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Lords of Darkness
THE LORDS OF DARKNESS
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Tales From Beyond the Grave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Skeletons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Ghouls and Ghasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 5
Wights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2
Shadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 9
Mummies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4
Vampires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2
Ghosts .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1
Spectres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 9
Lich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 7
The Night Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6
A Mundane Guide to. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85
The Lords of Darkness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9 2
Credits:
Authors: Ed Greenwood (Introduction, Lich, Mundane Guide,
Lords of Darkness), Deborah Christian (Skeletons, Shadows,
Spectre), Michael Stackpole (Zombies), Paul Jaquays (Ghouls
and Ghasts, Mummies), Steve Perrin (Wights), Vince Garcia
(Vampires, Ghosts), Jean Rabe (Vampires).
Editing: Scott Martin Bowles
Project Coordinators: Bruce A. Heard, Karen S. Boomgarden
Cover Art: Jeff Easley
Interior Art: Karl Wailer
ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, AD&D, FORGOTTEN REALMS,
DRAGON, PRODUCTS OF YOUR IMAGINATION, and the TSR logo are trademarks
owned by TSR, Inc.
Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Random House, Inc., and in
Canada by Random House of Canada, Ltd. Distributed to the toy and hobby trade by
regional distributors. Distributed in the United Kingdom by TSR Ltd.
This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any
reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork presented herein in
prohibited without the express written permission of TSR, Inc.
©
1988 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
Cartography: Dave LaForce
ISBN 0-88038-622-3
Typography: Kim Janke
$8.95 US
Keylining: Stephanie Tabat
9240
9240XXX1501
TSR, Inc.
POB 756
Lake Geneva,
WI 53147
TSR Ltd.
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Cambridge CB1 3LB
England
INTRODUCTION AND DMING UNDEAD
With a final sharp, splintering sound,
the door gave way. The warriors forced
it aside and peered into the dimness
beyond, blades drawn.
They beheld a dark, littered chamber,
silent and dead. Dust lay thick every-
where. Though there were no traces of
anyone having come there, an old man
sat in its midst, sucking a pipe and hum-
ming into his beard as he regarded
them levelly.
And who are you, graybeard?
demanded the foremost man-at-arms,
approaching warily. In reply, the old
man spoke a word of power that smote
their ears with a clap of thunder His
challenger staggered back as if dazed,
dropping blade and shield with a clang-
or.
My name, despoilers of tombs, he
said in a deep, rolling voice, is Elmin-
ster. I sit in this crypt to be with my
friends. You will leave them, and you
will leave meNOW. And he rose, eyes
flashing. The men turned and, with one
accord, fled.
The old man chuckled, sighed, and
sat down again. You were saying? he
prompted the darkness. And the dark-
ness answered. .
DMs devising their own undead adven-
tures.
The Night Gallery details the main
character or creature of each adven-
ture and is useful in planning a series of
encounters.
It is followed by A Mundane Guide to
Wards vs. Undead, Spirits, and Other
Entities, which explores the magic and
lore of dealing with undead. Some lore
will be common knowledge (readable
to players), and more can be revealed
by consulting veteran adventurers,
sages, or crumbling tomes. Much
should be learned only by trial and
error, during combat.
The Lords of Darkness section
presents new spells for necromancers
(those mages who specialize in working
with undead). They are fully compati-
ble with the spells in other AD&D
of shuffling zombies chill farmers and
merchants alike late at night around
dying hearth fires.
Some undead are clearly evil,
directed or created by or allied to dark
powers. Others are just as clearly neu-
tral, and the intelligent undead have
proven time and again that they are
capable of all the emotions and align-
ments of their living counterparts:
treachery, suspicion, friendship, honor,
and even kindness. There are benign
undead who warn or aid travelers as
well as those who kill the living. What-
ever causes undead to come into exist-
ence (spell, natural process, divine
deed, or unknowable mystery) are
strong in the Realms; there are a LOT of
undead.
