Bestiary VI: Silent Shadow

Illustration by author

 I wrote recently about the Court of Shadows, that amorphous sentient mass of dead souls which inhabits the dark and forgotten places of the Silent City. I also alluded to what might happen were one of these long-dead shadows to contract the unquiet sickness, to succumb to the mad hunger that plagues the dead.

I thought about how I'd create a creature which is significantly different from D&D's Shadow, whilst maintaining some of the core themes that make it what it is. Well, here's my offering:

 In some places, people raise their houses onto staddle stones to ward away vermin and damp. In other places, these stones are to keep out the shadows that creep along the floor in the gloom, to keep them from slithering into people's beds and taking their soul.

 A growth on your own shadow, an umbral tumour which attaches itself to you in the dark. This thing is a parasite. You can't fight it in the normal way. Blades and arrows pass through air and chip off stone. Watch for shadows that do not match the objects that cast them. You might see it peeping from the margins of a doorway or the shadow of a wall, staring at you with its hollow hungry eyes. If it gets within reach, it infects you. It hides inside your shadow and slowly feeds on you until you are too weak to resist it. When the shadow reaches this point, it creeps out of your shadow and, as a tarantula stalks a grasshopper, slowly, so slowly, it grows to loom over you. Then it devours you entirely.

 Ordinarily, these desolate creatures live quiet, solitary lives. Shunned from the collective of the Shadow Courts, they waft and slide aimlessly through angular ruins and deeply shaded woods. Their minds begin to turn in on themselves and they crave the warmth of a living creature. In desperation, they try to feed on wildlife, but it is not enough. A withered animal carcass could be a sure sign that a shadow stalks nearby, and that it is starving for a more substantial meal. Even merely approaching the sorry husk is probably an extremely bad idea.

 But how does a shadow infect the living? It hides, ready to ambush passers by. Any shadow large enough to cover a human can hide one of these monsters- the long shadow cast by a tree trunk, a lamp post, or the lee of a rock in the lengthening evening. Or perhaps it hides beneath the shadow of its last victim. Or even hiding in plain sight- an unnoticed, still and silent shadow cast by nothing. In any case, all the creature needs to do is reach out and touch your shadow, and it latches on. If the victim notices (a perception check vs. the shadow's stealth or something similar), they see a stick-like hand reaching out from a nearby shadow, but nothing casts it. The hand reaches along slowly towards the victim's own shadow. Perhaps an initiative check means the victim can avoid the shadow entirely, but if the victim doesn't know the shadow is there, a successful touch attack is enough.

 Imagine it is you who is infected by this creature. To begin with, you would feel nothing, except perhaps a creeping feeling of being watched, of never quite being alone. If you turned fast enough to get a glimpse, you might see it disappearing behind your shadow. Then, when you lay down to sleep, in the dark, in the pitch-blackness of an enclosed room, the creature inches from beneath you. Its head, featureless except for its two round eyes, emerges slowly, fixed on its prey. On you. Its hands, long and slender and sharp, enfold the contours of your neck and your shoulders in a chilly embrace. Anyone awake to witness the shadow's feeding will hear a quiet whispering as it soothes you to keep you in the arms of sleep, and a gentle lapping sound as it sips of your body's strength. In the morning, you must make a save or lose 1D4 (or 1D6 if the DM is feeling evil) points of strength. You awaken feeling exhausted, drained. You cannot gain these points back by resting if you are still infected by the Silent Shadow.

 Perhaps in the following days, your shadow begins to look increasingly ... different, somehow. Its limbs are slightly longer, its body is misshapen and lumpy. It lags slightly behind your own movements. If no one has noticed yet, this might be a good way to diagnose the infection. The longer it goes on and the more strength the victim loses, the more pronounced this effect becomes. The nightly feedings may also be making the creature itself stronger, with the shadow retaining the strength it drains from its victims, if you as a DM are imagining a final confrontation of sorts.

 But how do you rid yourself of this parasite? Perhaps while it is hiding in someone's shadow, it cannot be targeted by spells, or it makes saves against them with advantage. Or, even better, it can deflect spells and effects from itself onto its victim. Once it has drained some of its victim's strength, a bond is formed whereby the Shadow is protected from harmful effects. A Cure Disease or Remove Curse spell may break this bond, but it will not rid the host of its parasite. It will still be there, hiding. Perhaps if you are running D&D and you have a cleric handy, Turn Undead might suffice. But you'd have to decide how many hit dice the thing had and whether the effect would be strong enough to deter this mad horror.

 No, I think to remove it entirely, you must be more clever than that. The observant adventurer may notice (or you as DM may wish to tell them) that this creature is not simply an invisible spirit casting a shadow. It is the shadow. And as such, it can only move across surfaces on which shadows can be cast. It cannot jump into the air. It cannot cross from one side of a chasm to the other except if it goes down to the bottom first. So, in order to separate host from parasite, you must find a way to separate the victim from their own shadow. There is no other way to permanently and forcibly remove this skin-crawling leech.

 This could be done by means of magical intervention, of course. And what of effects like Invisibility which strips the subject of their shadow? Would the shadow be suddenly bereft of its hiding place, writhing on the floor like an insect on an overturned rock? Magic aside, there are simpler ways. Perhaps an arrangement of torches and a leap into the air, or a step onto a raised platform at midday might do the trick. Anything which causes a person's shadow to lose contact with their body and not return would work. Once the bond is broken and the shadow is separated from its host, exposed, it is vulnerable to damage from magical weapons and magic damage itself, especially radiant damage.

 It might be at this point that you want to use the stats for a Shadow from the Monster Manual and have an old-fashioned fight, but it might not. You might want to describe the shadow giving a hoarse, reedy cry and fleeing across the ground, never quite letting the players think it is gone for good...

That's all for now, folks. Thanks for reading, I hope you found it interesting.

Peace,

O