The village of Thistle Hollow barely clung to life after a hard-fought victory against the rampaging orc raiders. The orcs had stormed in with the fury of untamed elements, wreaking havoc in the dead of night with the same force as a savage wind tearing through the valley. The villagers, steeled with desperation and resolve, rallied with axes, pitchforks, slings, and hunting bows to push back the invaders. The battle ended with the orcs lying defeated, their bodies swiftly gathered and thrown onto a pyre at the edge of the village and set alight after a few buckets of pitch were tossed over the stinking mass.
A violent storm, the very one that foreshadowed the orcs’ arrival, returned before the fire could completely reduce the bodies to ashes. The flames were quenched by rain, leaving behind a haunting sight: half-burnt orc corpses, mangled and tangled amongst the remains of the pyre, their final farewell left incomplete. It was against this grim backdrop and a flash of lightning on the ridge a few nights later that heralded the arrival of a well-traveled Sage, his feet bare and sturdy and three red gems gleaming on his chest.
Riding along the muddy road on his trusty mule, the Sage sought ruins for his studies on lost kingdoms and ancient lore. Instead, he was met with a village steeped in terror. Doors were shut tight, and faces peered out with hollow despair. The silence was broken by the trembling voice of the blacksmith’s wife, who confided in a barely audible whisper that something sinister stirred in the night. The complaint was plain—there were unsettling sounds, as though claws were scraping at the doors, and an incident that sent ripples of dread had just occurred.
Uthric, the village tanner, had answered his door believing his child had returned from hunting in the nearby woods. Instead, he found himself ensnared in a merciless grip on the muddy street, his throat constricted as his face drained of color, turning the blue of a frosty winter sky. The horrific scene of his murder and the scant clues remaining were the spark that ignited the Sage’s suspicions.
Drawing near to the half-doused pyre, the Sage recalled similar tales—whispers of restless dead risen from improperly tended burial rites. Scouring the soggy earth, his toes squelched through the wet ash and charred remnants of bodies that still reeked of burnt flesh. There in the mud, a deep trail showed evidence of a large, crawling form that had escaped into the darkness.
“It’s a coffer corpse,” the Sage murmured, his voice low and burdened with grim recognition. “Likely once an orc shaman, its death rites left incomplete. Its soul is chained by unfinished business and it roams with a fury born of neglect, or perhaps one of their gods saw fit to refuse it entry to the afterlife until it takes its revenge on you all.” A strong, soot-streaked blacksmith, who had silently joined him, intervened with a rallying cry to end the curse once and for all.
"To hell with their foul gods and their evil damned souls the lot of them, lets find this thing and destroy it!"
The blacksmith’s simple command to kill the creature was met with a grave response. The Sage, drawing his staff carefully through the ash, implored that steel alone would not best the undead entity. Even if it was ripped apart, the curse embedded in its form would drive it back to life. The situation was dire and required both caution and advanced magical means.
Suddenly, a piercing scream rent the heavy air. Both the Sage and the blacksmith turned to witness an unnerving sight—a hulking figure emerging from behind the stables. This was no mere ghost story; it was the embodiment of cursed vengeance. With flesh blackened by fire and a snarl exposing grotesquely elongated tusks, the creature moved with a purpose, dragging a man by the throat. The victim’s struggles grew feeble as the creature’s vice-like grip strangled the breath from him.
the lore of Dungeons & Dragons is rich with tales of spirits denied passage to the afterlife. The coffer corpse is a prime example—a cursed monster spawned from the defilement of sacred funerary customs. When a soul leaves the mortal realm without the proper rites, it is left in limbo. This incomplete transition traps the spirit, turning it vengeful and relentless. It is not a creature born solely of malice but one driven by the torment of being trapped and unable to move on to the outer planes.
In many cultures within the game's universe, death does not conclude with the cessation of life. It demands reverence, ritual, and the proper sending off of the departed. When these final rites are interrupted, spiritual energies remain tangled in the mortal coil, festering into a being that carries the scars of its thwarted destiny.
