Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Vargouilles

History is a bottomless well of blood, poisoned by grudges. From out of its depths rise the curses of hateful generations past and forgotten.

These living curses lurk among us - by day ordinary-seeming, unaware of their true nature, and by night their heads detach, warp and flitter, trailing the tubes of their entrails on gloomy missions, inflicting pain and panic. An arrow loosed eventually lands, and lies still. A curse is a weapon for no just war, for it flies night after night without ever stopping.

They are

Vargouilles

HD: 1 AC: 14 ATK: 1d6 bite, OR Kiss OR Shriek SAV: 8  MOV: Fly as bat INT: As human ML: 7
No. Appearing: 1d10

Kiss: A vargouille spreads its curse with a kiss. One kissed by a vargouille must save, or contract their curse - on the first round after contracting the curse, a thin pink line of raw flesh circles their neck. On the second round, the line weeps corrupted blood. From the third round on, if their head is not firmly secured to their neck by their hands, or bandages, or suchlike, then it flies off as a new vargouille. Vargouilles are reluctant to overpopulate - too large a population of vargouilles in a community is a beacon to the headless huntsmen. The curse of a vargouille's kiss may be lifted by the same means as any other curse.

Shriek: Those within 30 feet must save or take 1d6 non-lethal damage each round they don't spend hiding or fleeing for the next 1d6 rounds. Those who fall unconscious due to this damage have their hair turn white permanently. Those who make their save against a vargouille's scream are immune to all such screams for a day. Headless hunstmen are immune to this.

A vargouille can chew the head off a corpse to make that corpse its new host body. Both the vargouille and its new body will appear to be an ordinary human during the day, but one's appearance is not changed to match the other.

Should a vargouille pass over the Seal of Iphegor it will be flung down to earth and become unable to fly until it removes itself from the radius of the Seal - however the true form of the Seal of Iphegor has been lost for centuries, and countless counterfeits crowd grimoires.

The Headless Huntsmen

HD: 3 AC: 16 ATK: 1d8 longsword & Hanged Man's Rot grenades, or 1d6 bow & arrows, or 1d6 bident and net SAV: 9 MOV: As human, or as riding horse INT: As human ML: 10
No. Appearing: 2d4

Impatient, ruthless exterminators of the vargouilles. The horses they ride are fearless, but otherwise ordinary.

Their neck-stumps are plugged by plates of lead printed with worn runes. Their blood does not flow except at the moment of their deaths, when it is expelled in a flood. When they attempt to go about incognito, they will wear hoods or helmets supported by gourds or tubers underneath. They communicate through gesture, and are somehow able to see without eyes, hear without ears. Headless huntsmen possess no special sense to detect vargouilles, but know the signs of their presence in a community - pregnant women whose children have been gnawed from their wombs, pets left impaled on branches, feces smeared on window-sills, and suchlike.

Hanged Man's Rot: Save vs. CON when breathing it in miasmic form, or contract. A Hanged Man's Rot grenade has a 10-ft. radius. Where a serious infestation has been detected, the headless huntsmen will bring a copper cooking-wagon which can in time fill an entire hex with Hanged Man's Rot miasma.

The disease is an affliction of the cervical vertebrae and its nerves - at first only a stiffness in the extremities, then becoming apparent as a harsh, weeping rash around the neck when it advances - in the end it leaves its victims paralyzed and suffocating. Save or take 1d6 DEX damage each week, which cannot be recovered until Hanged Man's Rot is cured. A dose of cure to the sickness can be produced with 20 sp of rare herbs, the knowledge of a sage or equivalent figure, and a day's work.

A vargouille can contract Hanged Man's Rot from both miasma and victims of it they feed on, yet takes no DEX damage. Instead, their ability to control a host body is destroyed. To those afflicted with Hanged Man's Rot, a vargouille's kiss is simply fatal if their head detaches rather than accursed.