Chalid the Damned
Chimeras survived the First and Second Unmaking, but there race is facing a slow extinction. They are being killed en masse or anything like that but their birth rate is slightly below their death rate in the Feudal Era of the Third Age .
Chalid the Damned is but one especially sad example. His name is forgotten, and no one will tell his story. At best he is now "that shadow chimera monster".
Physical Description
Facial Features
Chimera have three heads. In Chalid's case his heads were a dragon, a mountain goat, and a wolf.
Special abilities
Chalid retains the shape of a chimera but has lot his full sentience, lost his breath weapon and lost his functional viper tail. He can't physically harm or even touch the living.
He gained an incoporeal body, warping drain attacks, and the ability to corrupt and partially direct nearby wild animals.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Chalid's life was fairly typical for a chimera, other than that he lived over four centuries, something few chimeras can boast of. Even by the standards of his people, Chalid was a strong hunter and in tune with nature.
He was alive at the time of Mordock the Destroyer, but Chalid didn't have anything to do with Mordock's army or the forces opposed against them.
He flew across the mountains of the Border Baronies Region, sometimes fighting and slaying humanoids but mostly avoiding them when possible.
by Me with Midjourney
As an RPG Encounter
Chalid the Damned is meant as one-off challenge for seasoned PCs, not newly created PCs. If the PCs lack the means of harming incoporeal opponents, fighting Chalid will be impossible. If the PCs do not have access to the Fly spell or an equivalent, the fight becomes much harder. The PCs are unlikely to ever hear the name "Chalid" as he's probably going to be "that shadow monster". In order to make "that shadow monster" into a memorable encounter, you should work hard to grdaully ramp up the horror and suspense. The idea is not to have a shrieking peasant say "EEEK! A giant shadow chimera is attacking people, please slay it brave adventurers!" Ideally, a story involving Chalid the Damned has lots of investigation and suspense and a slow buildup. And the PCs probably won't figure out they are fighting a shadow chimera monster until moments from the actual battle. The PCs should hear small hints that something is not normal with the animals in the Border Baronies Region and is gradually getting worse. Wild animals are showing far less fear towards humans than normal and they are being especially aggressive, including animals that are normally herbivorous and gentle. Domestic animals seem unaffected other than being a little more nervous than usual. Chalid has been undead for centuries but he's only been active in the world for a short time. The longer Chalid is active, the stronger his affect on animals gets. The closer people are to Chalid, the more extreme the animal behavior is. The PCs should interview people, use wilderness lore, logical deduction, and various creative magical senses to slowly follow the trail of unusual animal activity to it's source. Then destroy the source. Potential hints and foreshadowing are below. Early Stage Foreshadowing
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Middle Stage Foreshadowing
"The reagent foraging in the wilderness is pretty good this summer, but the hunting is scarcer than usual."
"I saw a deer eating carrion, grossest thing I ever saw"
"I was crossing the pass and a couple small birds just flew at us at starting pecking."
"No it wasn't a dog that bit me, a rabbit bit me. Stop laughing!"
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Late Stage Foreshadowing
A reagent foraging or hunting party disappears (not exactly rare in the Borderlands).
A group of suspected brigands is leaving the area, with odd unexplained injuries.
The PCs find weird animal corpses or personally witness unusual animal activity rather than simply hear about it.
If the PCs have a party member with Beast Speech or Green Speech, the local animals are less communicative and unusually hostile and the local plants are edgy and upset.
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The Actual Fight
If the party includes a spirit loa, the spirit loa might gets headaches and nausia from the necromnatnic disturbance in Chalid's wake. Right before the PCs catch up with Chaild the loa might articulate a bit of Chalid's paid blurting out in Draconic " ALL shall suffer, all shall suffer!"
The PCs find a camp of brigands or hunters or foragers now all bunch of corpses, seemingly pecked to death. Several dead birds suggest they fought back.
The PCs find an armed patrol or group of adventurers limping back to town having survived an attack by a swarm of some sort.
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Aftermath
The PCs probably won't be able to figure out the shadowy monster is a chimera until they get close, and they probably aren't going to be tell the creature is incoporeal until their first attack goes through it. This is likely to cause them to throw out whatever their Plan A was and improvise something on the spot and make a mad scramble "Ummm, which of us has the Silverwood quarterstaff again?"
