Jiangshi
| Stats | HD 4 (16 + 4 AP) BR 10 Size 5' Weight 15# Max. Load 10# Run 25' |
| Group | 1 official / 1d6 office / 3d6 aristocracy |
| Desc. | A stiff, jittery pale-greenish corpse dressed in silken Magistrate's garments, dripping mercury. Dead-eyed slasher smile. Metallic sheen to its hair. |
| Wants | Power. More spirits, more armies, more controlled corpses. Order, logic, legibility. Clear and understandable things. |
| Intellect | Fragmented, schizophrenic insanity with dull flashes of calculated brilliance. |
| Morality | Pure envious evil. Will take everything from those who have true life. |
- Nine Inch Nails (Natural Weapon): 4 Physical. After a successful Strike, the target must Save or take 1 armor-piercing Physical Damage per round until treated.
Jiangshi are undead magistrates — administrators who refused to stop administrating even after death. Their bodies stiffen into rigor-mortis permanence, their veins run with mercury instead of blood, and their minds fragment into obsessive-compulsive spirals of bureaucratic procedure.
They are not mindless. A jiangshi can hold a conversation, draft a warrant, review tax records, and explain — at length — why its presence in your home is legally justified under subsection 47(c) of the Interior Revenue Code of the Third Glass Dynasty. It will cite precedents that don't exist. It will produce documents it wrote itself five minutes ago as evidence.
The mercury that drips from their nails, hair, and robes is alchemically significant — it preserves their corpses and poisons the living. Killing a jiangshi is less about combat prowess and more about finding the legal loophole that lets you do it.
Treasure: Silken robes (50 sp), jade seal of office (100 sp).