Get Ready for Horrific Parasites!
Lurking in dark alleyways or hiding in plain sight on bustling streets, the enigmatic and damned creatures known as harvesters stalk and murder the innocent to fulfill peculiar needs. Named for their acts of killing and surgically removing organs, bones, and skin from their victims, harvesters have been horrific parasites on civilization for millennia.
Harvester bodies are literal patchworks of organs, limbs, and bones, none of which are their original parts. When an organ begins to fail, a harvester removes the damaged, diseased, or aged one, replacing it with one from a healthy “donor.” This grotesque practice grants them near immortality as they do not appear to age in any traditional sense—some harvesters are hundreds, even a thousand, years old—dying off only when they are caught and killed or when they are unable to replace a critical, failed organ.
Because harvesters never venture away from cities and towns, there is always ready supply of fresh organs from the unwitting populace. This entry in the Monstrous Pages series examines the harvesters and lays bare their secrets, revealing their origins, practices, and place in the lands of Rûl. Using the lore and rules in Horrific Parasites helps you make harvesters even more dangerous and terrifying!
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Monsters abound in the lands of Rûl, from horrid, spiderlike lash crawlers to ferocious dragons, and everything and anything in between. Monsters encompass a wide range of creatures, but their inability to fit within the natural order and their strange capabilities unite them as a single kind. Most monsters are unique creatures, strange in form and erratic and aggressive in behavior.
One of the most feared and hated traditions of magic is Necromancy, for it exists in flagrant opposition to the wheel of life, allowing the living to refuse Father Death’s call and remain in the world long after the body has failed. The undead of Urth trace their origins to this sordid art, many standing as examples of misguided and botched experiments to bind the soul to the world. In many cases, the efforts simply failed, and the magic used functioned instead as an animating force, power that imbued cold flesh with mobility and made these rotting puppets subject to their caster’s will. While more powerful magic came of these initial efforts, many necromancers still rely on these crude spells to create servants, soldiers, or even disturbingly, lovers.