Dread warrior

A dread warrior was a special type of enhanced undead created by necromancer Red Wizards of Thay from the bodies of warriors shortly after their deaths.

Description
Although undead, dread warriors were recognizable as the individuals they had been before death, although their skin would shrivel and their eyes would glow with a feral yellow light. They carried the same weapons and armor as they had wielded in life. Often, whatever injury had killed them was visible and grizzly.

Personality
Dread warriors had to be raised within one day of the subject's death. Partly due to being created so soon after death, dread warriors maintained a minimal amount of intelligence and their warrior desire to fight. They were capable of speech and even of thinking for themselves, however they were by no means sophisticated and complex orders would confuse them. As a general rule, a dread warrior could easily handle commands of up to twelve words long, but anything longer could lead to misinterpretation or worse.

Combat
Only experienced warriors could successfully be raised as dread warriors, and they retained the knowledge to wield the same weapons which they favored in life, although they lost most accuracy with missile weapons, and could do little at range beyond crudely chuck a spear. In general, they were more durable, more dexterous, more intelligent, and more powerful than a normal zombie, and were capable of rudimentary and unimaginitive tactics.

They could be turned by clerics in a similar manner to shadows.

Society
When not engaging in combat these undead were kept in "cold storage" within barracks and dungeons.

Occasionally a dread warrior would break of the control its Thayan masters had over it. Whenever this occurred the dread warrior would wander the countryside in a twisted caricature of their old lives. They would terrorize innocents, challenge passerbys to fights, and sometimes even break into homes to steal food despite the fact that they could no longer eat.

Dread warriors operated exclusively as soldiers within the armies of Thay. They were primarily the retinue of the Zulkir Szass Tam, who was reluctant to use them as domestic servants. He loaned a few of them to his trusted allies, a few of which were known to use them in such a way, but that almost always resulted in sharp rebukes from Szass.

History
Dread warriors were first created by Szass Tam, the Zulkir of Necromancy among the Red Wizards of Thay, when he developed the animate dread warrior spell in 1352 DR. They were invented to lead armies of lesser undead for the purposes of defending Thay and invading Rashemen.

Myrkul's Legion, a force made up entirely of dread warriors, was unleashed upon Rashemen in 1357 DR. It was ultimately turned back, many of them falling to the nature spirits of the land and the spells of the Wychlaran. The magic of the nature spirits disrupted the necromantic spells within them so much that some dread warriors even turned on their own comrades, destroying entire companies, or more often simply misinterpreted orders.

By 1368 DR, dread warriors formed a part of Cyric's Legion, one of Tam's largest military units. During this time, Tam focused on increasing his ranks of these undead warriors in preparation for future conflicts, and would occasionally loan a few to his most trusted allies.

After Szass Tam ascended to power in the years following the War of the Zulkirs in 1385 DR, dread warriors continued to be created by Thayan necromancers. In the 15 century DR, dread warriors were common soldiers among the armies of Thay. They were usually commanding officers of the armies of more common undead.

Notable Dread Warriors

 * Ukulsid

Appearances

 * Adventures
 * Adventures in Thay: Invasion of the Living Dead