By Kevin Kulp

The problem with a sinking city is all those sub-basements. Things set up shop down there, turning your great-great-grandmother’s long-forgotten ballroom into their personal lair. You’d never know if you didn’t find the burrowed tunnels… and if your friends didn’t keep disappearing.

Eversink, it turns out, occasionally has a ghoul problem.

The Church Militant acts to exterminate ghouls as soon as they’re aware of them, but ghouls are crafty. If a ghoul lord is able to escape it won’t be long before another hive rises up somewhere nearby. They burrow into basements, destroy whole families or businesses, and then make the structure their own until forced to flee elsewhere. One thing about ghouls, though: they’re always hungry, and the fresher and more intelligent the meat, the better.

Use ghouls to underscore a tone of gluttony, greed, or corruption. Ghoul rats can be used as Mooks, and ghoul lords are typically named Adversaries. Ghouls are a good way to wipe out a family of Supporting characters that you’ve gotten bored of (or who are more interesting dead than alive), and they can even be used as a source of important clues and leads. Intelligent ghouls often know otherwise-forgotten secrets about Eversink, especially the Ghoul Lord who learns secrets from the people it eats.

Design Discussion

Ghoul attacks both hurt Health and drain their victim’s Athletics pool, paralyzing their target while their victim’s Athletics is 0. This is a technique that can also be applied to other monsters and trap effects. Picture a creature that makes its target glow brightly as it drains its target’s Stealth, or a magical trap in a temple of greed that mystically siphons off resources by draining a trespasser’s Preparedness.  This design choice also adds usefulness to Refresh tokens, because a victim of a ghoul attack can shrug off paralyzation by claiming a Refresh token and raising their drained Athletics from 0 to 1.

Common Ghouls

Hissing, loathsome, sly

Defense — Health: Health Threshold 4, Health 12

Defense — Morale: Morale Threshold 4, Grit 3 (Grit 0 if confronted with prayers or symbols of faith), Morale 6

Offense — Warfare: +1; Damage Modifier +1 (Claw or bite; see Paralysis, below)

Abilities: Malus 12

Special Abilities: Monstrous Ability (cost 3 per attack – Paralysis), Spider Climb, Lightning Speed (cost 3 per round)

Misc: Stealth Modifier +2

Refresh Tokens: 3

Description: Common ghouls appear to be rotting, naked human beings with jagged teeth and filthy claw-like fingernails. Ghouls feed on the living to satisfy their bottomless hunger. They tend to lurk on ceilings and in shadows, scuttling forwards quickly and leaping onto unsuspecting prey in the hopes of paralyzing and devouring a still-living meal. Common ghouls are easy to chase away with Sway attacks if you confront them with a prayer or a religious symbol, both of which ignore their Grit.

Common ghouls have a disturbing tendency to congregate in hives, dwelling in a network of tunnels or burrows that intersect the sub-basements of old houses and crypts. When directed by the more intelligent ghoul lord they’ll devour everyone in the building and live there themselves until discovered. On rare occasions they’ll even pretend to be the people they’ve devoured, dressing in their clothing and acting out their daily activities in a sham existence that’s immediately obvious to anyone who sees them.

Any corpse paralyzed and then killed (but not devoured) by a common ghoul becomes a ghoul itself. Ghouls are hungry enough that these are rarer than you’d think, unless the common ghoul is under orders from a ghoul lord to grow the hive.

Monstrous Ability: Paralysis (cost 3). When a ghoul’s Warfare attack inflicts Health damage, spend 3 Malus and reduce the target’s Athletics pool by 1d6+1. When the target’s Athletics pool (or Malus, if appropriate) reaches 0 they are paralyzed for the rest of the scene or until their Athletics pool is 1 or higher.

Spider Climb: The ghoul can clamber effortlessly up walls and across ceilings.

Lightning Speed: The ghoul is incredibly quick, increasing its movement to 2 range increments instead of 1 and still attack, or they can move 3 range increments without attacking. The common ghoul’s Health and Morale Thresholds rise by +1 for the round. When used during a foot chase, Lightning Speed adds +2 to the ghoul’s die roll on a Chase test.

