Attic Whisperers

Attic whisperers are undead.

Undead are once-living creatures animated by spiritual or supernatural forces.

They have darkvision.

Undead have immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns, and phantasms).

They have immunity to bleed, death effects, disease, paralysis, poison, sleep effects, and stunning.

Undead are not subject to nonlethal damage, ability drain, or energy drain.

They are immune to damage to their physical ability scores, as well as to exhaustion and fatigue effects.

Unintelligent undead cannot heal damage on their own, although they can be healed. Negative energy (such as an inflict spell) can heal undead creatures. Unintelligent undead can still have the fast healing special quality.

They have immunity to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects or is harmless).

Undead are not at risk of death from massive damage, but are immediately destroyed when reduced to 0 hit points.

They are not affected by raise dead or reincarnate spells or abilities. Resurrection and true resurrection can affect undead creatures. These spells turn undead creatures back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead.

Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep.

An attic whisperer spawns as a result of a lonely or neglected child’s death. Rather than animating the body of the dead youth, the creature rises from an amalgam of old toys, clothing, dust, and other objects associated with the departed – icons of the child’s neglect. The widely varying materials that fuse together to form these creatures lead to attic whisperers with vastly different appearances. Attic whisperers linger in the places where they formed, typically old homes, orphanages, schools, debtor’s prisons, workhouses, and similar places where children might be discarded. When an attic whisperer first forms, it does so without a skull – this does not impact the creature’s abilities in any way, but it usually seeks out a small animal’s skull as a form of decoration soon after it manifests.

All of the voices an attic whisperer steals linger around it in an invisible but audible aura of unnerving childlike whimpers, songs, and sobs. The attic whisperer can suppress or reactivate its aura as a free action. This aura is a sonic, mind-affecting effect.

An attic whisperer haunts shadowy, forgotten places like old buildings and dilapidated institutions, places that were once home to both young children and subtle evils. Hiding in drafty attics and moldy basements, an attic whisperer might lie dormant for decades while the quick go about their lives – often a scant floor away. The coming of a new child, though, rekindles some hope in the creature, its animating spirits motivated by loneliness, and ever seeking comfort and companionship. Once an attic whisperer finds a potential playmate, it does all it can to ensure it will never be lonely again by attempting to lure its friend to it, singing nursery rhymes, leaving trails of old toys, or calling out in the stolen voices of other children.

A creature bit by an attic whisperer may become fatigued for an hour. A fatigued creature that is bitten is instead exhausted for an hour, and an exhausted creature falls asleep for an hour if bitten. The sleeper can only be roused by killing the attic whisperer or by dispel magic, remove curse, or similar effects.