30 Day D&D Challenge, Day Fifteen: Favorite Monster (Undead)

Day 15 - Favorite Monster (Undead)

I'm going to be honest, my gut reaction is vampires. I do love them. However, when I really think about it, ghouls are my favorite undead.

I like ghouls because they're one of the first intelligent undead creatures most players face. I like ghouls because they eat flesh. I like ghouls because in many ways they remind me more of movie zombies than the typical D&D zombie (mainly because of the infectious bite and ghoul fever).

I've always wanted to play a ghoul. I've had this character idea in my head for a long time. A young squire/paladin in training goes out on a mission to hunt some "zombies" with his order. The zombies are actually ghouls and the knights are slaughtered. The squire is infected with ghoul fever but somehow gets away. The disease kills him though and he rises as a ghoul. Still he retains enough of his personality and code that he feels some remorse for what he does and maintains a bit of himself. He assuages his hunger on the flesh of the vile and damned. I realize this is just a take on the "good" vampire, but I think it could be fun and it's a bit more visceral. I actually built this character in 3.5 using Libris Mortis, but never got to play him.

Perhaps he'll appear as an npc in one of my games some day.