Shadow eft

Shadow efts were a race of psionic monsters dwelling between worlds; they drew strength from poisoning the minds of their victims. They were extinct in Faerûn since the time of the Imaskari.

Description
Shadow efts were formed half of bone and half of inky darkness, with a silhouette like a faceless, wingless demon. They possessed huge claws, tipped with absolute void.

Abilities
Shadow efts possessed the ability to turn themselves into shadows once a day through psychic powers for up to a quarter hour. Thrice a day, they could employ other, more aggressive abilities: they could render their claws 2-dimensional, and thus razor-sharp, accellerate their charges for a more efficient attack like that of a lion, or generate a terrible poison out of their claws. In particular, they had the ability to heal themselves from the metabolic stress they inflicted through that poison.

They were nearly invisible in shadowy conditions. Conversely, however, they became distressed in bright daylight, to which they were sensitive and very averse.

Personality
Shadow efts in Faerûn as of were mostly possessed by Pandorym and no longer had much of a personality.

Combat
Shadow efts preferred to attack from surprise, using the poison that allowed them to nurture themselves through the agony they inflicted.

Society
Shadow efts saw themselves as having found the perfect niche in which to easily hunt mental energy. They saw it as natural to harm the living for their feeding. These creatures existed in a loose confederacy, believing that the "unmerciful void", meaning all shadow and darkness anywhere, looked out for them and provided them with opportunities to feed. They saw each other as potential competitors, mostly.

However, in Faerûn, they were mostly a resource employed as assassins by the Imaskari, and had not much of a society. The Elder Evil Pandorym later repurposed those efts to attack Imaskari scions.

Ecology
In the wild, shadow efts mostly fed on psychic residue. However, particularly traumatic events could create conduits of darkness for them to enter the Prime Material Plane, where they fed directly on the minds of whatever victim came to them. Their numbers on the material realms also swelled during the winter solstice. They preferred cold, shadowy, dreary forests to dwell in while inside the Prime. They could also be briefly called through the use of a psionic power.

However, this did not seem to be the case in Faerûn, where they were only found in jacketed canisters within the Imperial Weapons Cache of the Palace of the Purple Emperor.

History
Per Ususi Manaallin, shadow efts were used by the Imaskari as assassins, kept in stasis within jars of preservative fluid until needed. To the best of her knowledge, they hadn't been seen in Faerûn since the fall of that empire. One of them attacked her while aboard the Smoke and Fire ship en route from Vaelan to Huorm in, attracted by fragments of plangent crystal she was carrying. Those efts bore each a fragment of the same crystal, infested by Pandorym's influence. Her party later encountered shadow efts inside the Palace of the Purple Emperor, fighting inside the Imperial Weapons Cache.

Appearances

 * Novels
 * Darkvision