The nightcrawler descends down on you and swallows you whole. Every nerve in your body explodes with pain. You experience your body dissolve by pure entropy. But it does not end there. As your soul leaves your body it is sucked into what can only be described as the end of everything. No heaven, no hell. Just an endless descent into a timeless, formless existence. You lose every scrap of sanity as countless ages pass in total darkness. A total lack of energy, form or substance. You long for something you can not even grasp with what is left of what you once were. You remain in a state of perpetual panic and hunger for unknown things. And then some fucking necromancer on the prime material plane summons you into what can only be described as an acid trip, while on fire, falling off a cliff. You are a skeleton.
Threw this at my party a few months ago, just popped up on my recommended again. The party was level 9 but were 6 strong, and had complained previously about the encounters they went up against not being challenging enough. So when they entered the dark forest in search of a long lost ally, guess what they ran into? Six entered the woods... one left with his life intact. I’ll never hear the end of it
No, but seriously, they were only level 9. They stood no chance. Its _Annihilating Aura_ ability alone shaves off about 50 HP in 4 turns! Enervating Focus just picks off any stragglers. It doesn't matter that there were 6 of them. XD
@@TheTsugnawmi2010 Oh absolutely, I feel really terrible about the whole thing. In my defense though, I had planned this to be a late game enemy towards the ends of the campaign and worked a whole bunch of the lore to make sense with a creature composed of negative energy living in a dark forest. BUT they went down the road of looking for the one dude that was trapped in the woods and went in to find him. Things did not go as they had planned from then onwards. Miraculously though, the party was able to continue on after the encounter, and now I'm looking down the path of my party heading back into the forest for revenge! I'm incredibly excited.
My brother threw one of these at me and my Mom once. My Mom turned it into a fish and I chopped it up into sushi. That was the best dnd moment I've ever had.
yesss night walkers are my favourite monsters. In 5e I LOVE how they look, and the idea they have a flying speed without wings is weird. When I threw it against my players, I described it as the PC's flew into the air, the creature started to walk upwards towards them as if it was following them on an invisible staircase.
I once had an Ooblex do a ritual that would summon the nightwalker that involved using blood from each of the players that would spill into smaller slimes and they would crawl over and attempt to bring blood to the alter, to keep the ritual from completing they had to stop all the slimes that carried blood else the ritual would complete. They in fact did not succeed in doing so, and had to now flee a night walker that was consuming all the natural and artificial light made in the area. The only thing they had to illuminate their path was a pendant that grew for 10 feet in a direction ahead of the player when there was no other source of light. It was basically running a horror movie and it was great
I made a homebrew story where I gave the Warlock Hexblade a magic item that held this creature inside it as it's pact weapon. Every night, when the character went to sleep, this being would show up in his dreams(more like a nightmare). They would learn more about each other(thus the character is talking in his sleep for the other PC's to listen in during night watch), and the nightwalker would be bone thin and get beefier(+learn more about itself) after devouring more souls. Later on, the nightwalker remembers that it met the Raven Queen, and asked of her to go to the material realm in secret, to go on an adventure as being godlike stops him from interacting with people normally. He wanted to interact with humans mostly because he found them interesting after witnessing the Raven Queen meddling with fate and restoring souls to the material realm. The joy of watching this rags to riches story as these adventurers are given a glimmer of power brings intrigue to the Queen, and the Night Walker. The Nightwalker enjoys these shows regardless, adventurers are high stake gamblers, either the adventurers will be filled with terror and destroyed, or they will prevail and slay all before them, maybe a mix where a dear friend is lost. The queen longs for adventure but must stay and guard the Shadowfell against those who want to take her place. While the Nightwalker needs to be hidden from the god's and other humans so they can enjoy the material plane and it's adventures. The Nightwalker asks the Raven Queen to become a weapon, a weapon of shadows where nobody knows it's secret, thus the gods and mortals don't bother, it's just a tool, like a golem. Once the contract with a mortal is fulfilled(the adventurer reaches level 20 Hexblade), the Nightwalker will be released, and return to the Raven Queen to tell her what he's seen. The blade first bonds with a person when it senses blood and negative emotion, before this event happens, it's just a rusty weapon found in heaps of gold. It's only fear is not being used, being stuck, but with the brilliant Raven Queen's help, that won't be an issue. Explaining what the Hexblades are made of, why the raven queen is the only one who can create them, and why the relationship is between hero and blade, not the Raven Queen. The weapon will prefer to stay in the scabbard or hidden away during sunlight and hates it when someone steps on his shadow :P Do mind, I'm a beginning DM, so this might be pretty lame(Oh you find a rusty sword buried in treasure, it must be trash! No, it's probably really important). I hope someone finds this interesting or might use it.
For a beginning DM, this is really good. Don't poop on yourself and call it lame. It's not a good look. Be confidant because you can make a really good story.
This is great! Keep at it! This is way way better than what I did during my first ever campaign lol, and being a DM for 4 years I can say this even rivals the stuff I do now!
The Nightwalker was the most evocative undead art for me in 3e, and I have loved them ever since. It's almost impossible to use them however due to their enormous CR rating. Still, the couple times they have shown up have been dramatic, one instance being a necromancer cabal sacrificing a member in opening a gate to the negative for the explicit purpose of bringing one in. They wished to use the monster to shatter an ancient magical seal (using it's powers to destroy magic etc), and it very nearly succeeded.
Sometimes its OK to have a threat so monstrous, facing off against them directly, toe to toe, is going to end really badly.. defeating them then becomes a problem-solving situation.
Warlock The Undying Patron (Nightwalker). But the twist is the invocations and class features arent gifts from the patron. The boons are instead the lingering effects of the connection the character has with the nightwalker which was banished back. The nightwalker is using this connection to slowly turn the player to a nightwalker-esk being as a sort of twisted revenge.
Thanx AJ! I didn't know these monsters were still in AD&D lore. My players were confused when they saw that 3 temples collaborated to hire adventurers to "purge the darkness" from a cursed nearby ruin that even a lich lord abandoned. They were temples that went to a goddess of life, birth, motherhood, and healing; the god of nature and reincarnation (among other things); and the god of death. Yes, the god of death. Most people don't know that gods of death and undeath often oppose each other. The priests of the death god explained that death is part of the individual's journey in all things, a balancing point in nature itself. And those super-destructive undead beings go beyond death and into obliteration, a profanity they saw as vile as immortality.
