Gossamer [Shadow Host]

A gossamer looks like a warped, elongated echo of the person it once was, transparent and glimmering, trailing curls of mist and threads of light as it drifts like something blown on the wind. It keeps the speech it had in life, usually the common tongue of its homeland, but every word sounds hollow and haunting, and it rarely talks to mortals unless magic compels it.

Gossamers exploit their ghostly bodies, swooping, slipping through walls and diving into the ground to confuse their foes. A favorite trick is to wait beneath the earth until voices or living presences pass overhead, then shoot up to attack, giving the victims -2 on surprise rolls.

On a hit, the spirit sweeps right through its target, dealing 1d8 damage and draining 1 point of Constitution, which returns at 1 point per day. Each point stolen heals the gossamer by one roll of the victim's own hit die: a drained warrior restores 1d10 hit points to it, a drained wizard only 1d4.

Having no physical form, a gossamer is untouched by normal weapons and can be struck only by +1 or better magical weapons. Like other undead it shrugs off charm, sleep, hold and similar mind- or life-affecting magic, and poison, disease and similar mortal dangers mean nothing to it.

Gossamers belong to the shadow host, the undead army of the Prince of Shadows, lord of the shadow fey. They are fairly common in the gloomy corners of the hidden shadow realm but rarely appear in the mortal world. They gather and act wherever the prince commands, and between campaigns they are confined to a black marsh in his realm. Their real allegiance, though, belongs to their former master, a sorcerer-fiend working his will from behind a black stone gate; they obey the prince only while it suits that master, and if he ever breaks free the entire host returns to him.

These spirits barely touch the living world, but the bodies they left behind are their weakness. Throw a gossamer's corpse onto a fire of yew wood and within 3d4 rounds the spirit is annihilated, spending that time in agony and lashing out to cause as much harm as it can before it ends.