Yatu

Yatu are mummified spell casters brought back as undead through some evil magic. Like Afiti and Upir they keep their spells and level of ability but can never again advance in level normally. Mummification has preserved them only in part, and they are dreadful to see: eyes shining with a weird light, withered and often stooped bodies, and wrinkled yellow skin like a mummy's. Yet despite their shrunken frames they have inhuman strength and vigor and need neither food nor sleep.

How Yatu are made is unknown, the secret having been lost in the Cataclysm after the First Age of Atlantis. It surely involved a necromantic ritual and perhaps rare alchemical formulae, and scholars of ancient Atlantean lore suspect some gruesome human sacrifice was central to it, though without firmer evidence this remains guesswork.

Like the stronger undead, a Yatu drains life energy with its touch, but unlike any other it can build up its own power from the energy it steals, gaining 1 hit point for every 10 points it drains; each touch drains 3 points of energy per level. With both spells and life-draining at its command, it is widely held to be the most dangerous undead of all. Lesser undead of every kind often serve a Yatu, fearing and respecting its might.

A Yatu senses invisible, ethereal and astral beings within 200 feet, as a spirit does, and although it keeps the level it had in life, it is always turned as at least 16th level.