Jiang-shi

Jiang-shi

(Creature)

Type

Undead

CR

5+

Environment

Any

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Source: Splintered Worlds, pg(s). 58-59

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Jiang-shis are a race of vampires who feed on the "chi" or life energy of living creatures by inhaling their breath. They are also known as hopping vampires due to their unusual method of locomotion.

Appearance

A jiang-shi retains its appearance at the time of reanimation. Since they can take decades or centuries to rise as undead, most jiang-shis wear out-of-date clothing. Each jiang-shi has a prayer scroll in front of its forehead, which protects it from magic items; in pre-Gap days these scrolls were handwritten and stitched to the corpse's brow, but paper scrolls have been mostly replaced by holographic ones. Because of rigor mortis, the jiang-shi's movement is especially stiff: it moves exclusively by hopping, and can be surprisingly nimble in difficult terrain.

Ecology

A jiang-shi is created when a restless spirit stays in its corpse after death, which decays until the jiang-shi rises from its grave to seek living prey. It is terrified by mirrors, the sound of a handbell and cooked rice (which mocks the jiang-shi by how it can no longer eat). Although they prefer darkness and try to avoid sunlight, jiang-shi vampires are not harmed by it like moroi vampires, but they can be destroyed if they're defeated and crumble into dust which is then scattered or mixed with cooked rice and vinegar. Jiang-shis are capable of sensing the breath of living prey.

Society

Jiang-shis are usually solitary creatures but are willing to work with other undead, especially flesh-eaters that leave the victim's chi for the jiang-shi to drain; except other vampires, of whom jiang-shis are jealous due to their ability to create spawn.

In the Pact Worlds system, jiang-shis are most commonly found on Eox or as officers in the Corpse Fleet. The leader of an infuential family in the Golden League is rumoured to be a jiang-shi that lived on Golarion before the Gap, and inhabitants of Absalom Station's Downside swear that seven jiang-shis have inhabited an abandoned level of the Spike since at least the end of the Gap, and each only drinks the breath of one species.