Spectral Shroud

Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement)

This semitransparent robe fades to wispy tatters along its hem. Its folds shimmer with prismatic colors, which are muted by the robe's translucence. While wearing it, you have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks you make in dim light or darkness and on any saving throw you make against being frightened.

The robe has a veiled hood that looks like a lace skull. Pulling the hood up or down requires an action. The first time you pull the hood up each day after dawn, each hostile creature that can see you within 30 feet of you must also succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened of you until the end of your next turn.

Leaving the hood up for more than a moment instills in you an eerie feeling of being watched. While wearing the robe with its hood up, you gain the following benefits.

• Ethereal Sight. You can see 30 feet into the Ethereal Plane when you are on the Material Plane, and vice versa.

• Ghostly Flight. You have a flying speed of 30 feet and can hover.

• Incorporeal Movement. You can move through other creatures as if they were difficult terrain. You take 1d10 force damage if you end your turn inside another creature's space.

• Limited Damage Resistance. The first time you take nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage since the end of your last turn, that damage is halved.

Sentience. The spectral shroud is a sentient chaotic neutral item with an Intelligence of 10, a Wisdom of 16, and a Charisma of 17. It has hearing and darkvision out to a range of 60 feet. The item can speak, read, and understand Common, and can communicate with its wearer telepathically. Its voice is wispy and hollow. While you are attuned to it, the shroud also understands every language you know.

Personality. The shroud's sentience is thanks to a ghost that's been bound to it. It was once a friendly spirit, but time has long since eroded its patience for social niceties. The shroud believes it needs to be buried in hallowed ground for its soul to be released and put to rest, and it will attempt to persuade anyone attuned to it to do so. At the GM's discretion, the shroud may cease to function for a creature that repeatedly fails to honor its wishes.

Only a legend lore spell or similar magic reveals the following information; the shroud will not know or share this on its own. At the end of every cumulative minute that you spend wearing the robe with its hood up, make a DC 13 Charisma saving throw; you must make this save even if the time spent wearing the hood isn't consecutive. On a failed save, you become possessed by the spectral shroud (as if by the ghost's Possession). A protection from evil and good spell fails to prevent you from being possessed in this way. While possessed, the hood can't be pulled down, and the robe forces you to attempt to bury yourself (along with the robe). Burying the spectral shroud in hallowed ground (including an area affected by hallow) successfully frees the spirit from the robe and transforms it into a robe of scintillating colors.

'I want a proper burial.'

"If things go south, we'll make sure you get one, buddy, I promise."

'No, no. I meant now. I want a proper burial, now.'

"...what?"

Updated May 27, 2025: adjusted to prevent low-spell possession prevention, rebalanced passive effects, added the AoE fear when you pull up the hood, added the option for the GM to deny someone the ability to use this if they keep ignoring the shroud.