Slow Shadow

A slow shadow is a blot of pitch-black with a writhing, unstable edge, so it seems to swell and shrink between four and six feet across as it moves. In dusk or torchlight it is 90% invisible and even in full daylight it is 50% undetectable. In true darkness normal sight cannot find it at all, though infravision shows it as a dark shape against warm surfaces.

Opponents suffer -6 on surprise rolls. A slow shadow latches onto its target with a successful attack roll, dealing 1d4 cold damage and slowing the victim as the spell, no save. After that it deals another 1d4 automatically each round until the victim dies, the shadow is destroyed, or it is driven away. Several attached shadows add their damage together, but the slow does not stack.

Cold, lightning, hold, charm and weapons below +2 have no effect on them. Priests can turn them, and one haste spell drives off 2d10 of them if cast before they attach.

A humanoid slain by slow shadows rises as a lesser slow shadow within a turn. These have all the same powers but cannot stray more than 40 feet from where they changed or from the shadows that killed them, and groups of 20 or more are very rare. Remove curse on the corpse prevents the change; once it has happened, recovery is all but impossible.

They can sense humans and demihumans 100 feet away. When they find one, they melt into cracks and corners nearby and wait for it to walk past, then surge out together.

Bands have no structure and roam their dungeon or ruin at will, attacking any human who comes close but backing off from clearly stronger foes. The living pain them by their very presence, and they hate treasure because it recalls comfort, so they wreck or hide any valuables they get. They leave their haunt only if ten years pass with no human visitor, and even then travel only at night, racing across the land to find a new dungeon.

Like shadows, they are thought to be long-dead people cursed with madness and a divided existence between the Prime and the Negative Material plane, and driven to make more of themselves. Sages believe the two kinds were bitter enemies in life and that their cruelty brought one curse down on both. The feud goes on: in rare witnessed battles, slow shadows defeated by shadows became shadows, and shadows defeated by slow shadows became slow shadows. No one has ever cured a slow shadow. If someone did, and could talk with one, it might be possible to break the whole curse and free every shadow of both kinds, though whether that would grant them rest is unknown.