Undead Cloaker

From across a room it looks like a big, moth-eaten cloak. Up close, the ragged cloth proves to be decaying flesh.

Most believe it began as a resplendent cloaker whose life was sucked away by the living dead. Whether it can speak is unknown, but it seems able to steer a mindless undead host with a faint telepathy. Any living being that makes direct mental contact with one must pass a madness check.

It flies fast at a chosen host and tries to wrap it up. A hit fastens it to the victim's neck for 1d4 damage; a miss just means it keeps trying in later rounds. While engulfed, the victim can take no physical action, use no psionics, and cast nothing needing material or somatic components. The cloaker holds on until the struggling stops, then lets the host move freely while keeping its grip on the neck. If the host ever fights to get loose, the cloaker re-engulfs it with no attack roll needed. An engulfed host absorbs half of all physical damage meant for the cloaker, and area attacks hit both at full strength.

With a host secured, any living thing the host touches loses a life level. Should a whole day pass without such a meal, the cloaker takes a level from the host. Anyone drained to zero level by the cloaker or its host claws its way out of the grave 1d4 days later as a common zombie.

Against anyone trying to hurt it or pry it loose, the tail slashes twice a round for 1d6, and each cut keeps bleeding for 1d6 a round until bandaged, which takes a full round and both hands, or treated with healing magic. Tearing it off calls for a successful bend bars/lift gates check; the cloaker dies at once but rips 1d4 life levels from its host as it goes.

It will not pick a host protected by negative plane protection, and casting that spell on its current host sends it off to find another. Priests turn it as a 6-HD creature, forcing it to drop away and flee. It shrugs off sleep, charm, hold, fear, cold, disease, poison, and paralysis, and is unaffected by level drain from its host or other undead. Holy water deals 1d6+2, and raise dead destroys it unless it saves vs. spell.

These chaotic loners never cooperate with each other or anything else, though they are sometimes found riding zombies they made themselves, still using the shambling body to channel their draining touch. A host who deliberately uses the cloaker to drain levels commits an evil act and must make a dark powers check.

Being undead, it has no role in nature. If it truly was once a resplendent cloaker, its fall into unlife is a sad one.