Priests of kelemvor on Faerun are just like that, stalwart enemies of the undead. They are "death is a journey", while priests of Myrkul are more "death is the destination".
The look on the Swashbucklers face when this creature grabbed his +2 poisoning sword and turned it into frozen dust in his hands, was only matched by the look on the Eldritch Knight's face when she cast Hideous laughter on it not knowing it can't be prone. So I granted it a Terrifying Presence as it flew towards her laughing maniacally with a voice that sounded of broken dreams, true hopelessness and total emptiness.
One of my old GMs used a Nightwalker as a Demilich's "Plan Eff It All". The little bugger plane shifted one of the PCs to the Negative Material specifically to have one of these things pop in while the Demilich dropped down a 100 foot shaft to escape.
These are by far one of my favorite creatures in 5e. They are terrifying even at high level. Edit: Imagine this. Introduce your party to a town's aftermath. Decayed bodies stuck in terrified, fleeing positions. A father with an outstretched hand in fear as his stiff corpse hovers over his wife and child. Every person once living, now a lifeless statue. The term ghost town sounds pleasant compared to this sight. And as your party stands in the center staring at what lays around them, the black, hulking silhouette of the Nightwalker raises from between the buildings and turns to the party. Its face blank and just as unmoving as the bodies. Its bony shadowy form starts towards them...
What a sight to behold Orcus striding across the Prime Material with a rotten retinue of nightshades, corpse gatherers, devourers, liches, crawling heads, death knights, and hullathoins. With legions of "lesser" intelligent undead like bodaks, vampires, mummies, and skull lords beefed up with plenty of class levels. Mmm. That's a rancid necrotic meatball of terror for any high level campaign. Really good episode AJ. X3
“To them, the prime material plane is the far realm” Nice bit of relativity and considering of another’s perspective right there, love playing around with morality and junk like that.
I recently ran one of these. I used it as an entity that had made its way into the shadowfell centuries earlier. Since its arrival it had been gathering lost travelers and Shadder Kai and draining all hope from them, transforming them into sorrow sworn. The creature has become know as the Dark Shepherd to the residents of Gloomwrought. It was drawn to my party by there positive emotions like a beacon. They had fought the sorrow sworn before but had only heard tales of the Dark Shepherd that kept the flock. The distortion of the creature alone with its towering height and long dark horns sent the party into full getaway mode. The druid transformed into a faint eagle and grabbed two companions (a cleric and rogue). The artificer took flight as well with a pair of winged boots . Leaving the fighter and halfling sorcerer. The sorcerer cast fly on the fighter and the chase began. The party was surprised at the speed and flight capability of the nightwalker. They were fast but, it became evident after a couple rounds of combat, some were not fast enough to get away. The aura was draining them as they ran. The quick thinking cleric atop the giant eagle cast a radiant wall which impeded the nightwalker and bought them sombre ground. In a lady ditch effort to stop the retreat the nightwalker used its finger of doom on the druid (in eagle form). The druid's save was an 18 total... not enough until you add the +4 from flash of genius (bah darn artificer). The getaway was a success but the Dark Shepherd is still out there, gathering his flock 🕵️♂️. Thanks for reading and thanks for the awesome videos!
Hey AJ, excellent video! 20:38 I really liked the Columbus looking ship near land and the Giant NightCrawler bursting out of the mountainside, going straight for the ship. That pic is one of those moments when you realize "I messed-up!" or "My moma said there would be days like this!" Thanks AJ & have a wonderful day.
I have an idea for a Nightwalker BBEG that been permanently trapped in the Prime Material and has come to realise that it cannot end this horrible reality by continuing to aimlessly kill. It got smart and started working on ways to end life more efficiently and permanently
So thought experiment, A Lich targets the low Charisma Hero with Plane Shift to the negative energy plane..... Now there's a Nightwalk. Is this viable? Would the nightwalker be on the Lich's side since it's undead as well? Should every Lich now use this tactic against stronger parties?
Remember those old wax bottle sweets with the sugar water inside? That's a lich in the eyes of the Nightwalker... twist the head off and crush the body, then slurp up all the yummy negative energy.
I love the negative plane. A place of complete absence and void. A place where the lifetime of a universe goes by unnoticed. A place where the shadows of things that existed outlived them and gained form. At the end of all time, after a span of time so unfathomably long that might as well be called "forever" the faded imprint that a soul has left on the universe is filled with negative energy and gains form. The negative energy sticking to the only thing left in existence to create a being of Un-life, a mold of an imprint, that is content to sit in the dark, waiting, forever and always...
Once again your explanation of what the Negative Energy Plane is interesting (It's the end of time). And telling us what it's like for a being living in there, is a nice Chill Touch.
"Sit back, grab a tasty beverage, and turn the lights off..." *Runs around the room flipping ON all the lights* Also the Reece's ad was horrifically timed
Idea to make the name "Nightwalker" thematically appropriate: it is perfectly capable of walking around during the day, but it's field of negative energy acts as a limited black hole to a good deal of the Sun's light. This effectively causes a pocket of reduced light akin to night time, to follow it around wherever it goes. You may even choose to have this reduced vision apply to even characters with night/dark vision abilities making it even harder to hit. Just an idea so that the name isn't out of place. . If you wanted to make it more fearsome, have it absorb some of the intelligence of those it kills with it's aura, it would also absorb & manifest the worst parts of their personality. This would mean one that had absorbed a bunch of Paladins would be extra WRATHFUL to the wicked, & of course it would see everyone as wicked in some way or another, but it would be screaming out to the the party in a dozen stolen voices of the sins that they have committed. I'll let your imagination run with other classes/people, but this also makes it fueled by vendettas of dozens of people for any real or imagined slight. I can also see any of these creatures using these stolen emotions & memories in a potent form of psychic attack, where they assault anyone in their aura range with a wave of negative emotions, & terrible memories. Perhaps this would be a good descriptive way to describe the aura of negative energy. The amalgamation of the worst parts of everyone's souls these undead have absorbed is in a way borrowed from Wraith: The Oblivion's concept of The Onceborn, who are spectral amalgamations based around a theme that was a kernel of negative emotion by the first soul that started forming them. Even the Onceborn in that setting are weak compared to the Neverborn, who are anti-titans, from the void that existed before reality.
