The Cold Womb: Al-Shadan's Journal on the Undead

The Cold Womb
Al-Shadan's Journal on the Undead

The Cold Womb: Al-Shadan's Journal on the Undead Al-Shadan_Foreword

"These are the freely written words of Yurel ben al-Shadan, firstborn son of Sheikh Menzed ben al-Shadan, born among the rolling dunes of Lebeq and consecrated to the Everlasting Light in the seventh summer from my First Dawn. For fifty-four summers have I served our world as a man of righteousness and a paladin in Pelor's cause, forever be His radiant dominion. And never shall the Eternal Darkness prevail against it.

In these many years of god-knighted service have I faced horrors without number, spawns of the Darkness and blights upon the earth. Most grave among these threats to goodness and life are the profaned dead, spat forth from their graves in denial of their eternal reward to slake their unholy hunger or heedless vengeance against the living. Much have I learned of these creatures, whether through errant research, gathered testimonies or firsthand ordeal. Blessed am I to have fallen so few times against them, and twice-blessed am I to have risen anew at the behest of the Most Holy Church of Pelor, that I may continue in our war against the restless dead.

But for too long have I walked the earth. Too few summers await me, and too many summers recede into the twilight behind me. So I have vowed to commit my learnings to the written form — a journal on undeath in its many faces and guises — before Pelor's bright hand takes me up from this world and guides me into His everlasting Paradise. Read now these words, O righteous hand, and heed well what lessons I leave behind, for death is but the gentlest fate for those who fall to the undead.

— First Sunsword Yurel ben al-Shadan
Springtide, 1302 SE"

The Skeleton

The Cold Womb: Al-Shadan's Journal on the Undead Al-Shadan_Skeleton

Many people have walked this world, and many have died. If we must suffer the scourge of the undead, then let us be grateful that the bulk of them become such wretches as the undead skeleton and the equally wretched zombie, and nothing worse.

The skeleton is the common foot soldier of the undead. Alone, the skeleton is weak. But the greatest problem with the skeleton is that it is so rarely alone. Whenever a foul-souled necromancer animates fleshless servants for his house, he animates many. Whenever an ancient battleground rings with steel once more and the blood of the new war-dead stains the bones of the old, the bones rise as an army. And wherever these skeletons gather in great numbers, they bear on their shoulders the threat of surrounding those who number but few, then cutting them down with the sheer weight of those numbers.

Skeletons may also be animated from the bones of creatures who are neither human nor elf. In my time, I have faced the skeletons of jackals, wolves, lions, minotaurs, ogres, basilisks and more. Two centuries before this writing, a fleet of five Hrothjurgandr longships were crossing the Sea of Opalescence when they were beset by the skeleton of a sea serpent draped in the tatters of its rotting skin, lunging from the depths as though vomited forth from Umberlee's throat. And in more recent days, one of my colleagues, Sharid Tagwarad by name, climbed Mount Perilous to reclaim the Holy Brand of Saint Merwitt from the tomb of a long-dead emir among the fire giants. The brand was kept by one guardian: the bones of the emir himself, rising from his sarcophagus to tear stones from the masonry and hurl them at Dawnsword Tagwarad with great force. So great was the giant skeleton's might that Tagwarad was forced to hasten back down the volcano's face and recover from the blows. He led two more raids on Emir Kurliumandr's tomb before the skeleton was defeated and the lost relic was reclaimed.

But the transition from fleshy life to fleshless undeath has stripped much from the skeleton, its mind being its gravest loss, followed with whatever unearthly powers it once possessed. A medusa's skeleton can no longer turn a man's flesh to stone, nor can a dragon's skeleton take to the heavens and belch fire onto hapless villages below. A skeleton is also wanting for autonomy and self-reliance; necromancers find this trade desireable, as would any slaver. Animate a skeleton and command it to stand watch at your treasure vault, and it may still be standing there long after your grandchildren are dust.

