Son of Ulmorrak

Seen from afar, a son passes for a zombie 75% of the time. Rotting flesh hangs from its bones, its skull is bare but for wisps of hair and fungus, and green worms wriggle through every opening in its head. It usually wears filthy rags, though new converts may still be finely dressed.

A son radiates a 30-foot-diameter sphere of fear. Anyone entering it who fails a save vs. spell flees for one turn, 60% likely to drop what he holds. Sons hunt in pairs or threes through ruins and dungeons, scattering groups with fear and then running victims down one by one. Priests turn them as mummies.

Their two-fisted flailing does 1d8, and any hit carries a 25% risk of a rotting disease fatal in 1d6 months, costing 2 Charisma permanently each month. Only the priest spell cure disease cures it; until then the victim heals at 10% of the normal rate and cure wounds spells fail.

Each round a worm also jumps at a foe in melee, using the son's THAC0. The next round it burrows in unless destroyed by holy water, a blessed object or the touch of cold iron, then needs 1d4 rounds to reach the brain. Cure disease or remove curse kills it en route, and dispel evil or neutralize poison delays it 1d6 turns. If it arrives, the victim dies instantly and becomes a son, decaying at once.

Sons regain 2 hit points every round and regrow severed limbs. At 0 or below one drops as if dead, still regenerating, and rises at 1 or more. Damage from acid, fire, holy water or lightning is permanent. Applying holy water or a holy symbol to its wounds halts regeneration and destroys it if it is at 0 or below. Cure disease or remove curse turns a son into a zombie but requires touching it, and anyone touching a son on purpose is attacked by 1d4 worms, each needing a hit to land.

Ulmorrak, an evil high priest, created the first sons with a curse taught by an evil deity, and their numbers have grown enormously. Sons are wholly insane and wander aimlessly: some haunt their place of death, some hide in crypts, and a few attack towns in broad daylight. Evil clerics reportedly use them as terror weapons, promising them eternal rest.

The worms are somehow tied to the curse. They die on touching the ground after a missed leap, within one round of being pulled from a son, and when their son is destroyed; some sages think they are the curse itself in living form. Sons hoard nothing, but their lairs often hold items dropped by fleeing or dead victims, and some sons still wear jewelry from life.