Deciduous Undead - Foul Necro Botanical Monstrosities
/The endless ranks of the dead will always be a real threat in fantasy fiction. Skeletal hands scratching at the living under the will of some strange contagion or the influence of a mad mage will always be a terrifying prospect.
What they are is consistent. There's very set feelings in the realms of fiction that let us readers and watchers know how we should think about them. They shamble, and they're fairly easy to overpower as long as you know what you're doing and have roughly average strength. The zombie is alongside the goblin as one of the first few things to help a PC get their first levels in combat. Because they're weak. Let's change that.
Deciduous Undead
The idea that zombies slowly shuffle about on what little muscle left on their rotting limbs is a great start, but creates a fairly weak creature. The magical energy that lifts a skeleton and animates it with the speed to be a threat is menacing, but they're brittle and prone to breaking.
Some necromancers in my homebrew setting have turned their mastery of the natural arts into warping the elements of undeath into new shapes, with the natural scaffolding of plants. In other cases, they occur naturally. In immense swamps and bogs suffused with dark magical energy, the undead can spring forth from the people who travelled there.
So called Deciduous Undead crop up often from the overgrown tombs and woodland cemeteries of the world. The undead have had the green of the world grow among their remains. The forces that animated those undead take those plants in with them. The moss hardens the bones and makes the greying skin smooth. Bark toughens their hides like a natural wooden armour. Vines weave through the joints and makes them both stronger and faster than most living beings, let alone other undead.
Some undead beings that fester in grim backwoods keep growing. Truly dire beings can fuse together with immense plants. Some deciduous undead grow to immense proportions. The deciduous undead can fuse with trees to bring them to immense heights, with other undead beings trapped in the knots of the wood. Some can grow branches from their backs and immense leaves can form wings for them to scour their tainted wood. The corpse flowers in our world can sprout across their rotting forms, leaving an immense, poisonous cloud around them.
The Dead Bloom
The consistently growing deciduous undead are a present threat on the fringes of the world. When the dead are near the growing life, they can make a truly profane union.
Mobs of deciduous undead can fall upon apart wandering through a blooming marsh or jungle hollow. The more serious and strong the undead for the stronger party make for a real challenge if the dense woodland has difficult terrain. It may lead to interesting story implications. Is the land cursed to spew undead horrors? Or is there some malevolent necromancer on the fringes creating these entities.
Now we want to hear from you. Where would deciduous undead bloom in settings you GM? What kind of necromancers would be so demented to mix undead and plant matter? Let us know on our discord server or in the comments below.
Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, he writes about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out himself. On Youtube, he can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Follow his Twitter @IzzetTinkerer.