Ghouls are humans, who feasting on corpses and engaging in other vileness, have become undead, or in turn were killed by another ghoul without their corpses being sanctified by a cleric. Loping through the darkness with their vague canine cast and long black marrow-licking tongues, they haunt graves and ruins, seeking the flesh of the dead and the living. Though their minds are warped by the transformation, and their general intellect stunted, they still retain a terrible cunning, and they attack in fearless packs to good effect, bringing down the living to feast on their remains. Any human or demi-human, save elves, attacked by a ghoul must make a saving throw or be paralysed for 3d4 turns.

Protection from evil will keep these things at bay, unless one so protected violates the circle by attacking the ghouls.

Ghouls are also said to be able travel the lands of dreams, using them as conduit to enter the waking world of men at various graveyards, and escaping without a trace. Marine ghouls are called “lacedons” and are sometimes found on ghost ships or dwelling in wrecks on the sea bed.

Description: Ghouls appear as emaciated, animated corpses with sharp teeth and long fingernails to which shreds of corpse-flesh are sometimes attached. Their voices are weird and eldritch, sometimes described as “meeping” and “glibbering”.

Treasure: 1d8×1,000 cp (50%); 1d6×1,000 sp (25%); 1d4×1,000 ep (25%); 1d3×1,000 gp (25%); 2d4 gems (30%); 1d4 jewellery (20%); magic weapon or armour (10%); 1d4 scrolls (10%)