In the case of the Orc, the sage was entirely correct, the god Yurtrus, their foul god of death and disease had denied the soul freedom from the mortal plane until it had killed as many humans as it could before it was destroyed. The terrifying visage of the Coffer Corpse looked as though the flesh had been burned away from its face in the shape of a clawed hand, gleaming bone white out of the ragged, blackened flesh, a sure sign of the white hand of Yurtrus.
In the fantasy worlds of roleplaying games, where magic is very real, it shouldn't be much of a shock that the risen dead can spontaneously occur, when with a simple act of will power, some basic components to achieve the correct resonance and some spoken keywords to attract the attention of powers beyond the mortal world, a clever diabolist can launch a ball of fire powerful enough to blow a drawbridge from its fixtures.
Thankfully, the coffer corpse happens to be vulnerable to even the most basic magic weapon, which can be achieved with a blessing, an enchantment or even clobbering the monster repeatedly with an improvised magic object, such as a magical cape of billowing with a brick wrapped inside it... I bet you never thought of that neat little trick.
The case of the Orc Shaman was unusual but not unprecidented, as normally the generation of a coffer corpse hinges on the violation of time-honored customs. Whether due to the chaos of battle, natural disasters, or deliberate desecration of a body intended to torment the living who cared for that individual in life, the departure from established burial practices marks the beginning of a curse. In Thistle Hollow, the orcs’ bodies were hastily arranged into a pyre, and the interruption of the flames by the returning storm meant that the orc shaman’s soul was left in a state of spiritual despair, it had failed to destroy the village, failed to bring back even a single orc warrior to the tribe, failed to represent the power of the orc people.
Shame, rage and vengeance became a spiritual catalyst for the creature’s existence, allowing the soul to return from the ethereal back into it's corpse. The residual necrotic energy from the half-burnt bodies congealed into it and shortly after, sparked false life to lifeless flesh and bone. To most it would appear as a simple zombie or perhaps a wight, but while it matches the wight's intensity in it's dead eyes, it is devoid of the mortal spark and replaced by that horrible, cat's eye glow, as if reflecting the bright vitality of it's victims, like the gleam of cold moonlight on the dead black eyes of a shark. Like the zombie, it's body offers no apparent resistance to damage even from mundane weapons, and the corpse can be cut down, seemingly destroyed, only to stand back up again, relentless, seemingly unstoppable, striking supernatural fear into the living who witness it.
I've seen professional gladiators mimic this trick a few times, it's always a crowd pleaser, but there is nothing entertaining when a dead thing does it. In my experience, the uninformed seldom stick around to try out different methods to drop the thing permanently, they just run for it, and I hardly blame them.
Coffer Corpses are also tremendously strong, more so than a zombie by far, despite their withered and broken state, they can crush a man's ribs with a single powerful blow, but it is their terrible death grip which they use to snuff out the living.
Once locked in this grip, the victim is rendered mute, unable to call upon spellcasting or even articulate a cry for help. The constant, relentless pressure diminishes the victim’s strength with each passing moment, leaving them grasping and clawing for escape, their fingernails raking at the dead flesh of the undead, who shows no expression as they murder you, no hate, no anger, not even satisfaction as the choke the life from you.
I should mention, the coffer corpse collapsing from damage that actually does it no permanent harm is all a trick, any blow of sufficient force will do, you don't have to calculate every hit point lost, ignore non-magical damage entirely and instead concentrate on how powerful the attack appeared to be and have the undead react accordingly. The whole special feature of this monster hinges on most parties of adventurers having no idea this undead can only be hurt by magic weapons.
It is this combination of an aggressive death grip coupled with the unpredictable strategy of simulated collapse that renders combat with the coffer corpse particularly nerve-wracking. Its ability to bounce back after apparent defeat forces its foes to remain vigilant, never allowing a moment’s ease in an already grueling confrontation. It also makes the role of an informed non-player character who provides this vital information so much more critical to how this encounter plays out.
