Zombie Lord

A zombie lord still looks like the person it was, except that its skin has gone the ashen gray of death and its flesh is beginning to rot. A stench of corruption clings to it, and carrion insects buzz around to feed on the scraps and ichor it sheds.

It speaks the languages it knew alive and seems able to converse freely with the walking dead, telepathically or by some stranger means. Touching a corpse lets it speak with dead, so dead men tell it plenty.

Forced into melee, a zombie lord hammers with two powerful fists for 2d4 each. Its graveyard reek is worse: anyone first coming within 30 yards must save vs. poison or suffer one of a range of horrid effects.

Its silent orders bind every zombie it can see, monster and ju-ju zombies included, though not the vampire lord's zombies or yellow musk creeper zombies. It can also tap the senses of any zombie within a mile, keeping watch over a vast area.

Once a day it can cast animate dead normally, or instead turn it on one living creature of lower Hit Dice. That target saves vs. death or dies on the spot, rising 1d4 rounds later as the lord's zombie.

It shares a common zombie's spell immunities (sleep, charm, hold and similar) and takes 2d4 from holy water or holy symbols, but it is turned as a vampire.

Zombie lords lair among the dead, in old cemeteries or on great battlefields, where bodies abound to raise and eat. Their thoughts circle death and the making of more undead, and half-eaten remains of would-be heroes litter the ground around their lairs. Lacking a vampire's or lich's grand designs, they often plot to take a small town and make its whole population walking corpses.

A zombie lord arises by chance, only on rare occasions when raise dead is cast within the misty dread realm. An evil human must be slain by an undead creature, someone must try to raise him, and the resurrection survival roll must then fail. Many believe the curse happens only in the dread realm, but that is unproven, since zombie lords have occasionally appeared elsewhere.