Meazel

Meazel
Meazel
In places where the Shadowfell washes against the shores of the Material Plane dwell meazels, hateful hermits who left behind their old lives to contemplate their misery in shadow. Now evil burns in their hearts, and they resent any intrusion into their suffering.
Hateful Hermit
Meazels are all that remain of people who fled into the Shadowfell to escape their mortal existence. There the darkness transformed them, and their bitterness made them twisted and cruel. Now, they loiter near Shadowfell crossings to waylay travelers who venture too close to their lairs.
Divide and Conquer
The stain of darkness responsible for the existence of meazels imparts to them magical powers that allow them to move through shadows with ease. Merely stepping into one pool of darkness allows a meazel to move to another one. They use this talent to ambush creatures, snatching them around the throat with their strangling cords and then stepping away. Meazels also use this ability to ferry their victims to isolated spots and then leave the hapless souls to the designs of whatever horrors lurk there.
Creatures that are drawn through the shadows by meazels are cursed by the meazels' baleful magic. The curse acts as a beacon; sorrowsworn, undead, and other terrors sense where they are located and descend on the stranded victims to tear them apart.