College of the Shadow Blade

Bards of the College of the Shadow Blade are performers of silence as much as song. They study the rhythm of patrols, the cadence of falsehoods, the shifting silhouettes cast by torchlight, and the precise instant when an audience’s attention can be turned away from what truly matters. Their performances are rarely confined to stages. A masked ball, military encampment, thieves’ den, royal court, or moonless rooftop can all become their theater.

The college’s signature discipline is the creation of a Shadow Blade: a weapon formed from condensed darkness, disciplined intent, and bardic magic. This blade is not merely an instrument of assassination. It is a physical expression of the bard’s hidden self—the truths concealed behind practiced smiles, adopted identities, and carefully constructed performances.

Many Shadow Blades serve as spies, covert agents, scouts, saboteurs, bodyguards, or investigators. Others are wandering vigilantes who expose corruption through stolen evidence and whispered testimony. Some become professional killers, using beauty, charm, and illusion to approach targets whom conventional soldiers could never reach.

The college does not teach that darkness is inherently evil. Darkness conceals refugees as readily as murderers, protects secrets as readily as crimes, and allows both tyrants and rebels to operate unseen. Every Shadow Blade must therefore decide whether secrecy is a shield, a weapon, or an excuse.

Origins in Aetheris

The College of the Shadow Blade has no universally recognized founder. Its teachings developed from several traditions involving bardic espionage, illusion magic, covert swordsmanship, and secret performance.

In the Helbrann League, related techniques are practiced by agents who infiltrate mountain fortresses, criminal networks, and hostile noble courts. Their Shadow Blades are often narrow, practical weapons resembling rapiers, long knives, or military sidearms formed from black mist.

Within the March of Draeven, certain intelligence officers employ Shadow Blade bards as interrogators, counterspies, and covert witnesses. These operatives are expected to gather proof rather than merely eliminate enemies, though unofficial assignments are rarely so restrained.

In the Freeholds of Rhonadral, wandering Shadow Blades sometimes work as independent scouts, smugglers, or protectors of isolated communities. Their traditions are less formal, blending bardic magic with local knife-fighting, storytelling, and night-raiding customs.

The Evershade Sovereignty recognizes several shadow-performing traditions influenced by both illusion and Feywild magic. These practitioners are particularly cautious when manipulating living shadows, understanding that darkness touched by the Feywild can possess instincts and hungers of its own.

The college is also found among resistance movements, criminal syndicates, hidden theatrical companies, intelligence services, and secret societies throughout Aetheris. In many regions, its members conceal their affiliation even from other bards.

Philosophy and Doctrine

Most Shadow Blades are taught three foundational principles.

Attention Is the First Battlefield

People perceive only a fraction of what occurs around them. A gesture, sound, movement, or carefully chosen word can determine what they notice and what they ignore. A Shadow Blade wins by controlling attention before drawing a weapon.

Truth and Appearance Are Different Weapons

An illusion need not be believed forever. It must only be believed long enough. Likewise, the truth can be presented so selectively that it becomes more deceptive than any lie. Members of the college learn to treat truth, falsehood, silence, and implication as distinct tools.

The Blade Is the Final Verse

Violence should be deliberate. A Shadow Blade who draws steel before controlling the scene has abandoned the college’s central discipline. The ideal strike arrives only after escape routes, witnesses, reinforcements, and consequences have been considered.

These principles create considerable moral tension. The college teaches methods of infiltration and manipulation without dictating how they must be used. Some Shadow Blades expose corruption and protect the vulnerable. Others become elegant predators who justify cruelty as professional necessity.

Visual Identity

Shadow Blade bards favor clothing that permits silent movement without sacrificing style. Dark coats, split cloaks, fitted leather armor, half masks, gloves, hidden pockets, and reversible garments are common. Their clothing may be deep black, midnight blue, violet, gray, or another shade suited to local environments.

Their instruments tend to be portable and easily concealed:

• Compact violins or narrow-stringed instruments.
• Flutes, whistles, or reed pipes.
• Folding harps.
• Hand drums with muted heads.
• Chime rings worn beneath gloves.
• Spoken-word performance without an instrument.
• Blades, cards, ribbons, or coins used as rhythmic performance tools.