@@pepsicrusader535 sure. If you had someone go necromancy wizard to the tier of play where this thing is going to come in, that's mostly going to be one of the big campaign-ending beats, which I kind of love. Otherwise, this thing is just a terrifying undead creature that really tells the party a different kind of essence to undeath.
My current party ran across one these. The only reason we survived was we "Captain Kirked" this particular Kobiyashi Maru test. The DM was cool about it and even commended our original thinking, lol. It involved changing it to a rat and a Bag of Devouring. I'm just the dumb warforged fighter in the party but our druid is definitely the hero of that encounter, lol.
@@AJPickett I'll ask Steve and Disco the particulars as I'm a rookie player. Steve's the DM and Disco is the druid. Funny, Disco is a New Zealander too. Don't know how he manages the time difference, the rest are either 'Muricans like me or Canadian.
@@AJPickett Got the story. Our druid tried a polymorph spell on it and unbelievably the nightwalker failed it's saving throw. Now I'm not up on all the rules of magic but that's what I was just told. Then while it was a rat, our barbarian simply picked it up and put it in her Bag of Devouring. That's the story I got lol.
You don’t usually think about the Negative Energy Plane as a place with its own types of creatures. However, I feel the entire Nightshade subtype of undead creatures is perfect for representing the plane. Similar to material plane creatures in appearance but utterly designed to eradicate life.
The cult in the game I'm running is trying to summon 12 of these. If just one reaches the center of the city then it dies and summons ITS master, the bbeg. So far the players have prevented 3 from having the chance of being summoned, but only have less than two weeks left to find the rest of the hidden cultist and stop them before they can perform this ritual.
18:55 Also describes what it would be like with a Purple Dragon flying around. That Night Flier feature is bomb for the building of suspense. Same here with the Nightwing. O_o
Imagine if the Negative Energy Plane wasn't innately evil, just a different world, like the shadowfell. Some Nightwalker is making dinner for their family, their kid is getting ready for Night School, and suddenly the Nightwalker disappears and some random mortal wizard appears in their place while the poor Nightwalker gets tossed out into the material plane.
I always liked to think that banishment wouldn’t work on Nightwalkers due to the victim they replaced acting as a sort of anchor to their native plane. Or at least banishment would treat the Nightwalker’s native plane as the creature’s native plane instead of returning it to the negative plane.
Night walkers made an appearance in Neverwinter Nights 2. Interestingly, according to the lore of that game, Nightwalker’s were an Avatar of the Ilfaern King of Shadows.
I am currently using one of these in my campaign. I gave it an ability where all sound within 1500 feet of it is cancelled out creating an aura of silence. Basically, everyone in the radius can't hear.
"Will there come a time when we can traverse the negative energy plane? Or is the problem unsolvable in all conceivable circumstances?" "NO PROBLEM IS UNSOLVABLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."
Next to the shadow, probably the freakiest creature in 5e you can unleash on your players. It just looks like something out of H R Giger's nightmares. Definitely one for DM's to keep in your pocket when the party thinks they have the upper hand in the situation and get too cocky. 🤯😉
Could you, hypothetically speaking, yeet someone into the negative energy plane in order to summon a Nightwalker? If so, could a powerful enough mage banish a whole village to summon a whole army of those things?
Summoning an army of these things would be fairly easy, controlling said army would be nigh impossible tho. I imagine if more then 3 or 4 of these things popped up in one spot they could probably level a kingdom, a villages worth would probably end the world without divine intervention
I've now got an idea thanks to you. Imagine a magical nuke fueled by the Negative Energy Plane. Now imagine a being born from the death and carnage, which would have a modified Nightwalker stat block.
I remember my first time using these Night Walkers on my 5e players while using my own template of them based on 3.5 edition. The party didn't think it was a dangerous threat until it showed cunning intelligence and focus on dealing with the party with its freshly summoned Shades and Wights.
I literally went "Yaaas!" in excitement when I saw this in my list just now. Time to devour that tasty lore! Thanks AJ! I've been curious about these scary giants since I got the tome of foes. :)
"Straight out of 'Fell One of a kind Stalking its victim Don't look below you Nightcrawler Beware the worm in black Nightcrawler You know it's coming back NightCrawler" Judas Priest's "Night Crawler" but modified for THE Nightcrawler.
The easiest way to weaken / kill any undead is to sever the Negative plane connection. Or sever the head. Said being does not get a saving throw. Dissolve remains in holy water. Nightwalker be finished.
The necromancer control undead ability should probably specify it doesn’t work on creatures with legendary resistance even if they have low int. No mundane 14th level necromancer should be taking control of a night Walker for ever. Or weirder still in my opinion a lich for a day. A dm is fully in the right to say that command undead doesn’t work on any legendary undead
The control undead thing does specify however that any undead with Int 8 or higher has advantage and can repeat the saving throw every hour. So it wouldn't be indefinite if the nightwalker has higher than Int 8
The small problem there is even with that rule in play a necromancer can still control it permanently because it doesn’t have legendary resistances or legendary actions
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar afaik it’s the only CR 20+ monster in MToF that has neither legendary actions or resistances. At least the wizard is limited to one only
I was so excited to see this. We're plating a campaign with one PC playing a minor god in the Shadow Realm with a personal army playing as an opponent to the rest of the player character party. Sending this to the chat
Ysval was a general for Szass Tam’s armies of undead in “Unclean” by RIchard Lee Byers. Every other kind of undead horror ever imagined makes an appearance in that series, including these others you speak of here. Something in that army also blocked out natural sunlight over the entire battlefield, returning advantage to the creatures of the night. Terrifying!!
Weird theory what if the dark powers are actually night Walkers that are so old and impossibly powerful or that the nightwakers are merely fragments of them or like there avatars
Probably not, Nightwalkers are agents of the Entrophic Immortals. Cause they're mystara monsters originally, they were added to forgotten realms cause i guess they just want everything from every setting.