Ghoul Rats

Cat-sized, hungry, spiteful

Defense — Health: Health Threshold 1, Health 1

Defense — Morale: Morale Threshold 3, Grit 3 (Grit 0 if confronted with prayers or symbols of faith), Morale 1

Offense — Warfare: +0; Fixed Damage 3 (Bite; see Paralysis, below)

Abilities: Malus 6

Special Abilities: Monstrous Ability (cost 3 – Paralysis), Spider Climb

Refresh Tokens: 1

Description: Ghoul rats are the animated corpses of large rats who live within ghoul hives. Constantly hungry, they move in packs and tend to swarm a single target at a time, paralyzing them before moving onto their next victim. They seldom stop to feed on paralyzed foes until no more threats remain. Ghoul rats are easy to destroy, but resistant to Sway attacks unless confronted with prayers or symbols of faith.

Monstrous Ability: Paralysis (cost 3). When a ghoul rat’s Warfare attack inflicts Health damage, spend 3 Malus and reduce the target’s Athletics pool by 3. When the target’s Athletics pool (or Malus, if appropriate) reaches 0 they are paralyzed for the rest of the scene or until their Athletics pool is 1 or higher.

Spider Climb: The ghoul rat can clamber effortlessly up walls and across ceilings.

Ghoul Lord

Gluttonous, clever, cruel

Defense — Health: Health Threshold 4, Armor 3 (layers of calcified fat and flesh), Health 5 per Hero

Defense — Morale: Morale Threshold 4, Grit 6 (Grit 0 if confronted with prayers or symbols of faith), Morale 5 per Hero

Offense — Warfare: +2; Damage Modifier +2 (Claw or bite; see Paralysis, below)

Abilities: Malus 25

Special Abilities: Extra Action (cost 3, usable twice per round), Fear (cost 3), Monstrous Ability (cost 3 – Paralysis)

Refresh Tokens: 7

Description: Ghoul lords are smart, devious undead who lead hives of common ghouls. They seldom hunt themselves, as they’re often too bulky to move quickly or squeeze through narrow tunnels, so their common ghouls bring them corpses and living paralyzed victims to devour. A ghoul lord’s chamber is filled with filth and gnawed bones.

When it knows the hive is in danger and it fears for its own existence, the ghoul lord can rip its essence free of its swollen and calcified flesh in order to escape into tunnels. Its form after doing so is that of a common ghoul. This takes up to an hour, however, and so can’t be used as a last-minute escape plan.

Any corpse paralyzed and then killed (but not devoured) by a ghoul lord becomes a common ghoul.

Ghoul lords are highly resistant to Sway attacks unless confronted with a prayer or a religious symbol, both of which ignore their Grit.

Extra Action (cost 3 per extra action): The ghoul lord can gain up to two extra actions in one round, which may be spent attacking. It can choose whether to take its three attacks at once, or (more powerfully) gain a second or third place in the initiative order. The ghoul lord may target the same enemy more than once.

Fear: In addition to its normal action, the ghoul lord automatically inflicts 3 points of Morale damage (or higher) without rolling by doing something terrifying. A single target costs 3 Malus; multiple targets costs 6.

Monstrous Ability: Paralysis (cost 3). When a ghoul lord’s Warfare attack inflicts Health damage, it may spend 3 Malus and reduce the target’s Athletics pool by 1d6+3. When the target’s Athletics pool (or Malus, if appropriate) reaches 0 they are paralyzed for the rest of the scene or until their Athletics pool is 1 or higher.

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Kevin Kulp (@kevinkulp) and Emily Dresner (@multiplexer) are the co-authors of Swords of the Serpentine, out now in hardback and PDF. Kevin previously helped create TimeWatch and Owl Hoot Trail for Pelgrane Press. When he’s not writing games he’s either smoking BBQ or helping 24-hour companies with shiftwork, sleep, and alertness.