Ghostly pooka

Ghostly pooka Level 33 Family Horse family creatures Body Type Quadruped Classification(s) Non-corporeal undead Area(s) Found Shadow Valley BCS Yes HP 260 Speed ?

Attack Attributes Physical Attacks Bite +237 AS Warding Attacks Slow (504) +177 CS Offensive Spells & Abilities Depression

Defense Attributes Melee +125 to +275 DS Ranged <N/A> DS Bolt <N/A> DS Bard Base +105 to +111 TD Ranger Base <N/A> TD Sorcerer Base +110 to +128 TD Wizard Base <N/A> TD Cleric Base +103 to +118TD Empath Base <N/A> TD Paladin Base <N/A> TD Major Elemental +128 TD Minor Elemental +128 TD Major Spiritual <N/A> TD Minor Spiritual <N/A> TD Major Mental <N/A> TD Minor Mental <N/A> TD Defensive Spells & Abilities Spirit Warding I (101) Spirit Shield (202)

Treasure Attributes Coins No Gems Yes Magic Items No Boxes Yes Skin None Other Alchemy (common)

The most stunning thing about the appearance of a ghostly pooka is the odd illusion surrounding this pitiful equine which seems to absorb all the color from everything around it. The ghostly horse appears to be weighed down by some heavy chains which cover its entire body. The sight of its obvious torment tears at the souls of all who lay eyes upon it.

Hunting strategies

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Other information

Ghostly pookas have a depression maneuver that affects those who use defensive stances in their presence. This maneuver is also level based. Offensive stances will help avoid this maneuver. This maneuver can be prevented with the use of Corrupt Essence (703).

Two examples of a ghostly pooka's depression ability:

A ghostly pooka stares straight into your eyes.
A wave of sadness washes over you as you stare at a ghostly pooka.
You are stunned for 2 rounds!

A ghostly pooka stares straight into your eyes.
The sight of a ghostly pooka touches you somewhere deep in your soul.  Your arms and legs feel leaden and your eyes begin to well up with tears.

Behind The Scenes

Pookas are shape shifters who in Rolemaster usually take the form of smaller animals and are not undead. However, the trickster pookas of Celtic folklore are sometimes represented as black horses covered in heavy chains, which is where their premise originates for Shadow Valley. Pookas and knockers (the spectral miners) originated in fairy mythology, which is a connecting theme to related areas such as Castle Anwyn. Their Slow (504) warding attack works by making the air more viscous, which is related to the strange dark mist of the valley. The valley also has a subtle theme of temporal distortions. Their sorrowful state is likely tied thematically to other allusions to "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. The shape shifting is relevant because of the heavy basis on "The Mound" by H.P. Lovecraft, which had a telepathic race of phasers who synthetically morphed life-forms as they wished. These would be in fantastic shapes for their own amusement, or as beasts of burden out of conquered races.

The color draining illusion in their creature description (and the skeletons by the well near the old shrine) comes from "The Colour Out of Space", where the ground-water is contaminated by an alien life form, which causes everything to glow but eventually become grey and disintegrate into a powder. This story features stampeding and dead horses, explains the mist color variations, and has "the colour" on an anvil like the Glaes Caverns.

This unnatural mist of the valley has a basis in multiple stories, but also appears once in "The Colour Out of Space": "He could not but wonder at his gleaning of the same impression from a vapour glimpsed in the daytime, against a window opening on the morning sky, and from a nocturnal exhalation seen as a phosphorescent mist against the black and blasted landscape. It wasn’t right—it was against Nature—and he thought of those terrible last words of his stricken friend, 'It come from some place whar things ain’t as they is here . . . one o’ them professors said so. . . .'"

References

• Ghostly pooka on Play.net bestiary

Near-level creatures

Level 31 ash hag hulking forest ape krynch skeletal ice troll wild hound Level 32 caribou cloud sprite bully ghostly mara giant fog beetle rotting corpse rotting farmhand Level 33 ghostly pooka hisskra shaman lesser fetid corpse maw spore mezic moor hound sand beetle skeletal giant three-toed tegu Level 34 cold guardian colossus vulture hisskra chieftain lava troll moor witch rock troll zombie skeletal soldier spectral warrior tundra giant luminous spectre Level 35 barghest bog troll moor eagle shimmering fungus spectral black warhorse spectral shade spectral woodsman troll wraith water wyrd