Friday, April 17, 2020

OSE Encounter Activities - Shadow

With this entry, we’ve slinked past sixty percent!

Shadows share some pretty outrageous Surprise chances with another Monster I’m puzzling over how to handle (the Invisible Stalker), but on the odd chance they you don’t simply spring them on the players, this might provide some inspiration for what these quizzical creatures are up to. They may be most often observed shedding their stealthiness to attack something or someone else.

In this version of the game, they’re not yet consolidated or classified by creature clade as Undead, and this could serve as a rude awakening to some given the traits they share (Incorporeality, Ability Drain, Spell Immunity). I’ve always personally preferred to play them up as something extra-planar or extraordinarily strange:

  • Elemental Darkness (I wonder what kind of special Summoning Device they use?)
  • Unfettered Vampire Reflections (a bit too close to Undead for my liking but still intriguing)
  • Life-starved, Famished Shards of The Elf Psyhopomp (or how they’re playfully portrayed in Peter Pan if you prefer)
  • Primal Childhood Fears Manifest (we were right to be scared of the Dark)
  • Or simply something else, shrouded in mystery and deliciously unknowable (they spontaneously generate in atramentous nether found only in the Mythic Underworld)

Whichever way you decide to interpret them, they’re sure to strike fear in the heart of the hardiest Fighter as they watch their sacred Strength shrink away with each successive strike!

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