Here is some theory crafting that I'm interested hearing some opinions of: If demons ( and maybe the Abyss itself ) are Tharizdun's dream given physical form then isn't it likely that gods used weakness of his this way fragmented mind in order to imprison his mind? The kicker is if this is so then if forces of good and order would ever thin the number of the demons and diminish area of the abyss the Tharizdun's mind would be able to focus again and bypass the prison. Ultimately this would mean dawn war 2 and only way to stop the big T would be let the abyss and demons grow in numbers enough to exploit restored fragmentation of T's mind again. From this we learn few things: 1) Blood war must be eternal stalemate. 2) None of forces of good and order must ever be able to wipe the demons or abyss out. 3) To avoid unnecessary suffering of good and morally neutral the evil entities are convenient sacrifice to fuel the blood war. 4) the big T must be stopped (how?) or all the sentient entities must flee.
This is where the machinations of Primus and the forces of Neutrality suddenly come into very sharp focus... the status quo MUST be preserved at all costs.
Yet in Exandria Tharzidun is seeking to be freed. So if Tharzidun gets free in one universe it would be a matter of time before other versions of Tharzidun break free.
In one of my campaigns, I had each night have a chance for an event called the Blood Moon. Every Blood Moon, the Nightwalker would be summoned and scour the ruins of the city, searching for life to extinguish. The party thought they could take him, and he wound up killing one of them with his Finger of Doom. They changed their minds and fled for cover, where they were hopefully safe.
I had a nightmare of this once four figures standing underneath an orb the orbs surface bubbling up like some foul soup of tendrils , arms , legs and faces screams all shouting louder then the other to where it was almost like white noise the figures standing taller then the tree line turning there heads twords me just pointing a figure no feeling pain just cold and empty
Fascinating video love how much detail you go into while still presenting the knowledge in a storytelling style to keep us interested and attentive Great work 🎉
Pathfinder also features a shark version, a gargantuan CR 20+ undead megalodon. Not sure on the lore of it but I guess they wanted you to not be able to ever escape these fully; they can follow you underwater.
Imagine being a 20th level necromancy wizard and taking full control over this big boyo, it would be practically eternal doom. Theoretically this ability isn't a spell and is a natural obligation ability, so if a DM stays strict to the rules you have a quite powerful pet now, if a DM is good enough and bending rules may let you have a nerfed one if controlled, if a DM wants you to swear at him for being unfair (totally ironic, I'm just joking) they'll say just no.
I’ve heard some DMs use the nightwalker as a servant to a bigger threat like a Deity, Lich, or high tier Necromancer who purposely threw an innocent person into the Negative Material Plane jus to get such a powerful servant. The hard part is finding someone who would survive the trip to the Negative Material Plane in order to get such a servant. This is where certain PCs or NPCs may come into place and become targets
DM: no you can't just cast a 7th level spell and end the encounter.
Wizard who knows control undead: my nightwalker now.
The nightcrawler descends down on you and swallows you whole. Every nerve in your body explodes with pain. You experience your body dissolve by pure entropy. But it does not end there. As your soul leaves your body it is sucked into what can only be described as the end of everything. No heaven, no hell. Just an endless descent into a timeless, formless existence. You lose every scrap of sanity as countless ages pass in total darkness. A total lack of energy, form or substance. You long for something you can not even grasp with what is left of what you once were. You remain in a state of perpetual panic and hunger for unknown things.
And then some fucking necromancer on the prime material plane summons you into what can only be described as an acid trip, while on fire, falling off a cliff. You are a skeleton.
This man gets it. 🧙♂️
Nightwalker is the equivalent of an elemental undead, the essence of the negative energy plane made incarnate.
Accurate
Threw this at my party a few months ago, just popped up on my recommended again. The party was level 9 but were 6 strong, and had complained previously about the encounters they went up against not being challenging enough. So when they entered the dark forest in search of a long lost ally, guess what they ran into? Six entered the woods... one left with his life intact. I’ll never hear the end of it
No, but seriously, they were only level 9. They stood no chance. Its _Annihilating Aura_ ability alone shaves off about 50 HP in 4 turns! Enervating Focus just picks off any stragglers. It doesn't matter that there were 6 of them. XD
@@TheTsugnawmi2010 Oh absolutely, I feel really terrible about the whole thing. In my defense though, I had planned this to be a late game enemy towards the ends of the campaign and worked a whole bunch of the lore to make sense with a creature composed of negative energy living in a dark forest. BUT they went down the road of looking for the one dude that was trapped in the woods and went in to find him. Things did not go as they had planned from then onwards. Miraculously though, the party was able to continue on after the encounter, and now I'm looking down the path of my party heading back into the forest for revenge! I'm incredibly excited.
Dont complain at the DM. 🤷
😂😂🙏
@@sagesheahan6732 the dm is not always faultless
@@VirKolpe How did that turn out?
It warms my cold, dead heart. Beautiful, true undeath
I love using Nightwalkers. There is something extremely menacing and foreboding in their presence.
My brother threw one of these at me and my Mom once. My Mom turned it into a fish and I chopped it up into sushi. That was the best dnd moment I've ever had.
The Next video should be a Night Walker putting on a finger puppet version of 2 and a half men starring Vecna, Acerak, and Saz Tamm as the Half
Or maybe Ebonsoul from that R. A. Salvatore book as the half since he pales next to Acerak and Vecna lol
yesss night walkers are my favourite monsters.
In 5e I LOVE how they look, and the idea they have a flying speed without wings is weird.
When I threw it against my players, I described it as the PC's flew into the air, the creature started to walk upwards towards them as if it was following them on an invisible staircase.
*GOOD GOOD*
It just activates noclip and struts it's stuff.
They are so profane, the very ground rejects them. So entropic, even gravity reverses around them.
