This week is an original monster that I am eager to present and featuring art from Vildevitus#2346. I've mentioned before that undead are my favorite type of monsters and one of the reasons for that is that they were once mortal creatures who underwent a transformation. The taking of something mundane and turning it monstrous is a very neat concept to me and all the unique ways they come into being, with the means of their death often resulting in specific types of undead forming, is fascinating. However, I noticed that there wasn't an undead born from a creature that dies from toxins, which prompted me to add my own. I decided to specifically focus on a creature that perishes from the venom of beasts and decided to focus on the desert for its abundance of such creatures as well as the desolation of such environments. Working from that base idea and with a name based off of the Egyptian scorpion goddess, I created the serqekah!
When designing the serqekah, I was unsure if I wanted to be a corporeal undead or not, but I wanted a somewhat more outlandish design for the creature, which led me to choose the latter. In its spiritual form, its body is now mixed with those of venomous creatures native to the region, creating an even more hideous visage then those normally possessed by undead. Its virulence aura makes any poison within range of it more potent, making it dangerous for players to linger around it while toxins course through their veins. Defense-wise, it doesn't have anything extraordinary aside from its incorporeal and undead traits, but I did look towards the HP of other incorporeal undead before settling on its total. As an incorporeal creature, it of course has a fly speed and gets a single attack in the form of its stinging tail, which might have a 'bite' in certain cases instead. Most incorporeal seem to deal force damage with their strikes, so I went with that and then added the soulwrack venom, which became a central idea when I was designing this creature. While simply a poison, I like the idea that it poisons the soul of creatures that the serqekah strikes, eating away at their very essence of being. It felt very thematic for the serqekah and one of the issues I still have with it is its duration. If you want it to matter in the combat, you have to keep its duration short. If you want it to have lasting effects, you have to extend the duration but then it doesn't matter merely as much in combat. I ended up choosing the former so that the serqekah could bolster its effectiveness with its virulence aura, but I'm still unsure about that choice.
I also included sneak attack as this creature becomes closer to other venomous creatures, striking from advantage to take out its targets quickly before slinking back into the shadows. Adding more spells also occurred to me, but none of them really fit the idea that I was going for outside of summon swarm although it is limited to the venomous spiders. The serqekah becomes very dangerous with its feats, particularly the Vital Strike line and the addition of Deep Toxin, which increases the frequency of its venoms that it inflicts with Vital Strikes. Thinking on that now, I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have decreased the damage of its attack, which is something I'll have to look into. Lunge is largely thematic and the idea behind it was sort of like a coiled snake's bite or a scorpion's tail suddenly lashing out. Finally, the serqekah can use its venomous empathy to manipulate the very creatures that likely brought about its end. It functions like the traditional wild empathy but is limited to creatures that possess some form of toxin.
Pathfinder 1e:
Per usual, there's nothing too different about the PF2e version of the serqekah outside of transforming it to that system. I used the wording from the Wild Empathy in the entries of other creatures for Venomous Empathy and I hope it is clear enough. I get to simplify Virulent Aura with it just adding the virulent trait to any poison within its range. Its resistances are pretty standard for an incorporeal undead and I went for a somewhat lower HP to account for its defenses. I ended up giving it a ghostly hand Strike so that it has an agile attack for moderate damage and decided to have it deal negative damage while I took the opportunity to have its tail deal poison damage and inflict Soulwrack Venom. Since the tail carries that spectral toxin, I ended up going even lower damage on that but I liked the idea of diversifying its damage types a bit. I had to alter that somewhat since ability damage isn't quite a thing in 2e, but I felt like doomed was a good stand-in for the idea that the toxin eats away at the creature's very soul. I also kept its ability to summon swarms of venomous creatures with summon animal - if they ever add a snake swarm, it might be worth adding that to the list of creatures it can summon with it.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e Version:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Pit Vipers: The heroes have been tasked with exploring a pyramid when they find themselves caught in a trap where making a wrong step causes the block to magically disappear beneath them. The fall gives way to a thriving pit of venomous serpents that eagerly await prey to drop into their reach. A former victim of theirs still remains in the form of a serkeqah that was once an adventurer that befell this trap. The rest of his party abandoned him and he died in agony among the magically sustained serpents, his soul twisted into a hideous undead. The intrusion of the party reminds him of his friends who abandoned him and he attacks them in a rage. Clever heroes may be able to play into his delusion and assuage the spirit without slaying it though that may require them having picked up certain clues left behind by that party scattered throughout the pyramid.
Rot to Ruin: An isolated city has recently come under assault from a horde of undead, prompting them to seek the help of the heroes. After fighting off the siege, which features a wide array of undead as well as some living girtablilu, they learn it was merely a force to test the city’s defenses sent by a larger tribe of girtablilu led by a necromancer. The city is built on an old ruins and she sees the new metropolis as an affront to the remains that lay beneath it, seeking to tear it down. She periodically sends waves of undead to wear down the city while her tribe cuts off supplies from reaching the city, requiring the heroes to venture out and take out her and her tribe before the city starves. Among her personal retinue are a host of serqekah, including an exceptionally powerful one – her former consort who perished under the wracking throes of her venom but remains obsessed with her.
Hope you guys dig the serqekah - it was a fun monster to design with a theme that I enjoyed playing around with. I think I could have gone deeper with it, but I'm content with what I made. But lemme know what you guys think!
If you're interested in joining in on the discussion of other monsters I'm making, have some own homebrew ideas you wanna discuss, or just hang out with a bunch of other PF/D&D nerds, we have a Discord server for that! We also recently started up a Twitter where we post teases for upcoming stuff.
Have a Monstrous Monday!
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