25 May 20. | Author: John Doe
Monster of the Week: Nightwalker
Don’t let its beautiful baby smooth skin fool you, the Nightwalker takes no prisoners.
What is a nightwalker?
This week we’re kicking off Monster Of The Week with a more well-known creature of the night – and the living embodiment of death itself. Nightwalkers appear to be comprised of shadow, but these colossal humanoid-shaped terrors are actually undead. And they’ll stop at nothing to eliminate your players.
Where do nightwalkers come from?
There’s much more to their origin than there is for the typical shambling undead. Nightwalkers are born from a failed ritual created by those who try to inhabit powers of the Negative Energy plane. You can think of the Negative Energy plane as a sort of alternate dimension where almost no living creature can safely travel. Why? Because it contains such high amounts of (living? dead? hungry? all of the above?) darkness. Think of Stephen Hawking’s description of Black Holes, but instead of going through the fun that is spaghettification you’ll just slowly shrivel into cold dusty shadow, as all hope, light, and laughter drains away. The plane of existence where Nightwalkers originate is a sinister plane indeed. Nightwalkers fall under the evil alignment. Allegedly, Nightwalkers consist of the same shadowy darkness as the negative energy plane. Being undead, they have no problem surviving this dread domain.
Did we mention, they’re really, really big? Despite their 20 ft stature, Nightwalkers are capable of hiding from the players’ sight by camouflaging into darker environments such as fallow farm fields, dark forests, and the abandoned backlot of Disney’s Hollywood Studios… *gulp*.
anyway…
Ok, so just like the nightmares I still have about that backlot tour, the Nightwalker is capable of stunning its prey within a 30 ft radius by using their evil gaze. They become literally paralyzed with fear. Fear isn’t their only weapon. Like many evil beings in real life, Nightwalkers are extremely charismatic. Because they have such high charisma, they’re extremely capable of intimidating players without having to flex a muscle. Although a large part of that has to do with the Nightwalker’s physical stature, it’s fear of the unknown that you want to emphasize to keep your players sweating. Or you can just focus on the fear of a gigantic malevolent creature that harnesses the powers of the Negative Energy plane. That works too.