Players are free to come up with an non-obvious strategy, but the two most obvious strategies are make a b-line for Chalid and beat him to death as soon as possible. Or lure the swarms, kill the swarms and THEN go after Chalid.
The latter approach will let the PCs fight the enemy in manageable pieces and heal up between fights and the former approach will result in fewer dead innocent animals.
The Borderland Region is always a hot bed of tribal and factional conflict. For an extra wrinkle, if the PCs are already involved in one of the Borderlands human-on-human conflicts, Chalid and/or his swarms could arrive on the scene and indiscrimiantely attack both sides.
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Chalid doesn't have any treasure, either on his person or in a secret lair (he doesn't actually have a lair), but destroying Chalid will make the PCs look like heroes to the local Borderlanders. They get offered a reward from one of the Border Barons or the Stewards
Chalid is not part of a wider narrative, and is essentially a "Monster of the Week" type of challenge, but he can be tied to even more dangerous threat lurking in the Hidden Sea of the Borderlands.
Species
Conditions
Children
Sex
male
Chalid's Swarms
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Most common swarms are uniform. A swarm of rats, a swarm of insects, a swarm of bats, etc.
Chalid's swarms are unnnatural. You might see a swarm with rats, rabbits, badgers, deer, and maybe even a bear. Bird swarms could have everything from lowly sparrows to mighty hawks.
Chalid's Swarms are unnaturally aggressive. Characters can kill animals in the swarm to thin their numbers, but each time the PCs kill some animals, the survivors will fight that much harder so swarms will hit just as hard even on their last legs.
If a PC uses Purification theurgy against a swarm, each success the theurgist rolls removes a health level from the swarm. The largest individuals in the swarm will be freed from Chaild's control but the other members of the swarm will immediately tear the freed animal to shreds. Ditto for using Animal theurgy or equivalent magic to try to usurp control of the swarm. It will release some of the animals from Chaild's control and cause the other animals to immediately turn on the "deserters".
You can increase or reduce the difficulty of the Act Three battle by increasing or reducing the number of swarms.
Chalid's Swarms have an initiative rating of 4 and act independently of Chalid though they will disperse almost immediately if Chalid is slain. They aren't going to consciously try to protect their master, but they will incidentally do so by flocking to any humanoid nearby.
A flying swarm will six dice of damage of lethal damage to any and all humanoids inside the swarm, and bestow a +2 difficulty on physical actions to flying characters within a swarm or +1 difficulty to ground based characters within such a swarm.
A groundling swarm will cause eight dice of lethal damage to humanoids inside the swarm and a +1 difficult on characters within the swarm. They cannot reach flying characters and can do little more than snarl at them.
Flying Swarms have 10 health levels, Groundling Swarms have 14 health levels.
Chalid the Damned Stats
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Chalid has an intiative raitng of 6, but you should roll each head separately. Chalid cannot cause regular damage without a swarm, but his three heads cause Attribute Damage which is scarier.
The dragon head inflicts two levels of mental attribute damage on a successful hit.
The wolf head inflicts two levels of social attribute damage on a successful hit.
The goat head inflicts two levels of physical attribute damage on a successful hit.
In theory, a normal melee weapon should be completely useless for fending off an incorporeal monster, but Chalid is acting from his instincts tell him that point objects hurt, so characters can use a non-Silverwood weapon to fend off Chalid's heads at +1 difficulty.
Each of the heads attacks with a six dice pool.
Chalid has six dice of Permanent Defense of six dice, so each attack on Chalid faces a fresh defense roll. You can't wear down his defense successes like with most humanoid opponents
Chalid is no longer a sapient being, so he cannot spend Willpower points but he has a Willpower score of 5 for the purpose of resisting mental attacks.
Chalid has three heads with sharp eyes and noses and the full sensory abilities he had while alive plus lifesight and keen murderous instincts. He has a ten dice pool for any Perception based roll. Chalid can see through most illusion spells.
He has a four dice pool for any roll not related to Perception or combat.
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