But this lack of mind and will also presents a two-edged sword for the skeleton and its enemies: an absolute lack of cunning, coupled with absolute fearlessness. We may recall the Raid on Lithis Tor in Ancient Omikoros, where Vorlimus the Lotus-Eater seized the Trumpet of the Bone Fields and used it to raise a vast army of skeletons, then turned his greedy eyes to the gold-mining town of Lithisolis. On seeing the great undead army marching their way, the people of Lithisolis shattered the Dragon Dam, unleashing a torrent of lava from the bowels of Lithis Tor. The Viamanthe River exploded in a magnificent bank of steam as the rushing lava drove the water out, and the river became a great lava floe between Lithisolis and Vorlimus' forces.

On seeing this, Vorlimus ordered his skeletons into four columns, then commanded them to cross the floe and slay everyone in the town. Anyone who has ever seen lava knows that, though it flows, it is nothing like water: a man who has the blessings of the efreet may stand on lava as though it were solid earth. But the skeletons had no such blessings and, four at a time, they set foot on the lava. And they were swiftly burned and reduced to ash. And yet the skeletons behind them heedlessly marched forward, as did the ones behind them, and the ones behind the next rank. And the people of Lithisolis gathered at the bank to watch skeleton after skeleton blindly and suicidally march onto the lava and meet its end. And the people filled the sky with laughter, amused with the skeletons' utter stupidity. Then they went to their beds and slept as night fell, assured that the blood of Lithis Tor would keep them safe.

But grave was their peril, for the lava was slowly covered in a creeping blanket of bone ash and black carbon beneath the army's relentless march. And the blanket of ash and char grew so thick that the skeletons could walk further and further across the river. Before the night's end, so many skeletons had perished to the lava that their scorched remains formed a gray, macabre bridge. And though Vorlimus had lost most of his army to Lithis Tor, there remained enough skeletons to creep into the town and butcher the people of Lithisolis in their beds. And that is exactly what they did.

But skeletons are easily outwitted, and their strengths and weaknesses do not end there. Because they lack flesh, skeletons are impervious to even the most horrid frost, and the winters of the distant North do not slow them in the least. Obviously, poison is useless against them, pestilence means nothing to them, and a carrion crawler's tentacles will not cause a skeleton the slightest impediment or annoyance. Weapons which pierce or slash tend to be light in weight, relying on their own sharpness to wound flesh and spill blood. But the skeleton has no flesh or blood, so expect your fiercest spear thrusts or axe swings to reap no more than mere scratches and nicks. In the stead of such weapons, take up the truncheon, the mace, the quarterstaff or the hammer. Undead bones break and shatter as easily as living bones do, or perhaps easier still. And thus, with far fewer blows, you shall return the skeleton to dust.

The Zombie

and

The Drowned

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Ghoul

and

The Lacedon

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Raiment

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Ghast

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Wight

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Slaymate

The Cold Womb: Al-Shadan's Journal on the Undead Al-Shadan_Slaymate

If ever there was the sternest reminder for parents to treat their children with love, kindness and fairness, the slaymate is it.

But not everyone is fit to be a guardian of children. Some souls lack resolve in the face of adversity and, yoked to the sway of their emotions, will respond to a tempermental child's tantrums with storms of rage and violence. Others are ridden with sloth or self-indulgence and have not the least notion of what parenting means, so they stuff their own lusts and leave their children to languish in starvation and neglect. And other souls yet bleed with sheer malice, and cruelty is meat and drink to them; may the gods preserve what unfortunate progeny are tragically born to their loins. But woe betide these souls, for every time a child perishes to violence, cruelty or neglect at the hands of a guardian, the dark forces of the universe may plant the seed of unholy vengeance in that child's lifeless heart. And if the seed takes root, another slaymate shall be born to bring trouble and calamity to the living.

