The Lost

Though they were once normal creatures, the lost have been tainted by incarnum and bound to negative emotions or ideals. Many of these miserable beings are misshapen wretches who have fled to the wilderness and gradually degenerated into savages, but a few are cunningly social and well groomed. The hunchbacked madman foaming at the mouth and screaming about the flies in his heart, the eyeless savage leaping through the wood, the effete noble with a penchant for bloodletting, and even the griffon that descends upon hapless travelers in the wild with his gore-encrusted beak and talons—all these creatures and more are lost.

Forever separated from its mortal brethren, a lost is pinned to the depths of hate and rage by a single wisp of pure incarnum. A lost is created when a passing strand of uncontrolled soul energy strikes a creature that happens to share its negative emotional state at that moment. For example, a human who is angry at a merchant for fleecing him out of his hard-earned silver might encounter a strand of incarnum that embodies anger in the alley near the merchant’s stall. The incarnum permanently bonds the wrath to the man’s soul and amplifies it until it becomes blind rage. This bonding process fiercely intensifies the creature’s heartbeat, making it audible at a distance of five feet.

Each lost appears as a deformed version of its former self, though the type and extent of the deformities vary widely from one individual to another. The creature’s mental stability is also hampered to a greater or lesser extent based on the emotion to which it is bound. For example, a lost dwarf who has retained his wits might wear a single glove to cover the twisted remains of his fingers, while a lost human blacksmith might drool, twitch, and stumble like a mad dog. None but the most deviously insane lost bother with dress or personal upkeep; they simply sleep where they can and let their clothes deteriorate into rags. But even a lost that successfully disguises its nature cannot escape its traitorous heart. Thus, the rare lost that attempts to masquerade as fully humanoid haunts noisy public places to mask its telling heartbeat.

No lost has ever been restored to its former state, but sages speculate that a method might exist to redeem at least some of these creatures. The exact means of doing so is left to the DM to devise, but it should require a quest of some sort.