The Sluagh

The Sluagh (SLOO-ah), or Host of the Unforgiven Dead, are ghosts of people who died with monstrous crimes on their souls. Their gods turned them away, leaving them stranded in the mortal world. Each is a gray, vaporous figure whose head and torso keep a human shape; those who knew them alive might faintly recognize their faces, still twisted with their old cruelty. Below the waist they thin into trailing wisps of fog.

The gods were mortal once and understand weakness and forgiveness, but when only death stopped someone's atrocities, they see no reason to grant mercy the dead never showed. The unforgiven must wander until they atone, and they never do. Rather than look at themselves, they blame the gods, spend their borrowed time on the schemes and grudges they began in life, and enslave the living to help.

The Host is deadly at range and worse up close. Often the only warning is a towering bank of storm clouds piling up overhead, where the spirits hide to gain surprise. From there they rain invisible darts on those below for 1d6 each. Two or three minutes later a burning class B poison spreads from each wound; for every dart that hit, the victim must save vs. poison, taking 20 more points on a failure or just 1d3 on a success. Because clouds float 880 yards (half a mile) or more above the ground, the Host is beyond nonmagical missiles and many spells, though the DM may allow large-scale battle magic against it.

Its subtlest weapon is domination, as the spell. Driven by revenge, a single spirit may descend to speak with a chosen victim in soft, lulling tones to lower his guard, then seize his will and turn him against its old enemies. If the puppet survives those enemies and outlasts the domination, he must still survive a system shock roll.

Being native to the continent, the Host has no fey glamour score, and any perception of the shadowy faerie realm its members earned in life is lost at death.

The Sluagh make their homes in the vast gray clouds drifting over the land by night. The newly dead hunt the enemies they had in life, especially whoever killed them, but over time their hatred spreads to everything living, from kings to farmers to dumb beasts. Anyone outdoors at midnight, man or animal, may drop dead from an unseen dart, and when someone dies suddenly for no visible reason, people say he caught the Host's eye.

The spirits meddle with the living and also feud among themselves. Folk wisdom holds that the fiercest storms are battles between rival factions of the Host, and the morning after, their blood is sometimes found spattered on rocks and stones, a sign people call the 'blood of the Host.'