As with such undead creatures as ghosts and revenants, these undead children seem to be born with a purpose: to return to a living world which spurned them, and thereby set right whatever wrongs prevent the children from going to their eternal reward. But both the ghost and the revenant are content to right their wrongs, return to their graves and go no further than that. The slaymate is a creature of naivete and innocence, and a creature whose brief, tormented life was crushed under the unyielding burden of betrayal. And so, for the slaymate, there can be no willing return to death. The more playful slaymates wish to drown their misery in an endless cavalcade of games and playtime, never once considering that their misery is a bottomless hole which defies all attempts to fill it; and when one is a naive, heedless and witless undead toddler, such playtime can be perilous to any living ilk who fall into a slaymate's company. The angrier slaymates, inexperienced and alien to the notion of restraint, will exact their bloody and terrible vengeance against whomever cut their threads of life too soon, but they know not when their quest is ended and will instead turn their baleful gazes to other parents and to other adults who could, in the slaymate's eyes, be parents in the present or in the future; the hatred festering in the hearts of these slaymates may claim many lives if the slaymate's existence is not ended swiftly and forcefully.

One slaymate returned to his grave by my hand numbered among the children of anger. He was Said Gadalzan, a boy of seven summers sired by a frail-hearted oaf of a father who resented Said for the wife and mother who had bled to her grave in birthing him. After Said sneaked out one night to visit his friends, as children often do, his father punished him by thrashing his rump and locking him in Said's bedroom. When Said defied his punishment and sneaked outside the next night, as children also do, his father grew enraged and struck the boy far more viciously. And when Said protested and yelled against his father — again, as children are wont to do — the final cord broke. His father retaliated by binding Said to a table with ropes, setting a pot of lamp oil in the hearth and pouring the boiling oil down Said's throat. Said suffered for days after; in his suffering, Said would not be silent, and his cries and wails enraged his father further, inviting another round of beatings from his father's cane every time the boy dared to weep. After the fifth day, Said's father stilled his cane at realizing that Said had fallen far too silent and still from his latest thrashing. Fearing the sultan's justice, his father gathered two of his most trusted friends and buried Said's small, tortured corpse among the steppes of the Lebeqi highlands.

But it was not the sultan's justice which Ensef Gadalzan should have feared. Before the sun set four times, Said clawed back out of his shallow grave and crept back to his village. Ensef died the same way that he had murdered his son, though far more swiftly; the lamp oil had caked solid by the time our temple's inquisitors cut his corpse open and peeled two stones' worth of fatty solids from his ruined throat, stomach and lungs. Though the boy could not have known his father's accomplices, we found both of them no less dead than Ensef was, one drowned in his bath and the other hanged from the rafters of his sheep barn. We feared that Said had become stronger and more stealthy in undeath than he was in life, and Said would prove our fears right.

Had Said ended his vengeance then, rare would be the soul who did not believe him justified in his deeds. But by the time we confronted Said, he had gathered his little friends along with other children from his village, eight children in number. And in tragedy had they become eight orphans, for Said had so naively reasoned that their parents and guardians were no kinder or more just to them than Said's father had been to him. In turns, Said murdered each child's parents in such ways that most of them could have never heard Said coming, then he took the child aside with assurance that all would be well, that they would never need to obey their parents or suffer punishments again. That they could play with Said forever. Some of the children were merely gullible, others were terrified beyond wits. But all of the children went with him, and as fortune held, that is when I and my comrades found them: shortly before Said could add a ninth child to his following.

We first sought to reason with Said. His father was dead, as were his father's friends. What remaining grievance could Said harbor? Would he not find peace in his grave, knowing that his revenge was fulfilled? No, Said replied. Parents are cruel, and the world is thick with parents. Children suffer by their parents, and Said would see all children freed from their suffering. And he would take the children from their families, and they could play and enjoy their lives forever after. We then explained that Said's father was uncommon and that most families rear their children with love and justice, not with brazen cruelty and torment. He had torn these children from their homes and marred their lives forever, all so he could have his own throng of playmates. Did he not feel guilt for this? But Said would not hear our words, and he would not give the children leave to come away with us. And so, with blessed icons and blessed steel, we moved against him.

To our surprise, three of the children — a boy and two girls — stood between us and Said, so moved were they with Said's tale of betrayal and retribution. In the light of Pelor's justice, we could not harm them. And Said, clever boy that he was, used our inhibition and our reverence for life to his advantage, ducking behind the children when we moved to strike him, then darting out from behind them to strike at us. May Brother Shamuzat lounge forever in Pelor's kingdom of light, for he perished to Said's shears and would never rise again. Sister Mahaliah disarmed him of his shears only for Said to sink his teeth deeply into the meat of her thigh, and though it would cause her great pain, she threw her sciimitar down and grasped the slaymate by his hair, holding him to her. And there did we put an end to Said and an end to his threat against families all the world over.