®
game rulebooks, and are recommended
as rare and mysterious magics, not
spells widely known and available. Cler-
ical equivalents may be devised in
accordance with the deities of individ-
ual campaigns.
DMing Undead
Most DMs use undead for their memo-
rable, fearsome nature and their
unique powers, which can sorely test
low-level player characters. How
undead are handled in battle is of para-
mount importance; while the mindless
nature of lesser undead allows a DM to
rescue foolish PCs from battlefield folly,
too often, more powerful undead are
handled in as mindless a manner.
Consider a lich, for example: a mage
or cleric so thirsty for immortality as to
try to cheat death, and already power-
ful at magic. All too often a lich is played
by the DM as a being who suddenly
throws a paramount instinct for surviv-
al beyond death away, to stand and
trade spells with a band of adventurers.
Liches should be cunning and elusive
why be destroyed when one can slip
away to strike again another night?
Whats the hurry, whats time, to a lich?
The DM should always have a clear
idea of what encountered undead are
trying to accomplish, from skeletons or
zombies mindlessly seeking to slay, to a
vampire or lich defending a trap-filled
lair. Why defend such a lair?
The lichs lair presented in this book
has a purpose: Alokkair is trying to
strip greedy adventurers of all the mag-
ic (and valuables which can buy more
.
Undead are among the most vividly
chilling monsters in AD&D
Undead in the
Forgotten Realms
Although this sourcebook is set in the
FORGOTTEN REALMS
game cam-
paigns, from awesome vampires to
silent, purposeful skeletons. Many
adventurers have battled wraiths and
cut their way through zombies; DMs
wanting to give players more such
excitement will find adventures aplenty
here. Everyone has fears and gruesome
images of the undead; may you find
more in these pages.
This sourcebook begins with intro-
ductory notes on the nature and han-
dling of undead. Tales From Beyond
the Grave then presents 10 complete
adventures. Each highlights a classic
undead type, with the challenges rising
as one proceeds to the later scenarios.
DMs should modify these as necessary
to better integrate them into campaign
play.
Creature Notes accompany each
adventure. These studies of the fea-
tured undead are particularly useful to
fantasy world,
DMs need not have other Realmslore
(such as the campaign set) if they wish
to set these adventures in different fan-
tasy campaign settings. For those
whose campaigns are set in the Realms,
a few notes will help in planning fur-
ther undead adventures.
Many types of undead are known in
the Realms, including sorts not in the
official AD&D game rules; boars,
horses, wolverines, and even owlbears
have been reported. There are also
undead animated by mages, such as
crawling claws and dracoliches (see
DRAGON
Magazine issue Nos. 32 and
110), little known in other worlds.
Undead are a recognized fact of exist-
ence in the Realms, much feared and lit-
tle understood. Many gory tavern tales
about liches and vampires and armies
2
®
®
magic) he can. A vampire or spectre
may try to separate individuals from a
party with pit traps and the like, so as to
drain them at leisure, and gain undead
followers.
All intelligent undead will have aims
(even if they are insane ones, or whim-
sies to entertain them). The natural
creation of greater undead seems
related to strength of purpose and
character, so thinking undead without
something to do (beyond exulting in kill-
ing and mayhem) should be rare.
A vampire or lich that clashes with
player characters many times to
become a behind-the-scenes personal
foe is far more memorable, frightening,
and satisfying to defeat than an undead
menace seen for only an instant before
PCs let fly with all their firepower. All
too often, undead are defeated with
boring ease, when a wily vampire
would become gaseous and escape,
only to ambush PCs later when asleep,
separated, or battling another monster.
