Sword Spirit

These undead haunt the iron plains of a plane of endless war and, rarely, other great battlefields. Normally a sword spirit is unseen and bodiless, noticed only as a sudden chill or an unexplained wave of bitter anger and despair. Wise travelers treat that feeling as a warning: the spirit needs 1 to 4 rounds to gather a fighting form, and the clever are gone before it finishes.

When it manifests, it becomes a dark whirlwind of rust, dust and metal flakes standing 10 to 20 feet high on a base roughly 5 feet wide, wrapped in shrieking wind. It sweeps up 1d6+1 nearby weapons and swings them with clumsy but tireless, blindingly fast fury.

Each weapon can be knocked aside, pinned or broken with a hit against AC -4, though this does not hurt the spirit. The spirit itself is an invisible, ectoplasmic presence threaded through the whole storm, so attackers need only strike the whirlwind. Nonmagical attacks cannot harm it; magical weapons and raw magical force such as magic missile deal normal damage, but fire, cold, lightning and similar energy spells do not. If the spirit is somehow made visible, physical weapon blows deal it double damage. Weapons below +1 enchantment simply pass through.

The gale turns aside all nonmagical missiles. Anyone fighting it in melee must save vs. spell each round or take -2 on attack rolls and Armor Class from the stinging debris, and anyone casting within 20 feet must save vs. spell to finish the spell over the noise and grit.

When its blades kill someone, the spirit hovers over the body for 1 round and feeds, gaining 1 hit point per level the victim had, while still attacking anyone nearby. It never tires of killing and fights as long as anything living remains. Anyone it feeds upon returns 1 to 3 days later as a ghoul (90%) or spectre (10%), unless the body receives a blessing from a priest of 5th level or higher.

As an undead thing it is immune to sleep, charm and similar mental magic. It is turned as a vampire, but as special undead on its home plane of war. Holy water burns it for 2-8 per full vial, and raise dead or dispel evil destroys it outright if it fails a save vs. spell.

Sword spirits are the ghosts of mighty warriors who died in futile battles. They linger at or near the field where they fell and seldom wander far. They exist only to kill the living, though a few have seemed to guard their own graves. They do not speak; any mind reached would prove a pit of hate, bloodlust and envy of the living, locked in a rage that admits no other feeling.

They have no part in the living world and give nothing to the land around them; if they belong anywhere, it is the iron wastes of the war plane.