RPG Menagerie: Anima

I never had any interest in d20 as a system - it was based on a version of D&D I didn't need nor care for - but there sure were a lot of products for it thanks to the open license agreement. So it's not impossible to find d20 material in my RPG collection, for a variety of settings and genres. Here's an example:

Monster: Anima, a Human Ghoul
Game/Product: 0One Games' Dark Ladies for d20
Writing: Andrew and Chris Hind. Art: Alessandro Cioffi (who does not follow the description given)
Origin: Her pregnant mother walked over a grave and cursed her babe to become a Ghoul Queen, which is a boss origin story, honestly. Now, Anima is the wife of a farmer, hiding her true nature from the rural community she feeds off of, ready to be confronted by your PCs. Anima takes her name from the Jungian concept, described as the unconscious feminine side of a man (just as the Animus is the masculine side of a woman). Does that really fit the character? Not really. I suppose it sounds like "animal" and fit the writers' idea that she would use her spells to polymorph people into barnyard animals as a side-gig.
Fear Level: High. Ghouls are ick, man!
Danger Level: Pretty high. Between her command of the undead and a vast variety of spells, Anima is a powerful threat.
I wonder if: I couldn't divorce her from her D&D-ish setting and put her into other horror games. I love the idea of the curse, and while one of the adventure seeds is patently ridiculous (you inadvertently free her from having been turned into a horse, which just makes all her backstory pointless), the other could easily be updated to fit even the modern day. It's just a matter of removing her spell list and her Circe shtick (which, honestly, just over-egging the pudding).

Next time, we'll look at some more undead (I must be in a mood).