If DMs play undead as energetically as
PCs, players will soon have their own
chilling tales of undead and hard battles
in the dark.
result in a loss of character experience.
l
Temporary paralysis with no sav-
ing throw, either complete or partial,
thereby preventing spell-casting, climb-
ing, picking locks, and giving a -2 pen-
alty to AC and attacks, for 1d12 + 10
rounds; curable.
l
Loss of all experience gained back
to the minimum required for the char-
acters current level.
l
Immediate loss of consciousness,
loss of 2d6 hit points, plus a permanent
loss of 1 hit point per drain attack, plus
possible loss of currently memorized
spells.
l
Loss of ability points at random;
character must save vs. poison to see if
each loss is permanent.
l
Permanent withering of touched
limb (limited wish or wish notwith-
standing), or bestowal of a disease of
severe, chronic nature.
l
Bestowal of minor permanent
curse (see Curses!, DRAGON
®
game rules:
dangerous monsters that must be
fought. There are vampires in the
Realms who command small armies of
undead, and liches who rule entire cit-
ies or underground realms.
But vampires have helped travelers
and battlefield survivors. Liches have
trained, advised, or chatted amiably
with adventurers. Skeletons have
marched out of crypts in besieged cities
to
snatch up children-their
descendants-and bear them to safety.
The great paladin Ralgorax, the
Sword of Tyr, in the dead of night
roused the sleeping northern village
where he had been born, riding his
charger down its streets and banging
his great sword against his shield. He
warned of an oncoming orc horde
and slew its boldest scouts as the vil-
lagers scrambled to gather their
belongings and flee.
®
Maga-
zine, issue No. 77).
l
Character stricken with insanity
(refer to DMG for types), or, if the char-
acter is a spell-caster, the PC perma-
nently loses knowledge of how to cast a
certain spell at random or perform a
type of a magic.
l
Alignment shift of character, one
step per attack, toward that of the
attacking undead. Note that this could
cause back-and-forth alignment shifts
as a character with a long career
encounters undead of different align-
ments.
l
Immediate feeblemindedness plus
a permanent loss of 1 ability point tran-
dom choice, save vs. poison to avoid).
The next day, after the paladins blade
had slain many an orc, the full light of
day revealed that Ralgoraxs flesh was
withered. He bore old death wounds,
and the horse beneath him was also car-
rion. He smiled sadly at their revulsion,
saluted, and rode away-into the
horde.
Alternatives to
Energy Draining
Many DMs are reluctant to use undead
as much as the vivid descriptions of
these monsters tempt them to; it seems
unfair to DMs and players alike to lose
10 years of life (in a campaign where
time is largely ignored, the loss is mean-
ingless; in a roleplaying campaign, the
loss seems horribly steep) at the mere
sight of a ghost, or have a single undead
attack drain one or even two levels of
hard-won experience, robbing a player
of the game benefits of what might be
literally years of AD&D
DMs should keep players on their
toes by occasionally using monsters
that vary from their official versions:
intelligent, unturnable skeletons are
frequent undead examples. Why not
helpful undead? Or neutral undead
who do not even know they have died,
such as merchants caught encamped
and asleep by a long-ago blizzard?
Undead need not always have malicious
personalities.
game play.
The horror and might of undead
must be preserved: to merely turn a
level-draining ability into so many dice
of physical damage seems a poor solu-
tion. DMs may well devise their own
solutions, but here are some alterna-
tives to an attack that would normally
Non-Evil Undead
The arts of creating and controlling
undead are Evil-and, as many have
learned to their detriment, very dan-
gerous.
But undead themselves are not
always evil. In the Realms, and many
other real and fictional lands, there are
tales of apparitions that warn the living
of hazards such as washed-out bridges
and impending disaster. Others provide
That is how easy it is to create non-
evil undead. Such variety in an AD&D
®
game campaign will give its participants
glowing memories of exciting, vivid
play . . . and isnt that what gaming is
for?
3
silent, non-attacking grim reminders of
long-ago battle valor, or guard family
crypts and the resting places of heroes.
Other undead are of the sorts
described in the AD&D
®
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