Sith

Tales of faithful wives who join their husbands at remote homestead, only to die through the neglect of their spouse or because of the harsh environment abound. So do the tales of the restless spirits of such women wandering the hills and ridges of the land that killed them. The stories tell that these spirits seek out rugged individuals like their husbands and drain all vitality from them

While there may indeed be ghosts roaming the lonely moors and highlands, these tales have also given rise to the sith, a beautiful vampiric spirit who preys on shepherds and lonely explorers.

The sith looks like a woman in her 20s, who wears a tattered dress that is not at all suited for life outside high society. Her features are face and hands are smudged with dirt and her hair is unkempt, but there is nonetheless a radiant beauty about her.

Combat: The sith will attempt to appear a helpless victim of circumstance when first encountering a lone character. She will express joy and relief over having finally met a "savior" in this harsh land, and will move to embrace the character. If the character accepts her embrace, he or she must make a save vs. paralysis. Should the save fail, the character feels compelled to join the sith in a dance, as they remain tightly embraced. As they dance, the sith drains her victim's blood through the skin via her touch: The victim loses 1d4 points of Constitution per rounds

Even characters who are not under the influence of the sith's touch may not recognize what is happening to him before it is too late. The drain is painless, and the loss causes the victim to feel increasingly lightheaded and dizzy (-1 to all attack rolls for each round the sith drains blood from the character) and finally fall unconscious. When the Constitution score reaches 0, the character is irrevocably dead, and can only be revived by a wish. Since the sith is not an actual vampire, the character does not rise as undead.

Accepted Alignments: Any.

Familiarity: Siths are automatically favorably inclined toward female shamans, and will only deal with males if under a charm spirit spell. Establishing a relationship with a sith takes three pints of blood, which must be poured over a shrine built in their honor. The shrine must be built from wood or stone that bears signs of having been worked by a craftsman.

Demands: Siths want to be taken from the wilderness and desposited in the city: This is all they ask of a shaman and will grant spells only if it appears progress is made in that direction. This may be accomplished the same way one would relocate a guardian spirit. Of course, a wily shaman may string a sith along for some time.

Benefits: While in the wilderness, a sith can grant a shaman 2nd- and 3rd-level solitary shaman spells, but once the spirit has been transplanted to the city, it may sponsor the full gamut of spells from the spiritualist list, in addition to the low-level spells from the solitary list. However, the spirit still remains a murderous, vampiric entity. Good-aligned characters would probably not knowingly unleash such a being onto an unsuspecting populace, even for the power it can grant. Many spiritualists, however, would have no moral qualms about such an act.