When a Shadow Blade manifests, nearby light may dim, reflections may distort, or ink-black vapor may gather around the bard’s hand. The weapon might resemble a rapier, shortsword, dagger, saber, or another elegant one-handed blade, but its edge appears to drink in surrounding illumination.

Their magic often produces delayed echoes, false footsteps, duplicated silhouettes, curtains of darkness, or brief movements visible only from the corner of the eye.

Role in Aetheris

College of the Shadow Blade bards serve as mobile skirmishers, infiltrators, and battlefield disruptors. They combine bardic spellcasting with reliable weapon attacks, magical darkness, stealth, and rapid repositioning.

On the battlefield, they excel at:

• Isolating vulnerable enemies.
• Escaping threatened positions.
• Fighting effectively in darkness.
• Protecting allies through concealment.
• Disrupting enemy spellcasters and commanders.
• Exploiting openings created by other front-line combatants.
• Moving between ranged support and close-quarters combat.

Outside combat, Shadow Blades act as spies, scouts, burglars, diplomatic observers, covert messengers, and investigators. Their combination of social skill and infiltration magic allows them to enter places where ordinary rogues lack the proper identity and ordinary diplomats lack the necessary discretion.

Subclass Integration

Major Polities

The Helbrann League and March of Draeven employ Shadow Blades within military intelligence, internal security, and counterespionage divisions. Officially, such operatives follow strict rules. Unofficially, many receive assignments designed to leave no public evidence of state involvement.

The Republic of Aurimundus values Shadow Blades as investigators, private agents, and specialists in covert rescue operations. Their methods remain controversial when used without judicial oversight.

The Freeholds of Rhonadral produce numerous independent practitioners who resist formal control. These bards may serve individual communities, adventuring companies, merchant houses, or personal codes rather than governments.

The Dominion of Xathrin, Obsidian Hegemony, and similarly oppressive powers cultivate their own brutal forms of the tradition. Such agents often combine bardic infiltration with blackmail, assassination, and magical coercion.

Organizations, Guilds, and Orders

Shadow Blades commonly associate with:

• Intelligence services.
• Thieves’ guilds and criminal syndicates.
• Diplomatic corps.
• Rebellion networks.
• Covert military companies.
• Traveling theaters used as intelligence fronts.
• Monster-hunting orders requiring scouts and infiltrators.
• Noble houses maintaining private agents.
• Investigative guilds specializing in concealed crimes.

Religious and Philosophical Movements

Faiths associated with night, secrets, knowledge, freedom, or judgment may accept Shadow Blades who use concealment in service of a higher purpose.

More rigid religious orders often distrust the college’s reliance upon deception. Shadow Blades answer that a disguise used to rescue prisoners is not morally equivalent to a lie used to enslave them.

Rival Factions and Enemies

Common enemies include:

• Tyrannical intelligence networks.
• Assassins who murder without restraint.
• Aberrations capable of reading thoughts.
• Creatures with supernatural sight.
• Inquisitors who treat secrecy as proof of guilt.
• Fey beings that steal shadows or identities.
• Necromancers that animate a victim’s shadow.
• Rival operatives attempting to expose the bard’s true identity.

Optional Subclass Techniques

The following techniques may be granted as optional talents, campaign rewards, specialized college lessons, or replacements for setting-specific bard options at the Game Master’s discretion.

Blade Behind the Smile

When you make a Charisma (Deception) or Charisma (Performance) check to distract a creature, you can expend one use of Bardic Inspiration and add the die to the check.

If the check succeeds, you have advantage on the next attack roll you make against that creature before the end of your next turn.

Curtainfall

When a creature you can see enters your Shadowed Refrain for the first time on a turn, you can use your reaction to force it to make a Wisdom saving throw against your bard spell save DC.

On a failed save, its speed becomes 0 until the end of the current turn.

Once a creature succeeds on this saving throw, it is immune to your Curtainfall until you finish a long rest.

Echoing Silhouette

When you use Shadow Passage, you can leave behind an illusory duplicate until the start of your next turn.

The first attack roll made against you before then has disadvantage as the attacker struggles to identify your true location. The duplicate disappears after causing this disadvantage.

Murderous Refrain

When you reduce a hostile creature to 0 hit points with your Shadow Blade, you can immediately move up to half your speed and attempt to Hide without using an action.

You cannot use this movement if your speed is 0.

