Monster Workshop is a weekly feature where I build new monsters or monster variants for Dungeons & Dragons. A new Monster Workshop drops every Wednesday. Throughout October, Monster Workshop gets in on the Month of the Living Dead action as I homebrew a bunch of undead from video games and other sources.
I did not know what I was going to create this week until I sat down to write it, but the result was a new set of monsters inspired by the pyreflies and unsent of Final Fantasy X. Full disclosure: This was my first Final Fantasy game, the only one I’ve played through to completion, and the source of about half of my homebrew and campaign ideas.
I love FFX a lot, and once I got into the swing of things, I got a kick out of this homebrew concept. I’ll delve into the basic idea a bit more in the design notes. As with the vampire article, I’m just going to suggest heading straight to GM Binder to check out the statblocks. There’s a lot going on in this one and presenting them in bits and pieces would be a headache.
Pyreflies
Pyreflies are motes of energy released when living things die. Individually, they retain fragments of memory, personality, and instinct. Together they can coalesce into powerful forms, shaped by their collective knowledge and attitude.
Shaped by Emotion. When a strong-willed creature dies under the influence of a powerful emotion, they may influence pyreflies to form a new body for them. In this way, pyreflies may take on any number of forms.
Undead Nature. Pyreflies do not require air, food, drink, or sleep.
Pyrefly Haunt
Pyrefly haunts are the most simple and common type of pyrefly formation. They are typically bestial creatures and may have a number of small differences based on why and where they were formed.
Shape of Anger. Haunts are typically formed around an angry soul. Angered by cause of death or an improper burial, the personality by the haunt fades into a maniacal fury. Haunts have no memory of their past lives or selves.
Numerous Forms. Haunts come in a great number of forms. They may be influenced by the land they formed in, the cause of death for the soul they coalesced around, or potent magic.
Most haunts take the shape of a diseased wild dog, but their shapes are as numerous as the souls that manifest them. Some have wings. Others swim in the sea. Some forms are attuned to elements or other magic.
Some haunts resemble other creatures altogether such as imps, sprites, and small beasts.
Pyrefly Revenant
Pyrefly revenants are among the most powerful pyrefly formations. They coalesce around a soul, giving it a copy of its living body.
Single-Minded. Revenants are formed when a soul with a strong will is determined to complete its living business. While the revenant retains its memories and personality from life, its single-minded focus on unfinished business comes to the fore.
Walk among the Living. Revenants can walk among the living unnoticed. To the naked eye, they show none of the traits of the undead. They may even avoid magical detection.
Seeking Respite. Revenants typically have little desire to linger. When a revenant’s goals are met, it will dissipate, allowing the soul to pass on.
Design Notes
Spoilers for a 20 year old game ahead. So, in FFX pyreflies are like remnants of the innate spiritual energy of the living. Fiends are made up of pyreflies. Auron and other unsent are made up of and sustained by pyreflies. Aeons are made up of pyreflies. Their motes of energy and memory. Probably not exactly undead in the D&D sense, but a cool foundation nevertheless.
Now, if I were running a Spira campaign, I’d probably go crazy with this. Everything is pyreflies all the time, but for a single set of monsters, I wanted something constrained. There’s not much to be done about them, but an individual pyrefly is a nonissue. Even a swarm of them just looks pretty until some agitating factor is introduced.
I was primarily interested in replicating some of the low tier fiends via the haunts. Anything bigger would deserve a lot more statblock attention and probably doesn’t need to be locked into the undead creature type.
I also felt like a proper unsent was necessary, so I modeled the revenant block on Auron with a few bells and whistles to make it feel like an undead, not just a regular NPC with the undead creature type.
But more than that, I think it built a neat cycle that feeds into Spira’s themes. You fight an enemy revenant, they die and become a swarm of pyreflies. The swarm of pyreflies coalesces into a haunt. You defeat the haunt, and the pyreflies dissipate. Nothing is ever totally destroyed, and it makes for a nice battle scheme that probably won’t prove a huge challenge to your party but will be fun and thematic anyway.
That’s all for now. Check out the statblocks on GM Binder. One more week of Month of the Living Dead ahead. Until next time!
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