It reminds me of this meme where a guy runs down a corridor chased by a floating guy
I once had an Ooblex do a ritual that would summon the nightwalker that involved using blood from each of the players that would spill into smaller slimes and they would crawl over and attempt to bring blood to the alter, to keep the ritual from completing they had to stop all the slimes that carried blood else the ritual would complete. They in fact did not succeed in doing so, and had to now flee a night walker that was consuming all the natural and artificial light made in the area. The only thing they had to illuminate their path was a pendant that grew for 10 feet in a direction ahead of the player when there was no other source of light. It was basically running a horror movie and it was great
I made a homebrew story where I gave the Warlock Hexblade a magic item that held this creature inside it as it's pact weapon. Every night, when the character went to sleep, this being would show up in his dreams(more like a nightmare). They would learn more about each other(thus the character is talking in his sleep for the other PC's to listen in during night watch), and the nightwalker would be bone thin and get beefier(+learn more about itself) after devouring more souls. Later on, the nightwalker remembers that it met the Raven Queen, and asked of her to go to the material realm in secret, to go on an adventure as being godlike stops him from interacting with people normally. He wanted to interact with humans mostly because he found them interesting after witnessing the Raven Queen meddling with fate and restoring souls to the material realm. The joy of watching this rags to riches story as these adventurers are given a glimmer of power brings intrigue to the Queen, and the Night Walker. The Nightwalker enjoys these shows regardless, adventurers are high stake gamblers, either the adventurers will be filled with terror and destroyed, or they will prevail and slay all before them, maybe a mix where a dear friend is lost. The queen longs for adventure but must stay and guard the Shadowfell against those who want to take her place. While the Nightwalker needs to be hidden from the god's and other humans so they can enjoy the material plane and it's adventures. The Nightwalker asks the Raven Queen to become a weapon, a weapon of shadows where nobody knows it's secret, thus the gods and mortals don't bother, it's just a tool, like a golem. Once the contract with a mortal is fulfilled(the adventurer reaches level 20 Hexblade), the Nightwalker will be released, and return to the Raven Queen to tell her what he's seen. The blade first bonds with a person when it senses blood and negative emotion, before this event happens, it's just a rusty weapon found in heaps of gold. It's only fear is not being used, being stuck, but with the brilliant Raven Queen's help, that won't be an issue. Explaining what the Hexblades are made of, why the raven queen is the only one who can create them, and why the relationship is between hero and blade, not the Raven Queen. The weapon will prefer to stay in the scabbard or hidden away during sunlight and hates it when someone steps on his shadow :P
Do mind, I'm a beginning DM, so this might be pretty lame(Oh you find a rusty sword buried in treasure, it must be trash! No, it's probably really important). I hope someone finds this interesting or might use it.
For a beginning DM, this is really good. Don't poop on yourself and call it lame. It's not a good look. Be confidant because you can make a really good story.
This is great! Keep at it! This is way way better than what I did during my first ever campaign lol, and being a DM for 4 years I can say this even rivals the stuff I do now!
The Nightwalker was the most evocative undead art for me in 3e, and I have loved them ever since. It's almost impossible to use them however due to their enormous CR rating. Still, the couple times they have shown up have been dramatic, one instance being a necromancer cabal sacrificing a member in opening a gate to the negative for the explicit purpose of bringing one in. They wished to use the monster to shatter an ancient magical seal (using it's powers to destroy magic etc), and it very nearly succeeded.
Sometimes its OK to have a threat so monstrous, facing off against them directly, toe to toe, is going to end really badly.. defeating them then becomes a problem-solving situation.
I REALLY like the whole soul/life exchange thing highlighted in their text block in MTF.
Yeah, it ties them into the campaign in a very compelling way.
The artwork at 9:11 is so compelling and inspiring I cant even
23:48 Oh hey Nyarlothotep, fancy seeing you here.
Warlock The Undying Patron (Nightwalker).
But the twist is the invocations and class features arent gifts from the patron. The boons are instead the lingering effects of the connection the character has with the nightwalker which was banished back. The nightwalker is using this connection to slowly turn the player to a nightwalker-esk being as a sort of twisted revenge.
Excellent!
Thanx AJ! I didn't know these monsters were still in AD&D lore.
My players were confused when they saw that 3 temples collaborated to hire adventurers to "purge the darkness" from a cursed nearby ruin that even a lich lord abandoned. They were temples that went to a goddess of life, birth, motherhood, and healing; the god of nature and reincarnation (among other things); and the god of death. Yes, the god of death. Most people don't know that gods of death and undeath often oppose each other. The priests of the death god explained that death is part of the individual's journey in all things, a balancing point in nature itself. And those super-destructive undead beings go beyond death and into obliteration, a profanity they saw as vile as immortality.
Priests of kelemvor on Faerun are just like that, stalwart enemies of the undead. They are "death is a journey", while priests of Myrkul are more "death is the destination".
@@AJPickett Cool! Did you post a cover on those two yet?
This is one of those videos I didn’t know I wanted until I saw it. Thanks AJ!
AJ: “They [lichs] are finger-puppets compared to what I’m about to show you”
Me: “Oh no. We’re in some pretty shit now. Game over; Game over.”
Lich's could control them though.... i don't see how this is critter is more dangerous then a properly build lich. Anyways...
Hands down one of my favorite creatures
If you put your hands down too close to those things, your hands are liable to get back up again and strangle something.
The look on the Swashbucklers face when this creature grabbed his +2 poisoning sword and turned it into frozen dust in his hands, was only matched by the look on the Eldritch Knight's face when she cast Hideous laughter on it not knowing it can't be prone. So I granted it a Terrifying Presence as it flew towards her laughing maniacally with a voice that sounded of broken dreams, true hopelessness and total emptiness.
That's the way to do it Gamma.
The book he mentions is about a particularly powerful lich and it's epic exploits. I do mean epic.
One of my old GMs used a Nightwalker as a Demilich's "Plan Eff It All". The little bugger plane shifted one of the PCs to the Negative Material specifically to have one of these things pop in while the Demilich dropped down a 100 foot shaft to escape.
sometimes, when you stare intot he darkness, it stares back and it enters into your world
These are by far one of my favorite creatures in 5e. They are terrifying even at high level.
Edit: Imagine this. Introduce your party to a town's aftermath. Decayed bodies stuck in terrified, fleeing positions. A father with an outstretched hand in fear as his stiff corpse hovers over his wife and child. Every person once living, now a lifeless statue. The term ghost town sounds pleasant compared to this sight. And as your party stands in the center staring at what lays around them, the black, hulking silhouette of the Nightwalker raises from between the buildings and turns to the party. Its face blank and just as unmoving as the bodies. Its bony shadowy form starts towards them...
