Survivor

A survivor was once a powerful human, demihuman or humanoid who drifted in the flame-sea for years, often centuries or longer, frozen in suspended animation. The exotic vapors have twisted its mind into something at once more and less than human. At discovery its skin looks like gray stone, and its clothes are decades or centuries out of date, but otherwise it looks like any other rescued castaway. Its flesh softens back to normal within hours of meeting air. The telling sign is that it keeps slipping back into its coma, waking only briefly. When awake it accepts soup, water or ale, but it is far too weak to rise and can only whisper.

The survivor never fights with weapons or spells. Instead it seizes the minds of the starship crew that rescued it, one victim every 24 hours, beginning with the weakest or dullest and working up to the most useful. Any human, demihuman or humanoid is a target. Each gets a save vs. spell at -2, because the takeover is spread across the whole day. A natural 20 always succeeds and leaves the target with a vague sense that something is wrong; others who save merely get headaches and blame bad air or food.

Once it controls someone, the survivor shares all that person's senses, and it can tap any or all of its slaves at once. At first the slaves act normally, but within a week they turn sullen, joyless and withdrawn, and the gloom deepens as the slave count grows.

Eventually it tries to take the ship. If everyone aboard is enslaved, that is simple. If someone grows suspicious or it fears attack and likes its odds, it stages a mutiny, using its slaves' full powers as cleverly as it can. A survivor holding the captain might have him reassure suspicious passengers that crews always get moody as a long trip drags on, buying time to claim them as well.

Control is broken by dispel evil, by dispel magic (treat the survivor as a 10th-level wizard), or by a wish or limited wish. A freed slave feels better without knowing why.

Survivors are solitary. Two might appear together to test a very strong party, perhaps a pair of criminals once tied together and tossed overboard, but this should be rare. With a ship in hand, it wants only more slaves; it can hold a number equal to its Intelligence score times 10. In port it might have itself carried ashore to enslave a small town, or it might keep sailing and pick up fresh passengers at every stop.

After so long without sensation, the survivor craves sensory input above all and will do anything to get more.