Stolen Shadow

As an action, you can touch a willing creature and temporarily alter its shadow and outward appearance.

For 1 hour, the creature can make itself appear up to 1 foot shorter or taller and can alter superficial details of its clothing, hair, coloration, and facial features. This effect cannot change the creature’s body type or number of limbs.

A creature can use its action to inspect the disguise, making an Intelligence (Investigation) check against your bard spell save DC and recognizing it as an illusion on a success.

Once you use this technique, you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Playing This Subclass

The College of the Shadow Blade is a mobile skirmisher and infiltrator that blends weapon combat with bardic support magic.

At 3rd level, the subclass gains a reliable Charisma-based melee weapon and several tools for stealth. The Blade of Living Shadow allows a bard to participate in melee without requiring high Strength or Dexterity, though Dexterity remains important for Armor Class, initiative, and stealth.

Shadow Flourish gives the subclass a meaningful offensive use for Bardic Inspiration, but each flourish competes with normal inspiration granted to allies. The player must decide whether immediate personal pressure is more valuable than supporting another member of the party.

At 6th level, Shadowed Refrain becomes the subclass’s defining battlefield tool. It can conceal the party, divide enemy formations, obstruct ranged attacks, and create ideal terrain for the Shadow Blade. Extra Attack ensures that weapon use remains competitive with cantrip-based combat.

At 14th level, Master of the Midnight Stage greatly increases mobility and survivability. The subclass can teleport through darkness, avoid critical attacks, and use greater invisibility as an offensive transformation. It remains dependent upon positioning, limited resources, and concentration.

Strengths

• Strong stealth and infiltration.
• Charisma-based weapon combat.
• Reliable magical weapon access.
• Excellent mobility.
• Effective use of darkness and concealment.
• Flexible transition between support and offense.
• Strong performance in intrigue-driven adventures.

Weaknesses

• Bardic Inspiration must be divided between personal and party use.
• Several features depend upon dim light or darkness.
• Concentration is required for Shadowed Refrain and many bard control spells.
• Limited armor and hit points make prolonged front-line combat dangerous.
• Creatures with blindsight, truesight, or similar senses reduce the value of concealment.
• Bright, open battlefields can make positioning more difficult.

Roleplaying This Subclass

Shadow Blade bards are often charming, observant, and deliberately difficult to understand. They may reveal different versions of themselves to different people, eventually questioning whether any single identity is their true one.

Some approach espionage as public service. Others view secrecy as freedom from judgment. A few become addicted to manipulation and begin treating companions as pieces in an elaborate performance.

Possible personality traits include:

• I instinctively note every exit when entering a room.
• I never tell a direct lie when a carefully incomplete truth will suffice.
• I use humor when I want others to underestimate me.
• I dislike standing beneath bright, exposed light.
• I maintain several convincing identities.
• I rehearse difficult conversations before they occur.
• I collect secrets but rarely reveal them without purpose.
• I treat combat as choreography rather than chaos.

Common narrative tensions include:

• The bard’s true identity becoming uncertain.
• Conflicting loyalties between companions and employers.
• A past target returning for revenge.
• An innocent person suffering because of one of the bard’s deceptions.
• A superior ordering an assassination the bard considers unjust.
• A magical shadow developing a will of its own.
• A companion discovering that their first meeting was orchestrated.
• The bard becoming unable to trust anyone who knows their real name.

Suggested Characteristics

Personality Traits

1. I test new acquaintances with harmless lies to see what they will believe.
2. I conceal nervousness behind elegance, humor, or theatrical confidence.
3. I become intensely focused whenever I sense that someone is hiding something.
4. I prefer indirect solutions, even when a direct approach would be easier.
5. I cannot resist correcting a poorly constructed disguise.
6. I speak differently while using each of my identities.

Ideals

1. Secrets must eventually be exposed, especially when they protect corruption.
2. No throne, institution, or tradition has the right to control every life.
3. Deception is acceptable against enemies but never against trusted companions.
4. A perfect operation leaves no evidence except the intended result.
5. Those who control information control everything that matters.
6. Darkness is not evil unless someone chooses to make it so.

