Spiritus Anime

The spiritus anime is an undead creature, in the shape of a formless vapor, capable of animating the bodies of dead creatures in its vicinity. Its appearance is that of a glimmering cloud of dust with a tenuous thread of dust motes attaching it to the body the spiritus wore in life (its “home body,” which is almost invariably buried). This cloud is normally invisible but a detect invisibility or true seeing spell reveals it as a glowing nimbus around the bodies it animates, or as a cloud if found without bodies. In addition, if someone actively tries to see this monster without magical aid, the attempt will succeed if a save vs. spells is successfully made. The viewer must be within 10’ of the spiritus anime in order to have any chance of seeing it.

Combat: In its natural, cloudlike form, the spiritus anime makes no attacks; to fight, it possesses and animates a corpse or skeleton within 100 yards of its original home body. When in one of these bodies, it fights as if it were a normal animated undead, either a skeleton or a zombie, with the animated body having all appropriate statistics (the body’s hit dice and hit points are separate from the spiritus anime ’s own). Damage done to the animated body is not taken by the spiritus anime; when a body that the spiritus anime inhabits is “slain,” the monster merely animates another corpse on the following round and once more rises to the attack (having a +4 penalty added to its initiative roll on the first round of a new body’s use). “Slain” undead cannot be animated again by the same spiritus anime, though zombies that are “slain” can be reused as skeletons months later, once the flesh has rotted from their bones. Only the remains of human, demihuman, or humanoid beings can be so animated.

There are four ways to halt a spiritus anime’s attack. The easiest is to retreat more than 100 yards from the spiritus’ home body, the distance beyond which it cannot move an animated host body. (Theoretically, a spiritus anime could use an animated body to carry its home body to a distant site, in order to find a larger sup ply of corpses to animate or to follow a particular enemy to which it has developed some special attachment, but such an intelligent plan would surely be beyond it.)

The second method is to destroy the supply of dead bodies that it can animate as weapons, a time-consuming process that can be counterproductive if some of the attacking party dies in the melee, allowing their bodies to be animated as zombies by the spiritus anime (in preference to the weaker skeletons).

The third way is to destroy the spiritus anime’s home body, instead of merely dispatching its host bodies. If attackers manage to identify and dig up its home body, they can “slay” this body and, in so doing, kill its spiritus anime. The home body has the statistics of either a skeleton or zombie, though if not animated it will not attack. When an attack on the home body is begun, the spiritus will concentrate its efforts on protecting its home body either by using animated bodies or by animating its home body and attempting to flee with it. Normal weapons are effective against a spiritus anime’s home body, and holy water does 1-4 hp damage per vial both to the body and to the spiritus anime itself.

The final method of killing a spiritus anime is through magic. If any cure wounds spell is used on a body the spiritus anime is animating, the spiritus anime permanently loses a number of hit points from its own hit-point total (not from the hit-point total of the animated body) equalling the number of hit points that the spell would have cured. Bless causes 1-4 hp damage to the spiritus anime if it fails a saving throw vs. spells, and exorcise, dispel evil, spiritwrack, raise dead, and resurrection will all kill it without a saving throw.

A spiritus anime can be turned by a cleric as if it were a ghoul. A “D” result destroys the body the spiritus anime is animating but does not harm the spiritus anime itself. If a spiritus anime is turned, it can leave the body it is animating and resume its attacks in the next round by entering a new body, just as if the first body had been destroyed. A bless spell cast upon a body that has not been animated will permanently protect that body from animation by a spiritus anime. If the spell is cast on the spiritus anime’s homebody, the spiritus anime takes the usual 1-4 hp damage, no matter where it is or what it is doing.

Once in a while (10%), a particular spiritus anime will have developed a special and deceptive battle tactic. It will abandon a wounded host body before the body is completely destroyed, only to return to it later. As those fighting against the undead will have assumed that they slew the first body, having it rise a second time will make them believe that the undead bodies are impossible to slay—a frightening prospect indeed.

Habitat/Society: A spiritus anime is a type of undead created only when a human, demi-human or humanoid creature is buried alive, either intentionally (as a torture or sacrifice) or by accident (such as a landslide or the result of a tragedy involving a disease, a feign death spell, etc.). Many (40%) of those so buried become spiritus animes, desperate to escape burial and return to the surface.

Because such circumstances are usually uncommon, only solitary spiritus animes are typically encountered. If more than one of them haunts a single site, the only sign that they acknowledge each other’s existence is that they usually refrain from animating each other’s home bodies unless there are no other bodies available to them. If this does occur, and one of these home bodies is slain, this automatically slays the spiritus anime to which the body belongs, without materially affecting the spiritus that had been animating the body. Thus, “killing” a zombie on one side of a graveyard could actually slay a spiritus anime on the other side of the field, causing two undead bodies to fall, in different locations, when only one was struck (though a third body might soon arise!).

Although both skeletons and zombies can be created from the bodies of any dead monster, a spiritus anime animates only bodies that are similar to the one it wore in life, for it feels comfortable in that shape alone. If the body animated is of the same species as the spiritus once was, then the animation is handled with ease. If there is a minor difference in size (such as that caused by a once-human spiritus anime using a dwarven skeleton), the animated body fights at - 1 to hit; if there is a major difference between the bodies (such as the size difference between a halfling and an ogre, or the presence of extra body parts such as the tail of a troglodyte or the four arms of some sahuagin), the body fights at -4 to hit.

Ecology: Spiritus animes are not natural creatures and do not participate in any way in the food chain, except to create carrion in their immediate vicinities that attracts scavengers, insects, etc. As these creatures are usually found in areas shunned by civilization, they are set very much apart from the worlds everyday functioning. They exist only to procure additional host bodies to preserve their “lives” aboveground until they are finally laid to rest

Spiritus animes do not collect treasure, but sometimes they will have incidental treasure. If in a proper graveyard, each of the bodies they animate, plus their home bodies, will have only the normal burial goods of that region, ranging from a burial shroud to the riches of a major tomb. If the bodies used are the result of an accidental burial, then the treasure will consist of the normal goods carried by the creatures when alive.