Innate Spellcasting. The atropal's innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 15). The atropal can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:
At will: dispel magic, toll the dead
3/day: contagion
Magic Resistance. The atropal has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Negative Energy Aura. Creatures within 30 feet of the atropal can't regain hit points, and any creature that starts its turn within 30 feet of the atropal takes 7 (2d6) necrotic damage. If the atropal is struck by a vorpal sword, the wielder can cut the atropal's umbilical cord instead of dealing damage. If its umbilical cord is cut, the atropal loses this feature.
Touch. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (3d6) necrotic damage.
Life Drain. The atropal targets one creature it can see within 120 feet of it. The target must make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw, taking 21 (6d6) necrotic damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The atropal regains a number of hit points equal to half the amount of damage dealt.
Summon Specter (Recharge 6). The atropal summons a specter which materializes within 30 feet of it in an unoccupied space it can see. The specter obeys its summoner's commands and can't be controlled by any other creature. The specter vanishes when it drops to 0 hit points or when its summoner dies.
Description
"This creature's hairless, overlarge head surmounts its wet, wrinkled, and bloated humanoid body. Its eyes are glassy and vacant. Its arms are too slender, and its tiny hands end in cruelly sharpened nails, while its legs are atrophied, dead things that hang useless below it."
Atropal scions are clots of divine flesh given form and animation by bleak-hearted gods of death. When a stillborn godling rises spontaneously as an undead, an atropal is born. If that atropal is defeated, but any fragment or cast-off bit of flesh remains, an atropal scion may yet arise from those fragments, lessened in power from its divine beginnings, but no less hateful for its stature.
Unlike normal atropals, atropal scions are imbued with foul magic that grants them a smidgen of spellcasting. Given enough time, an atropal scion may evolve into a threat much greater than the undead it originally splintered off of.
An atropal scion is a power to be reckoned with, and once animate in the world, seeks power over both life and unlife in an unrelenting bid for domination that only its lifeless tissue is able to sustain.
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