For four of the children, we found good homes for them or returned them to what remained of their families; the other four stayed with our temple and were reared by our clergy, and two of the four, grateful as they were to be rescued from the company of undeath, remain with the Church of Pelor as priests to this day. But Sister Mahaliah took ill from Said's bite, and only with many prayers and devotions were we able to undo the pestilence. And there do we come into my next point:

Though the slaymate is far from the most powerful of undead, slaymates are not without their strengths. Though slaymates prefer to avoid combat, they will fight with fury and passion if cornered. Their mouths reek and fester with a pestilence born of anguish, and those bitten by a slaymate may likely contract the slaymate's pale wasting disease, though in truth it is less a disease and more a curse. As with any disease, it is best to treat the pale wasting immediately; the longer a victim suffers its scourge, the worse the scourge grows, and the victim shall lie dead within seven days if the pale wasting goes untreated. Suffer the slaymate's stabs and thrashings if you must, but avoid its bite above all else!

Slaymates can be recognized by their eyes, pools of inky blackness nestled within sad, sunken sockets. Their skin is a pallid shade of gray graced with scarlet or rosy blotches, the exaggerated remnants of whatever blows or torments they suffered in their last hours alive. Their mouths often dribble or sputter, sometimes with spittle, sometimes with blood and sometimes with pus or erupting, pestilent bile. And they are always young children; though I confronted one slaymate who was no more than an infant (and a most unsettling slaymate it was), rare is the slaymate who has seen ten summers of life, and as far as I and my church know, no slaymates have ever lived for twelve summers or more.

Much of Said's account we learned from the light of Pelor; the rest we learned from Said himself. Though Said spoke with a soft and rasping voice, barely above a whisper — for his father's oil and cruelty had destroyed much of that voice — in undeath, slaymates are as capable of thinking and speaking as they were in life. Though their minds are shaped by undeath, their minds are no less childlike, and typically do they hunger for companionship. Sometimes, particularly among those slaymates who harbor sorrow or regret rather than anger or malice, they may even hunger for guidance and tutelage at the feet of one who may be more of a parent to the slaymate than anyone the slaymate has ever known.

However, these needs may also lead slaymates into the clutches of necromancers, a union from which no good can stem. Necromancers are as varied as the slaymates are; some necromancers beguile the slaymates with empty promises in order to gain the slaymate's servitude, others keep the slaymates around as interesting pets, or perhaps as something more. I recall now Lady Mazadah Kale of Morribord. As she was — and, at this time, remains — a noblewoman among Morribord's aristocracy, those of my church were forbidden to touch her, move against her or speak of her necromantic practices in public. But Lady Mazadah had birthed two children in her lifetime, and both of her children, with her husband, were lost when their ship capsized in a sea storm far abroad. She grieved for many years, but then, during a visit to Baroness Swann's court, she happened across a slaymate wandering Nellowswann's beaches. In life, the slaymate was a girl named Violetta, struck down in her fourth winter by a combination of lungsputter and gutter-bound parents who were too perpetually drunken to see their daughter to a cleric before her common cold could bloom into that fatal case of lungsputter. So Lady Mazadah cancelled the rest of her stay with the baroness and instead spent that remaining time on the beach with Violetta. By the time the lady returned to Morribord, she had fashioned something resembling a Seolemarkese papoose sized perfectly for Violetta, and so did Lady Mazadah bear Violetta on her back through the streets of Morribord's capitol for many years after, singing with Violetta, enjoying games or other diversions with her and treating the slaymate as if she were her own daughter in every way.

