demands a dark powers check.

The feeding site reveals nothing, though detect charm and the like show unnatural influence on the sleeper, and detect undead finds it if it fails a save, or automatically when cast on the corpse. Through speak with undead it proves polite and clever but lies to protect itself, perhaps offering false ways to destroy it. Raise dead restores its memories but not its personality; animate dead's effect is unknown.

A male of those same stocks buried in a coffin in a jungle realm becomes a pisacha over 3d6 nights, as does a native who worshiped that land's goddess of destruction and was buried abroad. Locals burn their dead (unless the domain's tiger-lord ate them), so most pisachas are foreign adventurers buried by friends. It remembers nothing, knows only hunger, and ignores its grave goods. Two sharing a territory avoid each other's targets.

Something ties them to that realm, and no one knows why only males rise. The tiger-lord ignores them while his food supply is safe. Victims fade over a couple of weeks without wounds, so people suspect disease, and the pisacha strikes near earlier victims to feed that belief. Scarce graves make its lair easy to find at home, while most other domains (the bayou domain aside) are full of graves with misleading markers, and the body may be as small as a tooth.