The Ghost Dancer

She looks like a lovely young woman of perhaps 18 to 22, translucent and ethereal, her flesh pale and lifeless. Her short hair is as colorless as her alabaster skin, her lips full and wan, and her eyes always lost in shadow. She wears a ragged, faded ballet costume, its fine patterns marred by pale bloodstains, some mere splashes and others the prints of hands that speak of an old and ugly violence. Faint mist curls up from her body.

She is utterly silent. Dark bruises ring her throat, which may be how her voice was stolen when she died, but no one knows what happened. She expresses herself through eerie, eloquent dances. Sadly, anyone who watches such a dance has usually been chosen by her, and few of the chosen live to describe it.

She avoids physical fights but is well armed when one comes. Unless she semi-materializes, only dreamers or beings on the Ethereal Plane can attack her. On the Ethereal Plane or the dream planes she is AC 6; semi-materialized she is AC 0. Weapons below +3 cannot harm her.

Her favorite weapon is a freezing touch, once per round, that deals 1d4 points of damage and drains 1 point of Strength. Lost Strength returns at 1 point per day, unless the victim hits 0. Then the victim is paralyzed and instantly teleported to the Hollow Stage, her ghostly theater, to sit in the audience until death makes the seat permanent. Death arrives after as many days as the victim's Constitution score minus 1d4, unless the victim is rescued and receives remove curse. Until that curse is removed, no Strength comes back.

When pressed, she performs the death dance, a wild, gorgeous swirl of motion and spectral music. Everyone within 30 feet when it begins must save vs. paralyzation at -4 or stand transfixed with awe. She can perform it twice a day, and each performance runs 6 rounds. While dancing she holds two ghostly scimitars and makes 4 attacks per round, against as many as four different targets.

She is turned as a special undead.

She is perhaps the saddest member of the court of nightmares. Incorporeal, she wanders the nightmares of the living hoping to understand how she died. Dreams of guilt and shame pull at her the way a flame pulls a moth. Her domain is the Hollow Stage, a theater in the dream city.

The Ghost Dancer feeds on the energy of guilty and shameful dreams.