Heck yeah
Roll oh-shit-itive
You're descriptions of the Negative Energy Plane are incredibly metal.
Love the Night Crawler puking up the soon to be Undead idea😈😈😈
Undead piñata!
What a sight to behold Orcus striding across the Prime Material with a rotten retinue of nightshades, corpse gatherers, devourers, liches, crawling heads, death knights, and hullathoins. With legions of "lesser" intelligent undead like bodaks, vampires, mummies, and skull lords beefed up with plenty of class levels. Mmm. That's a rancid necrotic meatball of terror for any high level campaign. Really good episode AJ. X3
That blurs the line between campaign and extinction event
@@louiesatterwhite3885 Gotta earn those tickets to godhood. XD
“To them, the prime material plane is the far realm”
Nice bit of relativity and considering of another’s perspective right there, love playing around with morality and junk like that.
I picked up my morality in a garage sale in 1973.
AJ Pickett I ordered mine in the early 2000s, I have yet to receive it
@@trajanfidelis it'll show up on an episode of storage wars.
I recently ran one of these. I used it as an entity that had made its way into the shadowfell centuries earlier. Since its arrival it had been gathering lost travelers and Shadder Kai and draining all hope from them, transforming them into sorrow sworn. The creature has become know as the Dark Shepherd to the residents of Gloomwrought.
It was drawn to my party by there positive emotions like a beacon. They had fought the sorrow sworn before but had only heard tales of the Dark Shepherd that kept the flock. The distortion of the creature alone with its towering height and long dark horns sent the party into full getaway mode. The druid transformed into a faint eagle and grabbed two companions (a cleric and rogue). The artificer took flight as well with a pair of winged boots . Leaving the fighter and halfling sorcerer. The sorcerer cast fly on the fighter and the chase began.
The party was surprised at the speed and flight capability of the nightwalker. They were fast but, it became evident after a couple rounds of combat, some were not fast enough to get away. The aura was draining them as they ran. The quick thinking cleric atop the giant eagle cast a radiant wall which impeded the nightwalker and bought them sombre ground. In a lady ditch effort to stop the retreat the nightwalker used its finger of doom on the druid (in eagle form). The druid's save was an 18 total... not enough until you add the +4 from flash of genius (bah darn artificer). The getaway was a success but the Dark Shepherd is still out there, gathering his flock 🕵️♂️. Thanks for reading and thanks for the awesome videos!
I love a good chase.
Hey AJ, excellent video! 20:38 I really liked the Columbus looking ship near land and the Giant NightCrawler bursting out of the mountainside, going straight for the ship. That pic is one of those moments when you realize "I messed-up!" or "My moma said there would be days like this!"
Thanks AJ & have a wonderful day.
I have an idea for a Nightwalker BBEG that been permanently trapped in the Prime Material and has come to realise that it cannot end this horrible reality by continuing to aimlessly kill. It got smart and started working on ways to end life more efficiently and permanently
DM: Nooooo! You can't just enslave a cr20 boss!
Necromancer: Ha ha command undead go brrr
Well, let them think that if it helps them sleep at night...
So thought experiment, A Lich targets the low Charisma Hero with Plane Shift to the negative energy plane..... Now there's a Nightwalk.
Is this viable?
Would the nightwalker be on the Lich's side since it's undead as well?
Should every Lich now use this tactic against stronger parties?
Remember those old wax bottle sweets with the sugar water inside? That's a lich in the eyes of the Nightwalker... twist the head off and crush the body, then slurp up all the yummy negative energy.
Watched this while taking a shit in the dark at 1:15 AM. Now that's scary
Fought one of these once...
Once...
I love the negative plane. A place of complete absence and void. A place where the lifetime of a universe goes by unnoticed.
A place where the shadows of things that existed outlived them and gained form.
At the end of all time, after a span of time so unfathomably long that might as well be called "forever" the faded imprint that a soul has left on
the universe is filled with negative energy and gains form.
The negative energy sticking to the only thing left in existence to create a being of Un-life, a mold of an imprint, that is content to sit in the dark, waiting, forever and always...
Once again your explanation of what the Negative Energy Plane is interesting (It's the end of time). And telling us what it's like for a being living in there, is a nice Chill Touch.
"Sit back, grab a tasty beverage, and turn the lights off..."
*Runs around the room flipping ON all the lights*
Also the Reece's ad was horrifically timed
Idea to make the name "Nightwalker" thematically appropriate: it is perfectly capable of walking around during the day, but it's field of negative energy acts as a limited black hole to a good deal of the Sun's light. This effectively causes a pocket of reduced light akin to night time, to follow it around wherever it goes. You may even choose to have this reduced vision apply to even characters with night/dark vision abilities making it even harder to hit. Just an idea so that the name isn't out of place.
.
If you wanted to make it more fearsome, have it absorb some of the intelligence of those it kills with it's aura, it would also absorb & manifest the worst parts of their personality. This would mean one that had absorbed a bunch of Paladins would be extra WRATHFUL to the wicked, & of course it would see everyone as wicked in some way or another, but it would be screaming out to the the party in a dozen stolen voices of the sins that they have committed. I'll let your imagination run with other classes/people, but this also makes it fueled by vendettas of dozens of people for any real or imagined slight. I can also see any of these creatures using these stolen emotions & memories in a potent form of psychic attack, where they assault anyone in their aura range with a wave of negative emotions, & terrible memories. Perhaps this would be a good descriptive way to describe the aura of negative energy. The amalgamation of the worst parts of everyone's souls these undead have absorbed is in a way borrowed from Wraith: The Oblivion's concept of The Onceborn, who are spectral amalgamations based around a theme that was a kernel of negative emotion by the first soul that started forming them. Even the Onceborn in that setting are weak compared to the Neverborn, who are anti-titans, from the void that existed before reality.
That is an elegant solution. Very nice. 🧙♂️
Straight up my favorite monster above CR 20.
