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

DM: Nooooo! You can't just enslave a cr20 boss! Necromancer: Ha ha command undead go brrr

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.

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.”

Nightwalker is the equivalent of an elemental undead, the essence of the negative energy plane made incarnate.

It warms my cold, dead heart. Beautiful, true undeath

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

I love using Nightwalkers. There is something extremely menacing and foreboding in their presence.

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.

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

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.

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.

sometimes, when you stare intot he darkness, it stares back and it enters into your world

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.

23:48 Oh hey Nyarlothotep, fancy seeing you here.

Love the Night Crawler puking up the soon to be Undead idea😈😈😈

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.

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.

The book he mentions is about a particularly powerful lich and it's epic exploits. I do mean epic.

Hands down one of my favorite creatures

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.

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...

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 REALLY like the whole soul/life exchange thing highlighted in their text block in MTF.

“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.

Watched this while taking a shit in the dark at 1:15 AM. Now that's scary

The artwork at 9:11 is so compelling and inspiring I cant even

"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

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.

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

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

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?

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!

That description of the negative energy plane was awesome.

Delightful!

Straight up my favorite monster above CR 20.

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.

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.

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.

Fought one of these once... Once...

As I always say : "More Undead"

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...

You're descriptions of the Negative Energy Plane are incredibly metal.

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.

This is one of those videos I didn’t know I wanted until I saw it. Thanks AJ!

Funny that the Lich from Adventure Time is more akin to one of these than a D&D Lich

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.

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”

The undead series huh? Sounds like something Orcus would enjoy. Night-walker sounds like a name Konrad Kurze would use

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?

"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."

Oh, yeah, the 14th level necromancer's pet.

Great to wake up to! XD

I've been waiting for this video since you posted the teaser. Thank you, good sir!

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

Nightwalkers are your friends. And also the natural predator of bandits, city guards and bards. Always befriend several you won't be disappointed

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....

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'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.

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.

AJ did you get a new microphone or a new audio program its sounds different and better

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.

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. 🤯😉

Oh dear shadow abominations indeed, I did not know.

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.

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.

Im like 99% sure that 21:40 is a carthus sandworm from dark souls.

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 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.

Every level 14 Necro Wizard: *Heavy Breathing*

I am so glad i did not wait until bedtime to watch this.....

Bro your voice is perfect for horror book

I think Siren Head is just a Nightwalker who Thought a siren looked scarier than a Skull and polymorphed it

Hell yeah, I love these things. Just pure death, and nothingness. They are pretty much "death elementals".

Yes! This! Very much this! All i need.

More of the undead is the best😍

"I don't ever want to see another one of these wimpy black giants." - Gerald Atrix, cleric

Who wins in a fight, Nightwalker or Empyrean/Titan? And why?

Nightwalkers = super scary 🤔? Looks at stats...undead....looks at wisdom...9...double check control undead spell. Yep, it's a wisdom save and they roll with disadvantage. Welp, looks like my necromancer is about to get a pet nightwalker.

"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.

Abyssal nightwalker incursion?

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.

Thank you, I never realized how deadly these guys were.

The nightwalker is my favorite d&d monster!

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

Nice.

Thank you AJ! I've been looking forward to this ever since you mentioned the nightwalker in the negative energy plane video.

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.

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. :)

There’s something terrifying about seeing the nightwalker emerge from the Lich or Arch Necromancer’s Sphere of Annihilation and dragon them soul and all screaming in to the howling void

Your descriptions of these monster's really make me want to play in a undead, horror themed game with you. Love the channel!

But what about the Command Undead feature from the School of Necromancy wizard? It meets all the requirements.

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

Night Haunts, based on their description, they almost sound like Lovecraft's Night Gaunts.

These things are dumb enough for us Necromancers to permanently enslave them (in 5th edition).

What exactly are the God's opinions on the negative energy plane? How does it fall into any of the creation myths?

..... I knew when my GM pulled this monster out..... I tried not to meta but I was sweating af

Note to self: Avoid at all costs. And don't visit the Negative Plane