The Pall measures the weight of death and chaos that emanates from an undead thing—the corrupting pressure it exerts on the living world simply by existing. Where Aura marks the depth of a living soul, the Pall marks its absence and its unmaking: the raw force of death and chaos that animates the Helspawn and seeps from tainted places and objects. A stronger Pall is at once easier to sense—dread runs ahead of it, and those attuned to the Arcane feel it from afar—and more able to unmake the souls of the living, assailing Spirit and driving the mind toward disturbance, terror, and worse.
Tainted
A tainted Pall is the faintest breath of death—the residue clinging to grave-soil and burial relics, or the thin corruption of a thing only lately risen and not yet grown into its unlife. It betrays itself only up close: a chill on the skin, a guttering of nearby flame, a wrongness in the air that the Arcane-sensitive notice within a few paces. Its touch unsettles the living but rarely masters them, a passing dread that most can set aside with little effort.
Shadowed
A shadowed Pall is a definite, creeping wrongness that fills a room and lingers after. Animals shy and will not enter; children weep without knowing why; the hair rises on the arms of anyone who crosses the threshold. It can be felt at a distance now, thickening as one draws nearer, and its pressure gnaws at composure—the weak of spirit falter, sicken, and must remove themselves from the space to gather themselves again. Wraiths, ghouls, and the lesser barrow-dead carry this weight.
Malign
A malign Pall radiates outward like heat from a forge, palpable ill will that arrives before the creature itself. There is no mistaking it and no ignoring it; even the bold feel it scraping at them from across a hall, and the frightened break long before the thing is in sight. It does not merely unsettle the living—it sickens and terrifies them outright, and even the strong of spirit must struggle to keep from fleeing. Powerful wights and the hungry dead of old battlefields press this hard upon the world.
Ravening
A ravening Pall is a devouring hunger that tears at every living soul within its reach. The air seems to curdle and darken, light dims, sound flattens, and the mind gropes toward panic of its own accord. Few can stand in its presence without being unmade—reduced to gibbering terror or frozen catatonia—and merely to sense it from afar is to feel one’s own soul thinned and drawn toward it. Liches and the mightiest of the Helspawn bear a Pall of this order.
Abyssal
An abyssal Pall is the emanation of things that are less creatures than open wounds in the world—death-lords, ancient horrors, and powers that have fed upon the Pall for ages until it is the whole of what they are. Their presence is felt across the land as omen and blight: birds fall silent, crops wither in the field, and the faithful sense a shadow drawing over the soul long before any door is opened. To stand near such a thing is not a test of will but an annihilation of the self; the living do not so much resist it as endure their exposure to it—if they endure it at all.
In Practice
A party descending into a barrow feels nothing until they are almost upon the tainted relic, and then only a chill and a snuffed torch. The shadowed ghoul in the next chamber sets the youngest among them weeping and the horses screaming in the dark above. The malign wight’s dread reaches them at the foot of the stair, and one breaks and runs before its door is even opened. Against the ravening lich the strongest warrior finds his sword-arm locked and his mind gone white with terror. And the abyssal death-lord is felt by the whole village a mile off—as a week of failing lamps, souring milk, and dreams of the grave—long before anyone thinks to open a door at all.