Like many undead,the Coffer Corpse has a natural immunity to mind-affecting spells and psychic manipulation, rendering attempts to subdue its will largely ineffective. However, it is not physically immune to damage from normal, non-magical sources, it's just that these won't destroy it. Ordinary blades may wound, but they rarely disrupt the cycle of its endless reanimation. Some common sense here is required, for example, lopping its head off and running away with it, or chopping both it's arms off it going to cause the coffer corpse a bit of an inconvenience.
This dependency on enchanted weaponry adds a layer of strategy to any encounter and will make the Coffer Corpse far more dangerous to those with no access, or some stance against using magic of any kind, but never forget, the gods are watching and one need not be a divine spellcaster or champion of a deity to receive a timely and life-saving divine boon. It is extremely rare in the realms to find anyone who refuses to pray to any god... extremely rare, and all it takes is the mere utterance of a god's name and they will be aware of what is going on over a staggeringly large area. Adventurers who venture into territories where the coffer corpse roams must be prepared. Relying on mundane attacks usually results in a grim stalemate, as the creature takes only a momentary pause before once again rising to continue its cursed mission.
However, its a little worse than I'm letting on here... unless the body is incinerated or, most critically, interred with the correct burial rites the living being it was desired, the Coffer Corpse will rise again with the coming of the night, wandering out of its lair, seeking some place to find its final rest, and never finding it, taking out its rage on the living. This also means, even if the thing is still animated, knowing exactly what those rites are can also cease it's torment and finally stop its attacks on the living, releasing the soul even without destroying the body first, so, this monster can be defeated with knowledge alone, if you have it.
Originally send in to White Dwarf magazine by Simon Eaton, way back in the 70's, the Coffer corpse has seen action in the realms and other fantasy settings for the last 50 years and continues to be a fun addition to the hordes of the undying.
The forgotten Realms wiki has some excellent notes and historic lore on the monster, and I quote..
"During the night coffer corpses would arise, wander around the area in which their corpse was abandoned in search of a peaceful rest, then at dawn return to wherever they were lairing. However, even during daylight hours a coffer corpse would attack people. They hated life itself and were instinctively driven by an urge to deprive others of it due to being denied a complete death. Thus they were known to attack any living humanoid creature that disturbed them, especially priests. Unlike some undead, upon killing a creature the coffer corpse would leave its victim's body alone. It then made sure not to interfere with any other undead that came to scavenge at the corpse, such as ghouls and ghasts. Coffer corpses were occasionally known to fight with weapons, though generally they used their bare hands. They were unusually strong for undead, thus once they had a grip on an opponent it was difficult to release them, especially when a coffer corpse had a death grip around their victim's throat. in the mid-14th century DR, coffer corpses were among the more substantial types of undead that could be found guarding the burial mounds of Uthgardt tribes."
Oh by the way, there is an excellent new sourcebook on the Uthgardt tribes, with 100% canon lore from the Creators of the Forgotten Realms, available now on DrivethruRPG, support actual Dungeons and Dragons, go pick it up today, you won't be disappointed.
Also in the mid 1400's, the legendary pirate captain Pohl Strongwind returned to life as a coffer corpse. Alongside a crew of ju-ju zombies (yes, I dislike that name as well) he sailed on a ghost ship across the Dragon Reach, terrorizing any vessel they came across, until eventually a group of adventurers put him to rest. You won't find a whole lot of Coffer Corpses in any of the outer planes, of couse, but many serve the dread Drow elf goddess Kiaransalee and there are many found in the Domains of Dread, and the Shadowfell at large.
My name is AJ Pickett, also known as the Mighty Gluestick and Picaroon the Dire Hobbit, Sage of Candlekeep and the Highhand Spire of Mintarn, as always, thanks for listening, and I will be back with more for you, very soon.
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