Lead Blades

Lead Blades are a rare form of specialized undead perfected by sorcerers of House Selwyth. They are "Tier Three" undead.
Lead Blades are skeleton warriors coated in lead with blades for hand.
Lead Blades are heavier, tougher, and stronger than conventional skeletons, and still moderately fast.

Supernatural Lead Poisoning

Lead Blades can inflict supernaturally augmented lead poisoning on their opponents with their blades and by expelling a noxious miasma or inflicting wounds with their weapons.
It rarely occurs, but biting a Lead Blade also opens a creature up to supernatural lead poisoning.
Normally miasma's are a specific ability of advanced zombies. Very few if any skeletal undead have every had miasma powers before but Lead Blades are spiritually connected to undead.

Causes

To make a lead blade, a necromancer has to first take the corpse of a person who died of complications form lead poisoning.
Then the hands and forearms are shaped into sharp blades with bone shaping. Then then all the bones are coated in lead and a necromancer creates a slight variation of Create Greater Undead.

Prognosis

Lead Blades have no direct impact on the souls of the corpses they are made from though dying slow painful deaths from lead poisoning has accidentally created many tortured ghosts, reshaping their bones and coating them with lead does not impact a soul's afterlife for good or ill.
In the extremely unlikely event a Lead Blade is made from the corpse of a person who becomes a very powerful ghost with corpse manipulation powers, the ghost will not be able to anchor to or use their own corpse due to the lead coating.

Sequela

So far, lead belchers have only been from the corpses of humans or goblins, but it is believed that anyone who died of lead poisoning could be eligible.
A past necromancer tried to kill a dwarf and satyr with lead poisoning as test subjects, but they died in an escape attempt before they could die of lead poisoning.

History

The creation of Lead Blades was perfected by researchers House Selwyth roughly around year 1770 using the lead mine Klarica County as a lab of sorts.
Some Selwyth scholars believe that undead similar to Lead Blades were created first in the Red Era or the Second Age and the knowledge was lost and then recreated by House Selwyth.
This backed mostly by supposition. History repeatedly has cycles of necromancy advancing in power and status and then being beaten down by an inquisitorial backlash before rising again centuries later.
There were some very vague ancient writings that originally convinced House Selwyth to engage in researching a lead based undead creature including an obscure tale that Tapukeah Nicola was hampered by unusual undead in her quest to educate Scarterra about lead poisoning.

Gerallt ap Selwyth did not create the first Lead Blade undead, but his research into the affects of lead on divination helped him improve their mundane eye sight and resistance to illusion. A formula he perfected not long before completing the process to end his life and begin his new unlife as a lich.

by Eron12 with Hero Forge

Type

Magical

Origin

Magical

Rarity

Extremely Rare

Affected Species

• humans
• goblins

20 d10s from Wikimedia Commons

Game Stats

Turn Resistance 4
5 lethal soak dice (H)
+3 soak against piercing weapons, -1 soak die against bludgeoning attacks, +3 soak dice bashing damage
Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 5 Charisma 1, Manipulation 1, Appearance 0, Perception 3, Intelligence 1, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 2, Athletics 2, Brawl 3, Dodge 1, Stealth 1, Melee 1
Health: OK, OK, OK, Destroyed
Blade Hands: 7 dice damage, 7 dice damage (H), 8 dice of damage (S), since their hands are basically swords they can parry melee attacks normally
Lead Coating: Lead Blades are heavier and thus not as prone to being knocked around or thrown as ordinary skeletal undead.
Lead Blades get four bonus dice for soaking or resisting magical attacks or breath weapons on top of their normal soak/resistance.
Mystic Sight: Lead Blades are immune to most illusions, at least the lead blades created by Gerallt the lich.
Miasma: Lead Blades can expel a cloud of miasma up to three times a day inflicting victims with supernatural lead poisoning. It's difficulty 5 to resist if there one or two Lead Blades making the miasma, difficulty 6 if there a three to six Lead Blades making the miasma, and difficulty 7 if there are seven or more Lead Blades expelling the miasma.
Lead Poisoning: Lead Blades can inflict supernatural lead poisoning on their opponents with their miasma or weapons. Difficulty 7 to resist if unsoaked damage is infllicted.
Failure on a Stamina roll inflicts a point of physical attribute damage. A botch inflicts a point of physical attribute damage and a point of mental attribute damage.