Shadow

A shadow looks like exactly what it is called, a dark shape on the wall or floor. Outside of brilliant light, such as a continual light spell, it is 90% undetectable; only in bright illumination does it stand out clearly.

Shadows exist chiefly on the Negative Material Plane, and that link lets their cold touch steal life. Each hit deals 2-5 damage and drains one point of Strength, which comes back 2-8 turns later. When a shadow empties a human or demihuman of either Strength or hit points, the victim dies and rises as one more shadow, driven to run with the pack and do evil. Any other living thing that bottoms out merely collapses, exhausted (Strength) or senseless (hit points); the pack abandons it to perish or returns to it once it stirs.

Cold does not touch them, nor do sleep, charm or hold magic. Clerics can turn them.

Leaderless packs drift through old ruins, crypts and dungeon halls, delighting in terror. Shadows keep no treasure; riches remind them of the lives they lost, so they fling everything they find into one out-of-sight spot, often a well or pit. Collecting that pile would be easy if shadows did not attack every living visitor on sight, whatever its purpose.

Most sages think shadows were made by magic, possibly an ancient curse on some long-gone foe. Because it claims only humans and demihumans, it apparently acts on the soul. When the victim's hit points or Strength give out, the curse shoves most of the essence onto the negative plane, leaving only a mad, evil shadow on the Prime. The original body is destroyed, either by the curse itself or by raw contact with negative energy; killing a shadow simply severs the link between its two halves.

No one has yet lifted the curse from a captured shadow. A limited wish restores the victim for one hour, still insane. A recent theory holds that a wish and then a heal spell could bring a shadow fully back, but nobody has proven it. Shadows seldom leave their lairs, so friends of a lost companion usually have time to mount a rescue, provided no one else wanders in and destroys him while the pack is out.