Only a shameless necromancer would dare to replace her dead daughter by adopting a girl from among the undead, but it was through that union that our church learned of one last unexpected trait embodied in the slaymate: through the great sorrow, malice or tragedy which brought the slaymate back from death, each slaymate is a walking, unliving wellspring of dark power, a focus and an everlasting font of fuel for the necromantic arts. A necromancer who keeps at least one slaymate within arm's reach will enjoy greater command over the magicks of necromancy; his spells may be more quickly cast, or they may become greater in power and effect, or they may endure for twice as long. The effects depend on the prowess of the necromancer harnessing the slaymate's pale aura, but you need know no more than this: beware the necromancer who has declared himself your enemy, and beware him doubly if he has a slaymate by his side.

The Shadow

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Tomb Mote

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Dessicator

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Bone Rat Swarm

and

The Corpse Rat Swarm

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Deathlock

The Cold Womb: Al-Shadan's Journal on the Undead Al-Shadan_Deathlock

At least two scholars in my acquaintence have called the deathlock "a poor man's lich." They are not very far from the truth.

These undead of death-bleached skin, wasted muscle, gaunt builds and twisted facial features mutated by untamed wizardry, hail from the corpses of mages who died while infused with potent arcane magic. Most of these undead wizards perished to sorcerous backfires when their daring magical experiments or the demanding creations of powerful arcane relics went awry. Unlike liches and their ilk, deathlocks do not enter undeath by force of will; their existence is entirely a cosmic accident, as each deathlock died with too much arcane power infused in his body. And such powers do not always disperse without ordeal; they may instead twist and shape their vessel into something strange, unusual and entirely undead.

The most intriguing trait of the deathlock is that it has a body and it has a soul (though that soul is shattered and ravaged through the deathlock's becoming), but it has a fraction of its mind and the merest fragments of memory. From what I gathered in speaking with these creatures, these memories torment the deathlock as a bottle of water just beyond reach torments a man dying from thirst. But more often than not, the deathlock's frustration takes an entirely different turn: rather than striving harder to grasp those memories and what sources or events brought them about, the deathlock will, rather, strive to forget those memories, destroy their sources or undo what events took place in the deathlock's living, breathing days and brought those memories about. Perhaps the deathlock has surrendered to his state and would be rid of these painful memories, or perhaps the deathlock fears that to embrace the deathlock's life — and everything which came with it — would be to unravel the strings of fate and either reverse his undeath or destroy him utterly, and either end would forfeit the greater arcane might and the chance at immortality which come with being a deathlock. Sometimes, a bold soul may drive a deathlock to flight simply by loudly speaking and reminding the deathlock of what he once was and all that he has lost; unfortunately, it is more likely that the deathlock may retaliate with force and try to destroy his accuser in a fit of pique.

Trapped in a magic-fueled shade of existence, the deathlock does indeed enjoy a stronger mastery over sorcery. Their eyes can inherently perceive the colors of magic; they know of your enchanted blade before you bare it from its sheath, and they perceive what spells you cast no matter how softly you may whisper the incantations or how subtly your hands weave gestures behind your back. The barest touch from their bare hands mimics the dark orison of Inflicting Minor Wounds, opening narrow rents and scores in the flesh touched; sustained touches can eventually kill a victim, but the end will not come swiftly. They also have a talent for reading mystic texts without error and may be versed in more spells and rites than they were in life, as the seeds of magic blossom into a frightful harvest.

For many years, one of my most stalwart enemies was a seasoned Brustaggan wizard named Oktav von Kurbisweise; though he was an evoker foremost, he also fouled his hands in necromancy, desperate as he was to prolong his life to an unnatural age. With a band of allies, I drove Von Kurbisweise from his tower among Brustagg's northern reaches; wounded near death and sorely pressed, he opened a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire and fled. Sanbarera Lexx, the wizardess of our band, pursued him, leaving me to tend to our injured. As Sanbarera revealed later, Von Kurbisweise had offended an elemental prince named Zarragazazzur some years earlier; after insulating herself against the plane and contacting the prince through telepathy, Zarragazazzur and his entourage found Von Kurbisweise as he was engaging — and besting — Sanbarera in a duel of wizards. The evoker was so elated with having my friend at his mercy that he sneered and ignored the prince as he prepared a spell to finish her, only to hear Zarragazazzur's mocking words: "You wanted all the power in the universe. Here is but a taste!"