Indestructoboy because it’s an undead and it’s stupid you can make it your undead slave as a necromancer
@@pepsicrusader535 sure. If you had someone go necromancy wizard to the tier of play where this thing is going to come in, that's mostly going to be one of the big campaign-ending beats, which I kind of love. Otherwise, this thing is just a terrifying undead creature that really tells the party a different kind of essence to undeath.
My current party ran across one these. The only reason we survived was we "Captain Kirked" this particular Kobiyashi Maru test. The DM was cool about it and even commended our original thinking, lol. It involved changing it to a rat and a Bag of Devouring. I'm just the dumb warforged fighter in the party but our druid is definitely the hero of that encounter, lol.
Rat and Bag of Devouring? That sounds pretty interesting... what did the Druid do?
@@AJPickett I'll ask Steve and Disco the particulars as I'm a rookie player. Steve's the DM and Disco is the druid. Funny, Disco is a New Zealander too. Don't know how he manages the time difference, the rest are either 'Muricans like me or Canadian.
@@darkhorse13golfgaming ah Canadia, I know it well.
@@AJPickett Got the story. Our druid tried a polymorph spell on it and unbelievably the nightwalker failed it's saving throw. Now I'm not up on all the rules of magic but that's what I was just told. Then while it was a rat, our barbarian simply picked it up and put it in her Bag of Devouring. That's the story I got lol.
You don’t usually think about the Negative Energy Plane as a place with its own types of creatures. However, I feel the entire Nightshade subtype of undead creatures is perfect for representing the plane. Similar to material plane creatures in appearance but utterly designed to eradicate life.
The cult in the game I'm running is trying to summon 12 of these. If just one reaches the center of the city then it dies and summons ITS master, the bbeg. So far the players have prevented 3 from having the chance of being summoned, but only have less than two weeks left to find the rest of the hidden cultist and stop them before they can perform this ritual.
I've been waiting for this video since you posted the teaser. Thank you, good sir!
I remember these in 3.5 and spitting out my drink when I saw half a dozen of these things at the end of Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance....
AJ did you get a new microphone or a new audio program its sounds different and better
I'm speaking slower and position my mic with more care 🙂
@@AJPickett wow big difference. It's much appreciated!
@@AJPickett do it more frequently it sounds much better
@@AJPickett good shit man!
Sounds the same on my old samsung....
Delightful!
The undead series huh? Sounds like something Orcus would enjoy. Night-walker sounds like a name Konrad Kurze would use
I guess Night Haunter wouldn’t be enough huh?
Tom Lopes indeed
18:55 Also describes what it would be like with a Purple Dragon flying around. That Night Flier feature is bomb for the building of suspense. Same here with the Nightwing. O_o
Your descriptions of these monster's really make me want to play in a undead, horror themed game with you. Love the channel!
Imagine if the Negative Energy Plane wasn't innately evil, just a different world, like the shadowfell. Some Nightwalker is making dinner for their family, their kid is getting ready for Night School, and suddenly the Nightwalker disappears and some random mortal wizard appears in their place while the poor Nightwalker gets tossed out into the material plane.
Thank you AJ! I've been looking forward to this ever since you mentioned the nightwalker in the negative energy plane video.
I always liked to think that banishment wouldn’t work on Nightwalkers due to the victim they replaced acting as a sort of anchor to their native plane. Or at least banishment would treat the Nightwalker’s native plane as the creature’s native plane instead of returning it to the negative plane.
Night walkers made an appearance in Neverwinter Nights 2. Interestingly, according to the lore of that game, Nightwalker’s were an Avatar of the Ilfaern King of Shadows.
Nightwalkers are your friends. And also the natural predator of bandits, city guards and bards. Always befriend several you won't be disappointed
I am currently using one of these in my campaign. I gave it an ability where all sound within 1500 feet of it is cancelled out creating an aura of silence. Basically, everyone in the radius can't hear.
That also shuts down ALL spells with a Verbal component
"Will there come a time when we can traverse the negative energy plane? Or is the problem unsolvable in all conceivable circumstances?"
"NO PROBLEM IS UNSOLVABLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."
Next to the shadow, probably the freakiest creature in 5e you can unleash on your players. It just looks like something out of H R Giger's nightmares. Definitely one for DM's to keep in your pocket when the party thinks they have the upper hand in the situation and get too cocky. 🤯😉
The nightwalker is my favorite d&d monster!
Could you, hypothetically speaking, yeet someone into the negative energy plane in order to summon a Nightwalker?
If so, could a powerful enough mage banish a whole village to summon a whole army of those things?
Yes.
@@AJPickett
I'm not sure if I should be excited or terrified.
Summoning an army of these things would be fairly easy, controlling said army would be nigh impossible tho. I imagine if more then 3 or 4 of these things popped up in one spot they could probably level a kingdom, a villages worth would probably end the world without divine intervention
@@bjarnivalur6330 Yes! :D
I love the “wormhole” visuals. Superb video, as always! Thanks, AJ!
Was gonna call my campaign “The Nightwalker”. Now I’m gonna call it “Oh No We’re In Some Pretty Shit Now Game Over Man Game Over”
Yes! This! Very much this! All i need.
I've now got an idea thanks to you.
Imagine a magical nuke fueled by the Negative Energy Plane. Now imagine a being born from the death and carnage, which would have a modified Nightwalker stat block.
I remember my first time using these Night Walkers on my 5e players while using my own template of them based on 3.5 edition. The party didn't think it was a dangerous threat until it showed cunning intelligence and focus on dealing with the party with its freshly summoned Shades and Wights.
..... I knew when my GM pulled this monster out..... I tried not to meta but I was sweating af
I am so glad i did not wait until bedtime to watch this.....
More of the undead is the best😍
I literally went "Yaaas!" in excitement when I saw this in my list just now. Time to devour that tasty lore! Thanks AJ! I've been curious about these scary giants since I got the tome of foes. :)
Thank you, I never realized how deadly these guys were.
Bro your voice is perfect for horror book
Thanks :)
Always thought they looked creepy and cool and u brought up 3.5 yay favorite edition
"Straight out of 'Fell
One of a kind
Stalking its victim
Don't look below you
Nightcrawler
Beware the worm in black
Nightcrawler
You know it's coming back
NightCrawler"
Judas Priest's "Night Crawler" but modified for THE Nightcrawler.
