Editing Odem

The '''Odem''' is a minor form of [[ghost|spectral undead]] from the [[Dungeons & Dragons]] setting of [[Ravenloft]]. When an evil humanoid dies who yearns to escape death, but who lacks the crucial will needed to come back as a full-fledged ghost, the result is this spectre; taking the form of a shapeless ethereal mass of writhing mist, odems are essentially concentrated masses of spite, envy and sadism; whilst some sources describe them as sapient, others suggest they are little more than a mindless impulse to hurt and torment people.

Incapable of directly interacting with the material world, and possessed of little direct offensive power, odems are obsessed with possessing humanoid hosts and using their bodies as tools for their own ends - namely to spread fear, anger and hatred, emotions from which they draw their own mystical equivalent of sustenance. Victims possessed by an odem are fully conscious and aware, but incapable of exerting any control; the odem typically rides a host until either its body is killed (which doesn't hurt the odem, who instead can move on to possess a new host), or the host's mind has broken under the weight of the horrors that the odem has forced them to partake in, whereupon the odem abandons the now-insane victim and seeks someone else to hurt.

[[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]] [[Category: Monsters]]