The Strange Bestiary
A soul eater is the animate head of a powerful wizard who shuffled off this mortal coil to become an undead creature without ethics, feelings, or a sense of morality. Also called dread skulls, these creatures maintain their existence by occasionally absorbing the spirit or mind of living victims. An absorbed “soul” is burned away, which is why dread skulls are wreathed in flame; it’s the by-product of the creature’s previous meal.
Motive: Hungers for souls
Environment: Usually at the center of tombs
Health: 15
Damage Inflicted: Moderate wound (5 points)
Armor: 1
Movement: Long when flying
Modifications: Resists mental attacks and deception as level 7; Speed defense as level 7 due to size and quickness; knowledge of arcane methodologies and rituals as level 8
Combat: A soul eater has a library of magic abilities it can draw upon, including long-range attacks of fire or cold against all targets within immediate range of each other, the ability to read the mind of a victim within short range on a failed Intellect defense roll, and the ability to cloak itself in the illusion of a normal human for up to an hour at a time.
In addition, a dread skull can draw out a victim’s consciousness and absorb it in a blaze of supernatural fire. To do so, the creature must bite a target, which inflicts a moderate wound (5 points); the target must then succeed on an Intellect defense roll or take an additional 5 points of Intellect damage (ignores Armor).
If a dread skull drains a character’s Intellect Pool to 0 through repeated bites, the character’s soul is sucked into the skull, and the body falls limp. Once absorbed into the skull, a victim’s essence is trapped and slowly consumed over the next twenty-four hours. During this period, the skull regenerates 1 point of health per round.
If a dread skull isn’t destroyed within twenty-four hours of eating a soul, the victim’s essence is fully consumed. If the soul eater is defeated and its skull is shattered before then, all unconsumed souls are returned to their bodies.
Interaction: Dread skulls are slightly insane but hellishly smart, which means that sometimes they will negotiate to get what they want.
Use: Soul eaters remember a little bit of the knowledge of every creature’s essence they consume. The PCs need to learn the command word of an artifact they’ve found, but the only one who knew it was consumed by a dread skull.
Loot: Sometimes dread skulls keep treasures as trophies of past victories, consisting of 1d6 cyphers and maybe an artifact.
GM Intrusion: The character who uses a cypher against the dread skull must make an Intellect defense roll. On a failed roll, the cypher begins to burn with flame, dealing the character 5 points of damage and destroying the cypher in the process.