Tombstone Troll

Sometimes, when a troll is regenerating from life-threatening wounds inflicted by necromancy or void energy, the vile energy takes hold in the troll's supernaturally resilient regeneration. The force that should have killed the troll instead becomes a part of the troll's strange physiology. These trolls are not undead, but the force inside them eats at their bodies and souls, turning them into shrunken mockeries of their former selves. These so-called "tombstone trolls" resemble withered, diminutive trolls, bloated with starvation and obviously sickly. Their teeth, hair, and fingernails rot, fall out, and regenerate every few days in an endless cycle that is both painful to experience and sickening to see.

Other trolls shun and despise tombstone trolls, who earn their name from their habit of digging up graves in their search for an easy meal that can't fight back. Tombstone trolls shun confrontation of any kind, especially in areas where their grave-robbing might put them at odds with powerful undead. They often lair underground, safe in their graveyard burrows for days at a time, gradually tunneling through the earth to devour nearby corpses. If the tombstone troll is clever, the surface might not bear any evidence of their presence except for a few divots or soft spots in the soil. Once a tombstone troll has run out of easy pickings in a cemetery, it moves on in the dead of night to find a new hunting ground. If their travel is lengthy or difficult, their hunger might drive them to attack the living.