[What better way to honor the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday with a monster of pure gluttony? The jikininki is kind of redundant from multiple angles, as both ghouls and gaki already exist in PFRPG. These were sort of designed with an eye towards replacing the 3.x ghast, which was a CR 3 undead with separate stats, as opposed to being just a templated ghoul.]
Jikininki This pot-bellied, gray skinned
humanoid reeks of death. Its muscular arms end in thick claws and tusks
protrude from its mouth.
The
undead known as jikininki are grotesque carrion feeders, obsessed with
consuming fresh human corpses. Although they frequently lurk in graveyards,
battlefields and other places where such are forthcoming, jikininki feel no
compunctions about creating their own corpses through murder and mayhem.
Jikininki
are created from the bodies of cruel and petty humanoids that enriched
themselves at the expense of others. This metaphorical feeding becomes a
literal feeding after death, and the jikininki feels continuous hunger, even
when well fed. Although they are somewhat stupid, jikininki possess a low
cunning which they supplement with their magical abilities to disguise
themselves as the living. Many jikininki use this ability to lull victims into
a false sense of security before striking.
Bearing
some similarities to ghouls and gaki, jikininki find themselves unable to work
with or among these undead. Ghouls despise the strong but dim-witted jikininki,
using them as cannon fodder at best and assaulting them en masse at worst. Gaki
are typically too obsessed with their own hunger to pay jikininki much mind,
although some gaki become fixated on eating other flesh-eating undead—a
situation which usually ends poorly for the jikininki. Jikininki are typically
solitary, but some do find solace in cooperating with others of their own
kind—some remote cemeteries are run by whole families of jikininki masquerading
as morticians in order to prey on corpses and mourners alike.
Jikininki
vary in size as humans do, although all bear thin limbs and swollen bellies as
if profoundly malnourished.
Shores of Swords 