Scarecrow

Built from the same junk as any field scarecrow, each is unique, but all share certain features. Body and limbs are lengths of cut wood such as garden stakes or broom handles lashed with hemp rope, draped in ragged cloth that may be stuffed with straw or grass. The head is a hollow gourd with a carved face, and once the thing is animated, fire glows in its eye holes. Every one of them is malevolent.

Though light, scarecrows are slow. Their knees and elbows bend both ways, giving them a lurching, jerky walk, and the head spins freely. They have no language but cackle like hyenas as they attack.

Each round a scarecrow can turn its gaze on one creature within 40 feet. An intelligent human or demihuman who meets it must save vs. spell or be charmed. This is not obedience but total fascination: the victim stands frozen with arms hanging limp while the scarecrow hits it automatically every round. The charm lasts until the scarecrow is destroyed or has been away from the area for a full turn. Its touch deals 1d6 damage and carries the same charm, again with a saving throw.

A scarecrow concentrates on one victim, the first it charmed, battering that person until dead while using its gaze to entrance as many others as it can. It fights until destroyed or ordered to stop.

Fire is its bane: fire-based attacks gain +1 to hit and +1 damage per die. Cold-based attacks do not harm it, and sleep, charm, hold and suggestion have no effect.

Scarecrows have no habitat or society; they exist to serve the priest who made them and carry out any simple one- or two-phrase command regardless of their own safety. Making one requires a special manual, or a high-level priest casting animate object, prayer, command and quest. The work takes three weeks but costs only 1 gp per hit point, and the final quest spell must be cast at the new moon.

A scarecrow can be made to kill one specific person by dressing it in clothes taken from that target. Once it is animated, the priest says one word, 'Quest', and it walks straight toward the victim. On arrival it ignores everyone else and turns gaze and blows on its target alone; when that person dies, the magic fails and the scarecrow crumbles to dust.

Being constructs, scarecrows never age. Their magic preserves the rags and sticks from rot and protects them from cold.

When its creator dies, a scarecrow normally falls apart, but 10% instead awaken. These conscious scarecrows have low intelligence but a fiendish cunning. They hide by day and do evil by night, and since they loathe fire and do not feel cold, they head for colder lands, slaying everything in their path along the way, threat or not. They hate all living things and murder humans and demihumans at every chance.