Bonds

1. My mentor disappeared during an operation, and I still search for the truth.
2. A former target spared my life, creating a debt I cannot ignore.
3. I serve a hidden organization whose purpose I increasingly question.
4. Someone knows my true identity and could destroy everything I have built.
5. My Shadow Blade resembles a weapon belonging to a legendary ancestor.
6. I protect a network of informants who have risked their lives for me.

Flaws

1. I withhold information even when cooperation would be wiser.
2. I manipulate friends because asking honestly feels too dangerous.
3. I assume every kindness conceals an ulterior motive.
4. I take unnecessary risks to prove that I am the cleverest person in the room.
5. I struggle to abandon a false identity once I have lived within it.
6. I believe good intentions excuse almost any deception.

Faction and Organization Connections

Shadow Blades may serve or oppose organizations across Aetheris.

Likely connections include:

• Military intelligence divisions.
• Covert branches of noble households.
• Thieves’ guilds and information brokers.
• Anti-slavery and prisoner-rescue organizations.
• Diplomatic services.
• Traveling performance companies.
• Resistance movements.
• Monster-hunting orders.
• Investigative circles.
• Arcane schools specializing in illusion.

Potential enemies include:

• Soul-reading inquisitors.
• Tyrannical secret police.
• Rival assassins.
• Doppelgangers and identity thieves.
• Fey collectors of names and shadows.
• Aberrations with telepathic senses.
• Necromancers who detach and animate shadows.
• Governments attempting to erase evidence of atrocities.

Adventure Hooks

1. The Murdered Identity: Someone is committing assassinations while wearing the bard’s face and using a nearly identical Shadow Blade.
2. The Theater Beneath the Palace: A forgotten performance hall beneath a royal court contains passages leading into every major chamber. Something still performs there each night.
3. The Lightless Prison: Captives are held in a fortress illuminated by permanent magical daylight specifically designed to prevent shadow magic.
4. The Stolen Shadow: The bard awakens without a shadow. Elsewhere in the city, a dark duplicate begins revealing secrets known only to the bard.
5. The Final Audience: A dying spymaster offers the bard a list of embedded agents, but several names belong to trusted allies.
6. A Song No One Remembers: Every witness recalls attending the same performance, but no one remembers the performer. By morning, an entire diplomatic delegation has vanished.

Notable NPCs

Lysandra Vey, the Velvet Knife

Lysandra is a Caelari Shadow Blade who poses as a celebrated court singer while gathering evidence against corrupt nobles. Her summoned blade resembles a narrow stiletto formed from violet-black glass. She refuses assassination contracts but has destroyed several powerful families through carefully released truths.

Konrad Spaar d’Vandali

A Helbranni infiltrator and master of concealed movement, Konrad embodies the college’s union of performance, deception, and sudden violence. His methods emphasize preparation, silence, and decisive strikes rather than prolonged confrontation.

Nyssara of the Third Reflection

Nyssara is an Umbric Elf bard whose illusions manifest through mirrors and polished metal. She claims that every reflection contains a possible identity. Several intelligence services seek her capture after she infiltrated their headquarters under the identities of their own senior officers.

Balance Notes

Intended Role

Skirmisher, Infiltrator, and Controller, with secondary Support capabilities.

Damage Profile

The Blade of Living Shadow gives the bard dependable melee damage using Charisma. Shadow Flourish provides limited burst damage at the cost of Bardic Inspiration.

Extra Attack at 6th level brings the subclass in line with martial bard traditions. Shadow Ambuscade adds modest once-per-turn damage but requires favorable lighting.

The subclass should deal less sustained weapon damage than a dedicated fighter, rogue, ranger, or paladin.

Survivability

Survivability is based on concealment, movement, teleportation, and reaction-based avoidance rather than armor or raw hit points.

The subclass can be difficult to pin down in favorable terrain but remains vulnerable when caught in bright areas, restrained, blinded, or prevented from teleporting.

Utility

Utility is high. The subclass contributes stealth, disguises, infiltration magic, darkness, teleportation, and social deception.

Its tools are particularly valuable in urban intrigue, espionage, heists, prison breaks, covert rescues, and politically sensitive missions.

Resource Economy

The subclass uses Bardic Inspiration for Shadow Flourish, emergency uses of Shadowed Refrain, and additional defensive reactions.

This creates deliberate competition between personal combat effectiveness and the bard’s traditional role as party support.

