Devilwhip

A devilwhip is a black leather whip hanging in midair as if gripped by an invisible man, cracking and darting with a speed and agility no human arm could give it. It shows itself only at night, faintly glowing like moonlight, and cannot communicate with the living.

Though often taken for a ghost, it is solid, and each vicious lash deals 1d2+2 (3-4) damage. Its bloody welts behave like those of a sword of wounding: regeneration will not close them, and each bleeds 1 hit point per round until bandaged or until a turn passes. Magical healing cannot mend the damage; only rest and time do.

It can be hit only by +1 or better weapons, or by a blessed farm tool such as a pitchfork or hoe. It shares the usual undead immunity to sleep, charm, hold, death, mind-affecting and life-affecting magic, and ignores poison, paralysis, cold and electricity. Priests turn it as a shadow, but no priest, undead or spell can command it. Holy water and holy symbols do not affect it. Dispel evil banishes it for twenty-four hours.

When a brutal master or overseer dies in great anguish, his spirit may linger in the shape of the tool he wielded, its rage soothed only by beating the people he once owned. By night it roams the countryside, always sensing which way its nearest former slave lies. Once it finds that person it ignores everyone else and strikes without ever checking morale until the victim dies, then vanishes, returning about a week later to hunt again. If all its slaves are dead, it haunts an abandoned mansion or field and attacks intruders.

Weak but spectacularly cruel, devilwhips haunt the imagination of slaves whose masters have died. Sold, escaped or freed, such people watch the horizon for the black lash, and many slave communities shun newcomers who outlived their owners. One slave-born spirit faith teaches that the whips come to claim the souls of their rightful property, a notion that terrifies the impressionable.

A devilwhip barely touches its surroundings and matters only for the fear it spreads among the enslaved.