#will-o'-wisps

Thanks to @FoxgloveDreams for this art piece!

First Appearance: 101 Mysteries, Memories, and Music

Encounter Appearance: 102 Ghosts, Dinosaurs, and Stuff

Armor Class 15

Speed 30 feet

Resistant to cold, fire, necrotic, non-magical physical damage

Immune to poison damage; charmed, frightened, poisoned conditions

Suggested, Max HP: 58, 90

Bodak: 141+ damage taken, 51 HDYWTDT by Fjord

Will-o’-Wisp 1: 25 damage taken, 14 killing blow by Fjord

Will-o’-Wisps 2 and 3: Destroyed by Jester

Looking like something out of a Edvard Munch painting with less screaming and more sobbing, bodaks are undead horrors that can kill an adventurer with a single look. In D&D lore, bodaks stem from individuals who worshiped Orcus during their life and chose to undergo a ritual to die and rise as a bodak in undeath. Of all the undead creatures a person could want to be, becoming a bodak is certainly… a choice, but we’re not going to judge (much). We don’t know if bodaks in Exandria have the same origin, although Orcus did make a feature in Campaign 1.

What’s disconcerting about this particular bodak is that while it’s already a known element on Rumblecusp, it’s not supposed to be in the Shaded Tangle, according to Viridian. It usually resides around the Ruins; for it to be in the Shaded Tangle, it would have either made a two day walking trip there for some unknown reason, or there is more than one bodak on this island. Considering bodaks don’t just spring up out of nowhere, the fact that there is potentially a second one on a completely remote island is reason for concern.