Banshee

All Banshees are women who suffered a grave betrayal or loss in life and linger now as spirits, fixated on the site of their grief and coveting remnants of their mortality. Like omens, Banshees are drawn irresistibly to places where death is soon to occur, though they must return to the site of their haunting before daybreak. The ghosts naturally levitate and their passage effects no sound, except for the faintest susurrus of heartbeats heard within a melee space of their location. The Banshee’s keening wail, which is a physical manifestation of her sorrow, has the power to place all those who hear it upon death’s door.

Banshee are not meant to be used as random ghosts the party fights: they are spirits with a tragic backstory, spurned revenants who are trapped in a cycle of despair that perpetuates the violence inflicted upon them in life. These ghosts are motivated less by strategy than by hatred of the living and a twisted compulsion to see beauty marred and hope extinguished. Her psychic will is so strong that she cannot be exorcised, but her sound maleficence is her deadliest weapon, as anyone who hears it is subject to doom, or otherwise placed on death’s door. The Banshee is unable to cross natural boundaries, such as bodies of water, the treelines of sacred groves, burning circles, or consecrated ground: all these represent the current of life, which are an anathema to the Banshee. However, nothing is more effective against a Banshee than discovering the nature of her death and using that knowledge to resolve the tragedy that created her hatred for life in the first place.