The official GemStone IV encyclopedia.
Broader and taller then the more common ghouls, this one stands with some cold bearing of command and power. Tattered rags of velvet and silk still drape the corrupt form and a keen light of evil will and force dominates the ruined face now rotting and festered. The aura of its power tingles along your nerves and brings a cold sweat to your brow as you gaze into eyes, now vacant, which seem to stare back at you with cruel disdain.
The ghoul master is large in size and about seven feet high in its current state.
Hunting strategies
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Other information
A chill, clammy wind whips by, and in a flash of sulfurous vapor, a ghoul master appears!
The master growls vilely!
A ghoul master mutters a chant!
A ghoul master gestures at you!
CS: +88 - TD: +258 + CvA: +6 + d100: +50 - -5 == -109
Warded off!
Behind the Scenes
In the I.C.E. Age these were called "ghoul kings", and were also found in Castle Claedesbrim. Those in The Graveyard use gorcrows as familiars to scout for trespassers to be converted into more ghouls. Ghoul kings were likely a specially made form of undead rather than the natural progression of Ghoul Rot as the lesser ghoul ages, which gradually become greater ghouls over the years. They did not exist in Rolemaster. The later extension of the burial mound introduced a "saucer-shaped depression" which may refer to the "slight bowl-like depression" from The Mound, which appears to be the basis of Shadow Valley, providing a second underworld passage which was not part of the design of The Graveyard. The skull would be an allusion to the headless woman sentry, and the unknown warrior marker to the reanimated headless conquistador whose story was once unknown.
This part of the necropolis was designed slightly before the gods documentation was changed so that the scythe wielding Gosaena had her familiar death theology. The carved image of the robed figure with scythe is more curiously related to The Temple of Darkness Poem, where the I.C.E. Age form of Amasalen (originally a servant only of the serpent god Luukos) is represented bizarrely as a grim reaper. This is interesting because Kestrel Etrevion or his sons were implicitly his servants, and Amasalen was later changed to include ascension. The ruined carvings of the dark gods, the descent of an ancient passageway, and sacrifices to the altar of a forgotten deity are better interpreted through Lovecraft and The Broken Lands. In the story the depression gives way to a winding stairway down, opening up into chambers with arches and depicting graven "eidola" of dark gods. It was a very old opening that the denizens of the underworld had forgotten existed, so symbolically it is a forbidden other way into the under crypt. It is interesting to note the burial mound was built on quarried rock and then filled with humanoid bones from the purging of the surrounding region.
References
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