Darklight

A darklight is a human-shaped silhouette of pure blackness ringed by a halo of shifting, many-colored light. Its eyes blaze with hues that never hold still. It keeps its mind and its speech, conversing in planar common and any languages it knew while alive.

Most souls pass on at death to the Outer Plane that suits their alignment or faith. A spirit ripped from its body by sudden, brutal violence sometimes strays on that journey and is dragged toward the Negative Energy Plane, rising as a wraith, spectre or similar horror. Even back on the Prime it stays leashed to that hungry plane.

Here and there the Inner Planes spring leaks, spots where one plane bleeds into another. Spirits bound to negative energy often bolt for such openings, and nearly all are pulled back, since that energy is what animates them. A leak that opens onto the Quasielemental Plane of Radiance is the exception. Radiance somehow breaks the old tether and claims the runaway as its own. The spirit keeps its dark power and its craving for life, but it now belongs to Radiance as firmly as a wraith belongs to the Negative Plane. In effect it can exist on Radiance and on one other plane, whether the Ethereal, the Prime or another Inner Plane, at the same time.

Few who met a darklight lived to describe it, which is why so little was written about the creature for so long. Its freezing touch strips two levels from a victim, and unlike other life-draining undead it keeps the stolen energy, gaining one Hit Die per level drained, along with the matching hit points and better THAC0. The boost lasts 1d4 hours, or less if the victim recovers the levels through restoration or similar magic.

Once a day it can turn invisible, sometimes to slip away but more often to ambush someone, then rake with claws of mingled light and shadow for 1d4 points of damage each. Its eyes can also fire bursts of light and color, which it can shape to several different ends as the moment demands. Whenever they are not firing, those shifting eyes weave a hypnotic pattern.

Its defenses are just as thorough. It can be hit only by +1 or better weapons and is immune to charm, hold and sleep, to poison, petrification and paralysis, and to any cold, light or darkness magic. It sees perfectly in any lighting, and it passes through a wall of force as though the barrier were not there.

Darklights keep to themselves and shun even their own kind. Their one exception is the incandescents, tiny light beings of Radiance that feed on its colors. Some of these motes develop a taste for the colors of visitors from other planes, and a darklight may strike up a partnership with such a swarm. The cloud then gathers around the undead and the two hunt outsiders together, never one another. A darklight in such an alliance learns to sense victims the motes have already turned transparent, so their strange condition does not hide them from it.

On Radiance, apart from these alliances, darklights fill no ecological role and hunt only beings from elsewhere. Away from the plane they attack anything alive to feed on its life force, favoring intelligent prey, though that may reflect malice rather than real need.

Rumor holds that certain spells can call a darklight from Radiance onto the Prime, the Ethereal or another Inner Plane linked to it. That may well be so, but one thing is sure. A summoned darklight stays where it was brought, and no known method forces it home.