Today, we are talking about Ghouls. In many legends, ghouls are stalkers and terrorizers, grave yard creepers, and consumers of dead flesh. That holds up true here!
A Ghoulish gentleman happy to help you find a grave.
Pale grey hunger wrapped up in tooth and claw. You aren't smart in the classic way, but your mind is more cunning than ever. Your instincts are keener than a razor's edge, and all those tasty warmblood smells, you are not just some slavering dog scrounging for any meat you can sink your grizzly fangs into, no, no, no. You are a gourmand of earthly delights, and you'll be damned before you are told otherwise.
The existence of a Ghoul is difficult; many go feral from the sheer pain of the hunger breaking down any psychological barriers they have and evoking the memories of their past life as their mind consumes itself for something, anything to take away a drop of the unending, ceaseless pit within them. Those who have held on to their minds and made peace with themselves have a strong tether to their past lives
Those in the highest seats of society have elaborate dinner parties with a live guest who serves as the main course, slowly being devoured in pieces over the evening, and using horrid magiks to keep them alive. The less privileged in ghoul society make do with non-human fare, the best they can. Grading human meat has become a practice in ghoulish culture as well. Rating live humans near the top and within that rating, 5 sub ratings based on health and heft of the human. Dead humans are rated based on the freshness of the human, preservation of the body, and the body itself, like any slab of beef.
🍖Key Attribute: Wits (+1)
💀 Undead Boon — Flesh Prince of foul air: You can sniff out living and undead with your keen nose. Drift checks to track things are made at +3.
🌙 Starting Banes: Silver, Starvation
🤤 Eternal hunger: Your stomach speaks almost as much as you do, and your eyes don't hide it too well. If you are under starvation, -3 to pokerface checks until you eat.
🩸 Healing — Ghoulash Dinning: Once per new dawn, you can consume the flesh of a dead human to heal 1d6 life force. If the human was alive, recover 2d6 or a critical injury instead!
⚰️Post-Mortem Questions:
When you awoke as a ghoul, what was the first thing you craved, and how did you satiate that initial hunger?
Have you eaten a living human before? If not, what holds you back? If yes, what did you feel most fully as the flesh slithered down your gullet?
What are your feelings about "Ghoul dinner parties"? How do you feel about the "Flesh trade" that supports them?
What are your personal rituals or methods for acquiring the "tasty warmblood smells" that drive your hunger? What are your feelings on "recreating the sensation and flavor of living human flesh in other things"? Is it a worthy culinary art, or a poor imitation?
Do you ever feel conflicted between your civilized self and the primal urges of your ghoul nature? How do you reconcile these opposing forces?
When the hunger gets too strong, what memories begin to fade away? What are you afraid of losing the most when the hunger finally takes you?
Hungry for more? Ghouls will be built in the vein of ambush predators who gain power from the food they eat. While starvation may seem very "mortal," I felt that bane was tied deeply to the mythology surrounding the Ghouls. Only one more, I hope you've got a bone to pick, cause we are going to Skeletons!!!
