Specter

Specters (also spelled spectres) were undead, incorporeal creatures that resembled ghosts.

Description
A specter appeared as a humanoid, with a mostly transparent and faintly luminous form. They looked much as they did in life, though the injuries that caused their violent deaths were visible on many specimen and could be recognized by someone who knew what the person looked like.

They were about the same size as a humanoid but weightless.

Personality
They had a hatred for all living things but retained their minds and capability to think.

Combat
A specter's touch wasn't only painful; it also drained the life energy from living creatures. The life energy had an invigorating effect on specters, and when the life energy of a creature was drained empty, the creature&mdash;only in the case of a humanoid&mdash;turned into a new specter enslaved by its creator.

As a general rule, they attacked their prey by moving through solid objects, including walls, ceilings, or even the ground.

They were generally encountered in a number of less than a dozen.

They were powerless in natural sunlight to the point of fleeing from it.

Effect
A specter-haunted place and the vicinity of a specter was cold, though in no harmful way.

Animals also refused to get into the vicinity of a specter and suffered from uncontrollable fear when forced to go near a specter.

Related Race
A specter was a type of undead that was categorized as a spectral creature. When someone tried to create a spectral creature out of a humanoid, instead of another sort of creature, the result was a specter. Unlike humanoid specters, other spectral creatures were capable of creating and enslaving other spectral creatures, or specters, out of other lifeforms than humanoids.

Places
The shadow dragons of Clan Jaezred conquered the drow city of Chaulssin and transformed its citizens into creatures of shadow, among others spectral creatures. Given that drow were humanoids, the results were specters.

By 634 DR, the descendants of these drow overthrew their slavers and killed them. The shadow dragons were then turned into spectral creatures themselves.

These drow descendants later succeeded at turning some of them into drow-dragons. A special kind of magic they mastered was to turn their breath weapon into one that created spectral creatures on killing their target with it. Used on humanoids, it created a specter.

Appearances

 * Adventures:
 * House of Cards module in Dungeon #19
 * Jammin module in Dungeon #21
 * Storm King's Thunder
 * The Rise of Tiamat
 * Computer Games:
 * Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms
 * Pool of Radiance
 * Treasures of the Savage Frontier
 * Novels:
 * Maestro
 * Storm of the Dead