Shadowed Refrain has proficiency-bonus-based uses to ensure that the subclass can access its defining battlefield environment without spending every Bardic Inspiration die.

Comparison to Similar Subclasses

Compared with the College of Swords, the College of the Shadow Blade has stronger concealment, magical mobility, and infiltration tools but less armor and fewer direct defensive bonuses.

Compared with the College of Whispers, it deals less explosive single-target damage but is more reliable in sustained combat and provides greater battlefield control.

Compared with the College of Glamour, it offers less group-wide mobility and social enchantment but greater personal offense, stealth, and survivability.

The main balance risk is allowing magical darkness to become an unconditional advantage. Limited uses, concentration, counters from powerful magical light, and the need to select creatures who can see through it keep the feature manageable.

Summary

The College of the Shadow Blade is a bardic tradition of spies, infiltrators, covert duelists, and illusion-wielding operatives. Its members control attention, weaponize darkness, and manifest blades formed from their hidden selves.

Mechanically, the subclass gains a Charisma-based magical weapon, enhanced stealth, illusion magic, and Bardic Inspiration-powered flourishes at 3rd level. At 6th level, it creates movable magical darkness, gains Extra Attack, and deals additional damage while fighting within shadow. At 14th level, it teleports through darkness, perceives hidden enemies, avoids attacks through supernatural misdirection, and turns greater invisibility into a deadly combat performance.

The College of the Shadow Blade is best suited to players who enjoy tactical movement, deception, infiltration, and the constant choice between supporting companions and personally exploiting the darkness.

“You watched the stage, listened to the song, and applauded the mask. By the time you noticed the blade, the final verse had already been sung.”

 

Shadow Arts

Your training teaches you to move, observe, and deceive with the practiced precision of a covert performer.

Action Type: Passive
Uses: At will; Bardic Inspiration as described below

You gain proficiency in the Stealth skill. If you already have proficiency in Stealth, you instead gain proficiency in Deception, Investigation, Sleight of Hand, or Thieves’ Tools.

You learn the minor illusion cantrip. It is a bard spell for you and does not count against the number of bard cantrips you know.

You also gain the following benefits.

Whispered Footwork

When you make a Dexterity (Stealth) check or a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check, you can expend one use of Bardic Inspiration and add the Bardic Inspiration die to the roll.

You can decide to expend the die after rolling the d20 but before the Game Master determines whether the check succeeds or fails.

Eyes for the Hidden Stage

You can take the Hide action as a bonus action.

In addition, dim light does not impose disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks you make that rely upon sight.

Veiled Performance

You can perform the verbal components of your bard spells in a soft whisper audible only within 10 feet of you, provided the spell does not itself require a creature to hear you.

This benefit does not allow you to cast a spell while silenced and does not conceal visible manifestations created by the spell.

Blade of Living Shadow

You can draw darkness into your hand and shape it into a supernatural weapon.

Action Type: Bonus Action
Uses: At will
Duration: Until dismissed or until you become incapacitated

As a bonus action, you manifest a Shadow Blade in one empty hand. When you create it, choose whether it takes the form of a dagger, rapier, scimitar, or shortsword. Its appearance does not change its game statistics.

The Shadow Blade has the following properties:

• It is a simple melee weapon with which you are proficient.
• It deals 1d8 psychic or necrotic damage on a hit, chosen whenever you manifest it.
• It has the finesse and light properties.
• It counts as magical.
• You can use your Charisma modifier instead of Strength or Dexterity for its attack and damage rolls.
• If thrown or disarmed, it disappears immediately after the attack or when it leaves your reach.
• You can dismiss the blade at any time without requiring an action.

The blade’s damage die increases to 1d10 at 6th level in the bard class and 1d12 at 14th level in the bard class.

Shadow Flourish

Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with your Shadow Blade, you can expend one use of Bardic Inspiration to deal additional psychic damage equal to one roll of your Bardic Inspiration die.

After the attack, choose one of the following flourishes:

Eclipsing Step. You move up to 10 feet without provoking opportunity attacks.

False Opening. The target cannot make opportunity attacks until the start of its next turn.

Veil of Doubt. The target has disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the start of your next turn.

Spell of the Shadow Blade

You learn the shadow blade spell. It counts as a bard spell for you but does not count against the number of bard spells you know.

