Ghostlight

A ghostlight is a dim orb of sickly green phosphorescence, anywhere from the size of a fist to a yard wide, constantly swelling and shrinking as it flickers. It likes to hide its glow among natural lights, so it haunts foul bogs, dank caverns, and misty moors and shorelines. Some folk of the neutral planes call it a corpse-candle.

It prefers to steer victims into the jaws of something else. By reshaping its body it reproduces the effect of dancing lights to lead travelers astray. If they will not follow, it drifts closer and pulses in a mesmerizing rhythm. Any creature within 30 feet that keeps watching past the first round saves vs. spell or suffers confusion, as the spell, lasting 2d6 rounds.

If that fails to create a deadly situation, it tries to take over something able to kill the victim, often one of the victim's own companions. This takes a normal attack roll, ideally by surprise or a silent rush from behind. The target saves vs. spell. On a failure, the ghostlight sinks into the body until it can no longer be seen, takes complete control, and usually turns the host against the intended prey at once.

Only when cornered does it fight directly. Its chilling touch inflicts 1d4+1 points of damage plus a temporary 1-level drain, costing a Hit Die, worsening THAC0, and stripping any spells or powers the lower level could not use. One drained level returns per full turn of rest, and memorized spells blocked by the lower level are still available once the level comes back. A character drained to level 0 falls unconscious until regaining 1st level; struck again at level 0, the character must save vs. death magic or die.

Only weapons of +2 or better harm it. In motion it is blindingly quick and hard to hit, but while still, such as when feeding or controlling a host, its AC falls to 0. It can go invisible for up to 5 rounds to ambush or escape, and once per turn it can teleport as far as 200 feet.

Its fatal weakness is hunger. Once it senses a creature at death's door within 100 feet, it drops everything to feed, draining life as above until the victim dies on its own or from the drain. While feeding it ignores all attacks until it is down to 10 hp or fewer, and then it tries to flee.

Every recorded ghostlight has been alone, claiming a hunting ground and apparently never leaving it. No one has ever seen a young one or two together. Some say evil mortals who stray into one particular layer of the Abyss become ghostlights; others claim a finger of death cast in the wrong corner of the lower planes creates one.

They speak by a feeble telepathy that reaches only as far as their touch. It often strikes deals with powerful local monsters, steering prey to them for the right to feed on the dying, then turns on its partner the moment a fight goes badly.

Bound to its word somehow, a ghostlight is a superb guide that knows every predator larger than a fox on its land, plus its hazards, portals, and conduits. It sometimes takes gems but prefers payment in food.

A ghostlight wrecks its hunting ground. Constant violent death lets the toughest predators take over, and then it sets them on each other until nothing is left. Its haunts are silent and empty, so one that has lingered long is probably starving and eager to attack passersby.

Ghostlights and will-o'-wisps share many traits, and some suspect one is merely the other after a trip between planes.