Wichtlin

To normal sight a wichtlin is just two glowing green eyeballs and two bony hands, also glowing green, drifting through the air together. Casting detect invisibility, true seeing or comparable magic exposes the rest: a charred elven skeleton hung with scraps of rotting flesh.

A wichtlin exists only to kill, so that the lord of the undead may try to claim each victim's spirit. It carries no weapons. A touch of its left hand paralyzes for 2d4 rounds unless the target saves vs. paralyzation. A touch from the right hand inflicts 2d6 poison damage, negated by a save vs. poison; a target under slow poison or similar protection is unharmed by it.

Weapons need at least a +1 enchantment to strike a wichtlin. Anyone able to see its full shape by magic attacks normally, while everyone else suffers -2 to hit. Poison and paralysis have no effect, and it shrugs off sleep, charm, hold and cold-based spells, but fire harms it normally and each vial of holy water deals 2d4. Priests turn it as a spectre.

The wichtlin curse dates to the court of the Ghoul Queen, an elder high elf ruler whose history her own people deliberately destroyed; only scattered rumors survive. An evil elf who meets a violent end has a 1% chance of being claimed: the lord of the undead and the Ghoul Queen's spirit together take the soul and return it as a wichtlin. They are so rare that they never appear in groups. They can turn up anywhere, even plodding across the sea bottom, and care nothing for treasure. Evil gods and powerful evil wizards sometimes employ them as warriors or assassins.

Being undead, a wichtlin needs no food or rest and has no bodily functions at all.

If an evil wild elf is violently slain astride a wild stag mount, the stag's spirit may be taken and raised alongside its rider. A wichtlin stag shows only glowing green eyes and antlers, and otherwise uses a living wild stag's statistics (3 HD, THAC0 17, AC 7, movement 24, attacking once for 2d4 or twice for 1d3 each), except that it can be harmed only by weapons of +1 or greater. Anyone struck by its antlers must save vs. paralyzation or be paralyzed for 2d4 rounds. It obeys its rider in everything, but vanishes forever if the rider is destroyed or if the two spend a full round more than 20 yards apart.