Siren [Ravenloft]

Beneath the glamour, this undead horror is half woman and half fish, gray and swollen like a long-drowned corpse, her hair knotted with rotting kelp. The flesh has fallen away from her fingertips, and she hones the exposed bone on the rocks where she lounges until each finger is a blade.

Few ever see that face. Innate advanced illusion magic dresses her as a sea-green-haired mermaid of breathtaking beauty.

Her song works as mass charm and carries astonishingly far across open water; crews have been snared a full mile from a basking school's islet. Wax in the ears or a silence, 15' radius spell protects against it, but only if used before the singing starts.

Each siren in a school can ensnare up to 8 Hit Dice of victims, who save vs. spell at -2. Those who fail steer at top speed toward the voices, then feel compelled to go ashore and sit beside the singers, and nothing short of physical restraint stops them.

A character who sights a siren may see through the disguise with a save vs. spell at -4, usually rolled secretly by the game master. Actively disbelieving removes the penalty, though charmed victims cannot try.

Once victims are close, the sirens strike with their bony fingers, an attack the tactile illusion makes feel like a soft caress. Every round a siren draws blood, the victim gets another secret save vs. spell; success shatters both illusion and charm, letting the victim see the truth and fight back, and the game master may call for a fear check at the sight. Anyone wounded by a siren must also save vs. poison or the wound festers, and it cannot heal naturally until treated with magical healing.

Priests can turn them like other undead, sending them diving beneath the waves, and holy water burns them.

Sirens travel the ocean in schools like fish and spend long hours sunning on rocky islets. They can live on fish but prefer thinking prey. Their resting rocks are littered with rotting dead, and since the sirens care nothing for possessions, gold and magic items lie about for the taking.

Knowing loot draws visitors, they often lurk just below the surface watching for a hull, then rise and sing. The stench of decay from the corpses and the sirens themselves is almost unbearable, but their illusions also cover smell, hiding it completely.

So far they have been seen only along the jagged coast of the domain of the walking dead, but they will probably spread south to other domains bordering that gloomy northern sea. One theory holds that they were merfolk warped by the wave of negative energy unleashed when a doomsday device was triggered there. If so, male sirens may exist as well.