Death Linen

Death linens steal the comfort of pulled-up covers on a creaking night. They are ordinary bedding and household cloth, such as pillows, sheets and towels, soaked through with the latent psychic force of bad dreams. Most stir at night, though some hide in cupboards and laundries and strike whenever someone comes near. Three broad kinds are known. None is undead, so priests cannot turn them and holy water does them no harm.

Plump and inviting, a killer pillow humps along like a giant amoeba and can spring 20 feet once per turn, though it prefers to wait for someone to lie on it. It has 2 Hit Dice and wrinkles its cover into a crude face to bite for 1-2 hp damage. On an attack roll of 18 or higher it wraps the head of a creature of size L or smaller and starts to suffocate it for an automatic 1-4 hp per round. The victim or a helper can pull it off with a Strength check on 3d6, or attack it; such attacks are at -2, deal only half damage and also strike the victim.

Anyone who sleeps on one is hit and smothered automatically. The sleeper is gripped by a weak suggestion and must save vs. magic each round to wake up.

Nobody makes most killer pillows; they simply happen, and they ignore their own kind, though similar conditions can spawn several linens in one building, especially a large one like a castle. Some wizards make them deliberately from deathbed linens, control them and send them as 'gifts' to people they want dead.

This 4 HD creature lurks in linen closets and pantries disguised as a pile of towels or rags, and visual inspection fails to spot it 90% of the time. Once it moves it looks like a ragged snake or ferret. Its fangs carry type E venom and deal 1-3 hp damage per bite, and it can coil its long body around a victim to suffocate him as a killer pillow does while biting at the same time. Some form from winding sheets and are found in tombs and crypts. Certain wizards and priests create and command them as assassins or tomb guards. Like all death linens they live alone, and though they attack the living they never eat them.

A sheet rears up into an unsettling human shape when it attacks, flapping and twisting as it rushes forward with startling speed. The sight forces a save vs. paralyzation; those who fail run in terror for 2-8 rounds, and a horror-focused campaign may use a fear check here instead. It punches twice with ragged fists for 1-4 each, and an 18 or better means it has wrapped and begun suffocating its target, who needs a Strength check to escape. It also bites for 1-2 with poisoned fangs (type C; onset 2-5 minutes; damage 25/2-8). Blunt weapons do only 1 point per hit, plus magic and Strength bonuses.

Sheets prefer houses, manors and castles but will chase prey across open country. They need no food and attack or ignore the living for reasons of their own, rarely putting up with another of their kind. Magic items can control them, especially whistles carved with arcane runes, and scraps of a sheet serve in rites to make zombies and other undead.

Fire does double damage to every death linen. Dousing one with a gallon or more of water slows it as the slow spell. An attack roll of 19 or 20 stuns it for a round, dropping it to the floor as a limp heap, and every attack against it the next round hits automatically.

Death linens have no natural place in the world; they are bad dreams with a body and need no nourishment. Spellcasters use their threads as components for charm, suggestion and sleep. Destroying one may not end it. Each month for the next 1-12 months there is a 10% chance its life force wakes in another pillow or sheet, fed by the nightmares everyone has. If it has not returned after a year, it is gone for good.