To his horror, Von Kurbisweise's spell surged without warning and rapidly grew larger and larger yet, well beyond what he could control. He stopped the prestidigitation but his spell did not stop with it. The last thing that Sanbarera saw before Zarragazazzur expelled her back into our world was the sight of Von Kurbisweise swept into the distant inferno in the twisting funnel of a fiery whirlwind, vomiting blue flames from his screaming maw as blinding fire-light burst from the pits of his ears.

I believed Von Kurbisweise to be dead and departed forever, but years later I began to see his warped, leering face staring at me from torchieres and in hearthfires. His hair, black and normal in his living years, then glowed and moved unnaturally, as if that hair were sculpted from living fire moving by its own volition. His teeth were blacker than soot, as was everything else inside his mouth, and each of his cheekbones had sharpened into two points thrusting out through his skin, while his forehead had enlarged and sprouted a white, reptilian crest of bony ridges and skin stretched between them. His ears were as ash-white as the rest of his skin, but they were shaped not like human ears but as half-rings of bony quills jutting among webs of stretched skin and ropy cartilage. He would later emerge fully from the Elemental Plane of Fire, wreathed in an orange robe every inch as hot and as bright as a bonfire. Though he confronted me and vowed to put an end to me then and there, he addressed me as though he were meeting me for the first time, guided to me by a hatred which he could not remember, and in that light do I now understand why he seemed genuinely confused when I mentioned our previous meetings and clashes. Then, with Mighty Pelor guiding my hand more wrathfully than He had in my early years, I weathered Von Kurbisweise's onslaught and endured his flames as I hacked his legs away with my thrice-blessed glaive, then seized his head, held him underwater in a nearby contemplation pool and chanted Pelor's blessings over the water until my staunch enemy finally crumbled to dust, and the eddies collected that dust and swallowed the heavier motes of all that remained of the dreadful Oktav von Kurbisweise.

As any cleric will learn, deathlocks are so infused with grim energy that the power of faith prevails less against them, and they will scorn all but one's most stalwart invocations to the gods by which to turn them to flight or to shatter their bodies with holy power. Abjuration is the key to defeating the deathlock, for wizardry is everything the deathlock is and everything he does; strip him of that power, or shield yourself wholly against it, and that leaves but the deathlock's physical aspect, which is far more easily bested. For priests, such prayers and rites as Spell Resistance will shield them from everything in the deathlock's mystic arsenal, while such invocations as Protection from Evil will spare one from his mind-shackling powers, and Protection from Elements and its ilk are vital if one would emerge from the deathlock's rains of fire, ice and thunder intact. I am less versed with the arcane arts, but I understand that such spells as Globe of Invulnerability and Spell Turning can serve arcanists equally well in defending them from a menacing deathlock. Though it is a spell which often fails against the undead, Feeblemind is a wonderful spell for the sorcerer who wishes to cripple an enemy deathlock, and both priests and wizards should keep the powers of antimagic at hand, for the safest enemy spell is the one negated before it can be cast.

But keep in mind that the deathlock may be able to cast the same prohibitive spells on you. So strike from surprise if you can, and ensure that your magicks smite first.

Every deathlock that I have ever met has been some manner of fallen wizard, witch, sorcerer or other arcanist. But I continue to hear rumors that deathlocks may just as easily rise from the ensorcelled corpses of clerics, druids and perhaps even bards. The assassin known only as the Faded Whisper is said to be a once-mortal assassin who perished when he cast a spell of darkness to hide himself from pursuers, only for the darkness to sprout teeth, rush down his throat and tear him apart from within, and then, in a strange turn, his wayward magic molded his torn body back together and revived him as a deathlock come the next dusk. While the fertile soil from which new deathlocks rise may indeed be varied, every deathlock suffers from an excessive reliance on magic. Remove that magic — or become impregnable against it — and the deathlock has already lost.

The Ghost

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Allip

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Murk

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Quell

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Skin Kite

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Brain in a Jar

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Skulking Cyst

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Wraith

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Entomber

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Necropolitan

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Blackskate

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

The Bloodmote Cloud

[This journal entry has not yet been recovered.]

» Wraith's Food Journal