Howling winds are screaming round as the thing crawls into town, doors are locked and bolted now
The easiest way to weaken / kill any undead is to sever the Negative plane connection. Or sever the head. Said being does not get a saving throw. Dissolve remains in holy water. Nightwalker be finished.
Funny that the Lich from Adventure Time is more akin to one of these than a D&D Lich
Yeah, that lich is legit spooky as hell.
Best dialogue. I am a sucker for dialogue
The necromancer control undead ability should probably specify it doesn’t work on creatures with legendary resistance even if they have low int. No mundane 14th level necromancer should be taking control of a night Walker for ever. Or weirder still in my opinion a lich for a day. A dm is fully in the right to say that command undead doesn’t work on any legendary undead
The control undead thing does specify however that any undead with Int 8 or higher has advantage and can repeat the saving throw every hour. So it wouldn't be indefinite if the nightwalker has higher than Int 8
@@MurkyTheSquid which it doesn’t
The small problem there is even with that rule in play a necromancer can still control it permanently because it doesn’t have legendary resistances or legendary actions
@@fakeandgay9592 why does a cr anything above 20 creature not here legendary resistance
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar afaik it’s the only CR 20+ monster in MToF that has neither legendary actions or resistances.
At least the wizard is limited to one only
Perfect for the season.
Hell yeah, I love these things. Just pure death, and nothingness. They are pretty much "death elementals".
I like it.
Oh dear shadow abominations indeed, I did not know.
Had to fight a night wing once. We were way under leveled for it, had to use a legendary relic just to half its health
Planned on making one of these as the BBEG I've been making in my spare time. This helped a lot!
I was so excited to see this. We're plating a campaign with one PC playing a minor god in the Shadow Realm with a personal army playing as an opponent to the rest of the player character party. Sending this to the chat
Ysval was a general for Szass Tam’s armies of undead in “Unclean” by RIchard Lee Byers. Every other kind of undead horror ever imagined makes an appearance in that series, including these others you speak of here. Something in that army also blocked out natural sunlight over the entire battlefield, returning advantage to the creatures of the night. Terrifying!!
Weird theory what if the dark powers are actually night Walkers that are so old and impossibly powerful or that the nightwakers are merely fragments of them or like there avatars
Good theory
Probably not, Nightwalkers are agents of the Entrophic Immortals. Cause they're mystara monsters originally, they were added to forgotten realms cause i guess they just want everything from every setting.
Here is some theory crafting that I'm interested hearing some opinions of: If demons ( and maybe the Abyss itself ) are Tharizdun's dream given physical form then isn't it likely that gods used weakness of his this way fragmented mind in order to imprison his mind? The kicker is if this is so then if forces of good and order would ever thin the number of the demons and diminish area of the abyss the Tharizdun's mind would be able to focus again and bypass the prison. Ultimately this would mean dawn war 2 and only way to stop the big T would be let the abyss and demons grow in numbers enough to exploit restored fragmentation of T's mind again.
From this we learn few things: 1) Blood war must be eternal stalemate. 2) None of forces of good and order must ever be able to wipe the demons or abyss out. 3) To avoid unnecessary suffering of good and morally neutral the evil entities are convenient sacrifice to fuel the blood war. 4) the big T must be stopped (how?) or all the sentient entities must flee.
This is where the machinations of Primus and the forces of Neutrality suddenly come into very sharp focus... the status quo MUST be preserved at all costs.
Yet in Exandria Tharzidun is seeking to be freed. So if Tharzidun gets free in one universe it would be a matter of time before other versions of Tharzidun break free.
I'm not gonna lie I'd rather face either and adult or even elder red dragon than one of these
In one of my campaigns, I had each night have a chance for an event called the Blood Moon. Every Blood Moon, the Nightwalker would be summoned and scour the ruins of the city, searching for life to extinguish. The party thought they could take him, and he wound up killing one of them with his Finger of Doom. They changed their minds and fled for cover, where they were hopefully safe.
Im like 99% sure that 21:40 is a carthus sandworm from dark souls.
Yeah, it's hard to find pics of massive death worms, oddly enough.
I love me my big zappy boy.
If you like nightshades check out the adventure Talons of night. They are literally coming out of the walls in that module
Night Haunts, based on their description, they almost sound like Lovecraft's Night Gaunts.
They probably are inspired.:)
I had a nightmare of this once four figures standing underneath an orb the orbs surface bubbling up like some foul soup of tendrils , arms , legs and faces screams all shouting louder then the other to where it was almost like white noise the figures standing taller then the tree line turning there heads twords me just pointing a figure no feeling pain just cold and empty
The first part kinda sounds like a gibbering mouther
I think Siren Head is just a Nightwalker who Thought a siren looked scarier than a Skull and polymorphed it
Oh, yeah, the 14th level necromancer's pet.
Fascinating video love how much detail you go into while still presenting the knowledge in a storytelling style to keep us interested and attentive
Great work 🎉
what a delightfull video to be watched just before going to bed!
As I always say : "More Undead"
Love your readings, AJ! Listen to them as I go to sleep.
Pathfinder also features a shark version, a gargantuan CR 20+ undead megalodon. Not sure on the lore of it but I guess they wanted you to not be able to ever escape these fully; they can follow you underwater.
Iirc thats actually from mystara too, just like the Nightwalker. I know there are other versions.
Imagine being a 20th level necromancy wizard and taking full control over this big boyo, it would be practically eternal doom.
Theoretically this ability isn't a spell and is a natural obligation ability, so if a DM stays strict to the rules you have a quite powerful pet now, if a DM is good enough and bending rules may let you have a nerfed one if controlled, if a DM wants you to swear at him for being unfair (totally ironic, I'm just joking) they'll say just no.
I’ve heard some DMs use the nightwalker as a servant to a bigger threat like a Deity, Lich, or high tier Necromancer who purposely threw an innocent person into the Negative Material Plane jus to get such a powerful servant. The hard part is finding someone who would survive the trip to the Negative Material Plane in order to get such a servant. This is where certain PCs or NPCs may come into place and become targets