Berbalang

The berbalang is a gaunt, black-skinned humanoid with leathery skin and two broad bat wings that make it a fast, nimble flier. Its huge eyes are white, wet and glowing, and give it infravision to 120 yards.

Whether the berbalang or its projection, it fights from the air, raking with sharp claws and biting with needle teeth. Charm, hold and sleep do not affect the projection, and the instant it takes any hit it flies off, and the berbalang steers it home as fast as it can.

Destroying the projection has a 75% chance of killing the berbalang from the shock. Merely wounding it keeps the berbalang from making a new one for days equal to the hit points lost. A returning projection simply dissolves, and those who chase it home to finish the job may meet a perfectly healthy berbalang instead.

Nearly its whole life passes in a deathlike trance as its spirit roams the Astral plane, hunting weaker beings and carrying out its elaborate courtship and mating. It senses any disturbance of its body and comes back to defend it, but the journey may take 1d100 rounds, and if the body dies first, the spirit dies with it. It therefore hides and guards its resting place carefully.

On the three nights of the full moon each month, the berbalang shifts its trance to create an exact copy of itself, the projection, which it controls directly and sends out up to three miles to find the only food it eats: a freshly killed human. The projection fights just as the creature itself would.

A berbalang never forgives interference. Once it recovers enough to make another projection, revenge is certain. If its projection came home hungry or was destroyed, it first sends a new one to feed as soon as possible, whatever the moon's phase, and then seeks vengeance.

After a kill, the projection lifts the corpse and heads home. As it flies, the real berbalang wakes and the projection eats, so by the time it arrives the body is nearly stripped and the berbalang is sated. Nobody knows how the creature is nourished by its double's feeding, or how it breeds when it meets its own kind only in spirit form.

To stay hidden, it relocates every three or four months, traveling only at night and avoiding any encounter it can, so few people ever face the true berbalang rather than its projection.