Publication:Dread Codex/Monsters/Undead Stalker

''This hulking 9-foot-tall beast has skin of deep crimson, lined with bulging veins and corded muscles. Its arms end in dangerous four-clawed hands and its large head bears glowing eyes and a maw filled with shiny teeth. Its thick black hair is greasy and unkempt and takes on a purplish sheen in the moonlight.''

Undead stalkers are large, humanoid monsters that feed on the living and undead alike. They speak no languages. Undead stalkers are nocturnal, and even at night or when underground they keep to the shadows. They spend their days in dark holes and subterranean chasms, and while their favored hunting grounds are forests and mountainsides, they can be found in any environment. Cunning and cruel, they seek out intelligent and magical creatures, devouring their souls after killing them. But undead stalkers ignore all other potential meals in favor of undead, whenever possible. They gain great strength from negative energy, and the desire to consume undead creatures seems to be the driving force of their existence. Undead stalkers hunt relentlessly until dawn, when they hastily retreat to their lairs. It is unknown why they despise sunlight, as it appears to only repulse, rather than harm them.

Undead stalkers show no ability to socialize. They do not form families, communicate among themselves or with other species, or empathize with creatures they encounter. They reproduce asexually, and each only once; when an undead stalker is several centuries old and has consumed enough lives, it returns to its lair and collapses. It dissolves, melting and joining with a bed made of the remains of its victims. After several days, a new undead stalker rises out of the morass of bone and ichor. Given their inability to increase their number, the death of undead stalkers as a species seems inevitable.

Combat
Undead stalkers enjoy toying with adversaries, often preparing primitive traps and ambushes. They almost never retreat from battle, focusing on killing one enemy at a time. An undead stalker's natural weapons are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

 (Su): An undead stalker that hits with both claw attacks tears at the spiritual "membrane" that protects an opponent's soul. The creature receives 1d4 negative levels. The Fortitude save to remove a negative level has a DC of 14. The save DC is Charisma-based. For each such negative level bestowed, the undead stalker gains 5 temporary hit points.

 (Su): An undead stalker devours the souls of creatures it kills with its claws. A creature whose soul has been devoured cannot be raised or resurrected until its soul is freed. A limited wish, miracle or wish frees the soul, as does the death of the undead stalker.

 (Su): An undead stalker's claws deal damage normally against incorporeal creatures. An incorporeal creature's 50% chance to avoid damage does not apply to attack with an undead stalker's claws. When an undead stalker is incorporeal, its claws deal damage against corporeal creatures normally, and it retains its natural armor bonus to AC.

 (Su): Once per day as a standard action, an undead stalker can use the negative energy it has collected to take on spirit-form, leaving its body behind. The spirit appears as a ghostly version of the undead stalker, and gains all the traits of incorporeal creatures, but can use its ghost touch ability to affect corporeal creatures and objects normally. As it loses its Strength score, the undead stalker's attack bonus with its claws changes to +6, but the stalker ignores material armor not made of force and lacking the ghost touch quality. It also gains a +1 deflection bonus to AC.

While the stalker is in spirit-form, its body lies unconscious. Damage taken by either the spirit or the body injures both, and the death of the body destroys the spirit. The undead stalker can merge with its body once again by touching it as a move action, but it automatically rejoins its body after a number of minutes spent incorporeal equal to its Constitution modifier.

 (Ex): In sunlight or when within the radius of a daylight spell, an undead stalker must succeed on a DC 15 Will save or become frightened until it reaches a dark or shadowy area. Even if the undead stalker succeeds, it must repeat the save every minute it stays in the light.

 (Ex): Undead stalkers share certain traits with undead. They are not subject to ability drain or energy drain, they are healed by negative energy (such as inflict spells), and they take damage from positive energy (such as cure spells).

Treasure
Standard — Since the remains of slain creatures are taken to the undead stalker's lair, there is certainly treasure to be had there. Defeating the creature anywhere else yields a large smelly carcass.


 * Chain shirt [100 gp]
 * Cloth of gold vestments [90 gp]
 * Dagger (x4) [2 gp each]
 * Holy symbol, silver [25 gp]
 * Masterwork battleaxe [310 gp]
 * Masterwork longbow [375 gp]
 * Masterwork studded leather [175 gp]
 * Longsword (x2) [15 gp each]
 * Smokestick (x2) [20 gp each]
 * Potion of cure moderate wounds (x2) [300 gp each]
 * Potion of lesser restoration [300 gp]
 * Scroll of consecrate (CL 3rd) [200 gp]
 * 347 gp

In Your Campaign
The result of heavy magical experimentation on owlbears, undead stalkers were first created to attack a necromancer's fortress. The king who commissioned the monster wanted the necromancer and his undead legions wiped out after their fourth attack against his kingdom. Originally good-aligned, the first taste of negative energy somehow warped the stalkers' arcane matrices and turned them into the soul-sucking bloodthirsty beasts they are today.

Several adventure ideas present themselves where the undead stalker is concerned. In an enormous mortuary where the spirits of the ancient dead can be called upon to advise the living, both resident spirits and the mortuary's caretakers have been disappearing. The caretakers lock themselves, along with the PCs, inside, and ask the party to determine who is causing the disappearances, and why. One of the caretakers has called an undead stalker into the mortuary in order to hide his summoning of spirits for personal gain, and is doing his best to hide evidence from the PCs.

A grieving widow whose husband was slain by an undead stalker is the subject of another adventure idea. She asks the PCs to free her husband's soul so it might find peace. But the undead stalker is the sole guardian of an ancient pyramid where undead are feared to dwell, and the only force preventing the undead from escaping. After some investigation, the only known way to extract a soul from inside an undead stalker is with a spell hidden inside the pyramid, so the PCs must sneak past the stalker, explore the pyramid, and then find the stalker again.