Dreamwraith

Dreamwraiths are savage products of the subconscious that assault minds with illusion. Usually humanoid and nearly always hideous, they love to wear the decaying face of a lost companion. Most appear inside dreams made by the mindspin spell.

Whatever their shape, all dreamwraiths share one Armor Class and Hit Dice. They loathe every real creature that is good or neutral, strike with sudden fury and gain a -1 bonus to initiative. Some can cause despair with a tale of hopelessness; a listener who fails a save vs. spell joins in chanting it. Dispel magic ends this, or a speech about hope and courage, with a 30% base chance the DM may raise by up to +70% for real eloquence.

Their icy touch deals 1d10, and many wield daggers, long swords or battle axes, but every point is illusionary at the usual rate of 4 illusionary points to 1 real hit point. Victims believe the wounds and fall as if dead when they think the total is fatal, learning the truth only after the dream. Real attacks hurt a dreamwraith normally, and it vanishes at 0 hit points. Magic resistance is normal in the outer layer of a mindspin dream, 10% in the middle and 20% at the core. Not being undead, it cannot be turned. Disbelief before its first attack negates its illusionary damage to that character; after it has wounded him, he cannot disbelieve it. Disbelief follows a set procedure modified by concentration.

A 7th-level priest spell (illusion/phantasm; verbal and somatic; special range and duration; one person; 3-hour casting). The caster sifts the subject's fears for 3 hours, and any disturbance ruins it; a save vs. spell negates it, though a charmed subject gets none. For dispelling it counts as 21st-level wizard magic.

The dream has three layers, crossed as the land seems to drift by at 1 mile per hour: the outer reaches 20 miles per point of the subject's Intelligence, the middle 1 mile per point, the core 20 feet per point. Waking the subject ends everything. Outside, space and time lie: a bare field looks like forest, days pass like minutes. In the middle layer, real companions and illusions look alike. At the core, characters use another group's attack and saving throw tables (priests use rogue, warriors wizard, wizards warrior, rogues priest).

Priests subtract Wisdom from 20 and take that score's spell failure chance, and their turning table inverts so that skeletons cannot be turned and the best odds lie against ghosts, liches and special undead. Rogues' thieving rolls reverse, success for failure. Wizards cast one level higher and may claim one spell from a new level, which they think they know but which has only illusory effects.

These etched crystals hold the essence of dragonkind. Idle they measure 10 inches; speaking the command words cut into them swells them to 20. A wizard who gazes in to summon evil dragons, their main use, must save vs. spell. Failure means charm and a mindspin dream; success summons any dragon within a radius of 1d4 x 10 miles to attack all non-evil creatures near the orb. Orbs also cast cure serious wounds 3 times a day and continual light and detect magic at will, but each use requires the charm save and, if it succeeds, a check for arriving dragons. Detect magic and detect evil register the orb and anyone it has charmed; the charm dispels as 11th-level magic.

A dreamwraith ends when its dream does. Its bodily functions are illusion. Dream creatures of every alignment shun dreamwraiths, which ally with one another and with evil dreamshadows.