The Creeping Death

The land of Mourning Pyre is ruled by the Creeping Death, a sentient spell given life by a magical catastrophe. It can see through the eyes of its animated dead, growing in intelligence and power with every body it controls.

Background

Created by the Day of Mourning, it was once a simple living spell of animate dead used inorder to hold off an attacking army from the land. As it raised corpses into zombies, it gained some of their sentience, becoming a thinking being. Those involved in the Day of Mourning had thought to use this powerful version of "Animate Dead" in order to even the three to one odds of the invading army not realizing it was gaining sentience. As it grew in intelligence it grew with the urge to gather more intelligence. Greedily, it sought out more dead, raising abominations and spreading across the region. It held the attacking army at bay, but it was too late by the time the original casters realized that the spell was now beyond their control. The Dark Powers took notice and drew the Creeping Death into the Mists along with the land into the Mists.

It is unknown just what they used in order to produce a more powerful spell. It's rumored that there is technology to enhance spellcasting spread across the land, and it is the source of the Creeping Death and perhaps even a way to beat it.

Current Sketch

The Creeping Death has grown in power and intelligence over the time it had been in transported to Mourning Pyre. When once it was a force focused on devouring all in its path in order to retain all the knowledge of its domain upon almost complete destruction of independent sentient life it began to realize that it could kill much faster than humans and other races could breed. It would 'run out' of supply to make it smarter if it continued to recklessly kill everything in its path.

Seeing this it withdrew from attacking settlements so that more minds could be formed by society and that it would one day add those to it's hive mind. Children, seem to be mostly ignored by the Creeping Death until around breeding day.

Furthermore the Creeping Death has just begun to understand the usefulness of magic and has began to be able to 'cast' minor spells from first to second level arcane spells. It wants to further the knowledge by devouring more minds with arcane knowledge so it may better understand and grow more powerful.

Having a basic understanding that the end of its domain there exists life beyond it, it almost never closes its borders from the outside encouraging more to come to its domain. The first few weeks someone enters Mourning Pyre they may not encounter a single undead, as the Creeping Death uses this ploy to relax would be victims. As it sits, the Creeping Death is trying to increase its population and trying to find a way to send messages to other domains or invite more beings to its domain so the population can continue to thrive and through this it can raise more undead.

To bring in more and more people into its domain, the Creeping Death has had to adopt more of a humanoid mindset. To this end, it covertly observes humanoid interactions, through its minions or its own stealth and guile. Though it has a lot to learn, the Creeping Death becomes ever more savvy and subtle in its machinations. However, a downside in learning about mortal society for the Creeping Death is that this learning has introduced new concepts previously unknown to it. Things like doubt and self-reflection, may one day cause the Creeping Death to question what it existence means and where its drives come from. As a dread possibility, the Creeping Death may come to wonder if the desire to create undead reflects a desire for some deeper form of connection. What this connection might be would be a mystery, but woe be to the entire Hub if it ever decided to find a mate or even reproduce itself.

Curse

The chief curse faced by the Creeping Death is maintaining a balance between what it must do and what it wants to do. Living earlier as a creature of pure id, the Creeping Death's drives are to run rampant killing and reanimating. It never acted like a true force of nature but instead found pure joy in these activities. Therefore, shackling these desires in order foster life in its domain feels extremely chafing, even unnatural, to the Creeping Death. In order to gain the bodies it feels it needs, it must devote ever increasing amounts of time changing and maintaining conditions in the domain suitable for ready inhabitation. Thus Creep Death must walking a tightrope balancing the the need for growth and the desire to destroy, a task of discretion and cognitive dissonance tearing the Creeping Death apart.

To make things worse for the Creeping Death, there are reports of older undead suddenly decaying and falling apart. As a dread possibility, the Creeping Death's undead spawn may "wearing out", the necromancy holding them together dissipating after a time. This only increases the Death's need to bring more mortals into its domain, just to replace the creations it loses. It may be that the Creeping Death will reach a point it can encourage the study of magic, especially necromancy, in its domain with the purpose of co-opting techniques to preserve its undead.

Combat

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