Nightshades. The scariest and most mysterious monster in the book.
Where do they come from? What do they want? The book seems very keen on describing how they smell: "On open grave on a winter's morning" (as opposed to an open grave on a summer midnight?) how they feels: "cold" (very), and what they're made of: "Equal parts of darkness and absaloute evil" (gotta be real heavy...) but that's about it.
Never has been said so little about so much for so long.
Does anybody has an idea where do these cool undead come from? How do you create one? What are their aims? What do they do on their spare time? How come they are the only monsters in the book who are left a total mystery?
I have no idea, but after a shadowwalk my party is scared silly when they hear of them. It may be a cool monster where they left it blank just so DM's could make up a cool origin for a cool monster.
I have no idea, but after a shadowwalk my party is scared silly when they hear of them. It may be a cool monster where they left it blank just so DM's could make up a cool origin for a cool monster.
It feels like in Doom, where you fought all those very cool monsters never stopping to wonder what the hell are they, why are they there etc...
Something has to be done! :)
IIRC the nightshade first appeared in the Monsters of Mystara book in 2nd edition.
IIRC the nightshade first appeared in the Monsters of Mystara book in 2nd edition.
Thanks! I'll check it out.
Nightshades. The scariest and most mysterious monster in the book.
Where do they come from? What do they want?
Not sure about the rest of your questions but the environment for encountering the nightshades is the Plane of Shadows. An alltogether nasty, soul-sucking kind of place that no sane PC wants to go to.
What do they want? Good question. Your soul. To extinguish your life. As creatures of the Plane of Shadow they would hate all beings made from 'positive energy' they hate life.Summoning them would be a major pain as they have large numbers of HD. But I could see some big cleric of Lolth summoning a nightwalker to defend a temple. Or an epic necromancer or lich might strike a bargain with one - "you kill party X and I'll feed you 100 souls..."
IMO
igi
i think it was in the october issue of dragon that said night shades were evil outsiders that died on the negative energy plane and spontaneously rose as a night shade depending on their hit dice.
i think it was in the october issue of dragon that said night shades were evil outsiders that died on the negative energy plane and spontaneously rose as a night shade depending on their hit dice.
Hmmm... interesting. So maybe it should be template because all sorts of evil things die on the negative plane, it's hard not to with all those 21-HD brutes walking about...
Well, probably not a template. I mean, look at all the monsters that kill things, and those salin foes then rise as wights or some other specific monster that disregards their abilities in life. Thier transformation pretty much erases whatever they were before, using their physical form as a shell to fill with and transmute into "nightshade stuff"... ish... ism... yeah..... Hmph. Well, that was clear as mud.