You can cast shadow blade once without expending a spell slot or requiring material components. Once you cast it through this feature, you cannot do so again until you finish a long rest.

When you cast shadow blade, you can use Charisma instead of Strength or Dexterity for attack and damage rolls made with the weapon it creates.

You cannot have both the weapon created by shadow blade and your Blade of Living Shadow manifested at the same time. Manifesting one causes the other to disappear.

Shadowed Refrain

Your performance can spread a living veil of darkness across the battlefield, concealing allies while leaving your own senses unhindered.

Action Type: Action
Uses: Proficiency Bonus per long rest, or Bardic Inspiration
Area: 15-foot-radius sphere
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

As an action, you create a 15-foot-radius sphere of magical darkness centered on a point you can see within 60 feet of you. The darkness spreads around corners and lasts for up to 1 minute, requiring concentration as though concentrating on a spell.

Nonmagical light cannot illuminate the area. Magical light created by a spell of a level higher than your proficiency bonus suppresses the darkness in any overlapping area.

When you create the darkness, choose a number of creatures you can see equal to your Charisma modifier, with a minimum of one creature. You and the chosen creatures can see normally through darkness created by this feature.

A chosen creature remains able to see through the darkness until the feature ends, even if it later leaves and reenters the area.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest. When you have no uses remaining, you can expend one use of Bardic Inspiration to use the feature again.

Moving Refrain

As a bonus action while the darkness persists, you can move its point of origin up to 30 feet to another point you can see. The entire sphere moves with it.

The darkness ends early if its point of origin moves more than 120 feet away from you.

Shadow Ambuscade

Once during each of your turns, when you hit a creature while both you and the target are within dim light or darkness, the attack deals additional psychic damage equal to your Charisma modifier.

Extra Attack

You can attack twice instead of once whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

In addition, you can cast one of your bard cantrips in place of one of those attacks, provided the cantrip has a casting time of one action.

Master of the Midnight Stage

You move through darkness as effortlessly as a performer crossing a familiar stage, appearing wherever your enemies least expect you.

Action Type: Passive, Bonus Action, and Reaction
Uses: As specified below

You gain the following benefits.

Shadow Passage

While you are in dim light or darkness, you can use a bonus action to teleport up to 60 feet to an unoccupied space you can see that is also in dim light or darkness.

After teleporting, you have advantage on the next attack roll you make with your Shadow Blade before the end of the turn.

You can use Shadow Passage a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

If both your starting space and destination are inside the darkness created by Shadowed Refrain, you can use Shadow Passage without expending a use. You can teleport without expending a use in this manner only once during each of your turns.

Perfect Night-Sight

You can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet.

You also perceive invisible creatures and objects within 10 feet of you as faint distortions, provided they are not behind total cover. This perception does not reveal their true form, but you know the space they occupy.

Unseen Encore

When a creature you can see targets you with an attack while you are in dim light or darkness, you can use your reaction to blur into shadow.

The triggering attack is made with disadvantage. After the attack is resolved, whether it hits or misses, you can teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space you can see.

Once you successfully cause an attack to miss through this feature, you cannot use Unseen Encore again until you finish a short or long rest. You can also expend one use of Bardic Inspiration to use it again before then.

Greater Veil

You learn the greater invisibility spell if you do not already know it. It counts as a bard spell for you and does not count against the number of bard spells you know.

You can cast greater invisibility on yourself once without expending a spell slot or requiring material components. Once you cast it through this feature, you cannot do so again until you finish a long rest.

When you cast it on yourself through this feature, taking the Attack action allows you to make one additional attack with your Blade of Living Shadow as a bonus action. You can make this bonus attack on each of your turns for the spell’s duration.

Shadow Blade Spells

Your training grants access to spells associated with infiltration, illusion, fear, and supernatural darkness.

Each spell in the following table counts as a bard spell for you and does not count against the number of bard spells you know.

Bard Level	Spells
3rd	disguise self, shadow blade
5th	darkness, pass without trace
9th	fear, nondetection
13th	dimension door, greater invisibility
17th	mislead, seeming

Whenever you gain a bard level, you can replace one spell granted by this feature with another spell of the same level. The replacement spell must be from the Illusion school or have a primary purpose involving darkness, concealment, disguise, fear, infiltration, or teleportation, subject to Game Master approval.