Baroness Brantifax

My version of Baroness Brantifax from the adventure Book of the Raven from Candlekeep Mysteries. This version is used in my Eberron campaign set in Q'Barra. She's tied to an agent of the Cold Sun which has, unknown to her led to all the misery the Brantifax family went through.

Baroness Brantifax is a ghost of the 4th magnitude as described in Van Richten's Guide to Ghosts. She has unknowingly made a pact with the fiend Fistandia / Aashalara, the representative of Rhashaak (Prakuthu to the Cold Sun). In undeath, her tether to Fistandia runs through the Libram of Souls

Description

Ethereal wisps run out from the book and converge to materialize in the ghostly shape of a humanoid, a woman, tethered to the book by an ethereal veil. The Baroness appears like a beautified version of the portraits you've seen in the Manor. Just in her 30's, her voluminous hair, piled and pinned in a perfect spiral atop her head, shines vibrantly. A jeweled tiara adorns her forehead and invokes a subtle but unmistakable mark of station. Fine silks of varying shades, all trimmed with golden thread, drape her statuesque form. She carries herself with an air of easy superiority, a confidence born of wealth and power, of responsibility and influence.

Monster lore

• DC5 (very easy): ghosts are incorporeal,  can move through creatures and objects, yet can still harm you.
• DC10 (easy): resistance to acid, fire, lightning and thunder damage. Ghosts deal necrotic damage and are themselves immune to it, as well as cold and poison.
• DC15 (medium): ghosts have an aura that corrupts the living, killing plants, sickening creatures and more.
• DC20 (hard): when seeing the true visage of a ghost, victims can get frightened, so much that they age or even die.
• DC25 (very hard): there's always something that tethers a ghost to the world, to lay it to rest, one must find an sever that tether.

Rejection of the Self. If Baroness Brantifax sees a reflection of herself she is driven into an incoherent rage as she tries to disrupt or destroy the source of the reflection and those responsible for creating it. While she can see her reflection, she makes attack rolls with advantage, but cannot take lair actions, and attack rolls against her also have advantage.

Wrath and Resentment.  The negative emotions that drive Baroness Brantifax burst forth when she wails. Each of her lair actions causes a negative emotion to build up again. After she has used each of her lair actions at least once, she regains the use of her Wail ability.

On initiative count 20 (losing ties) she may take a lair action to cause one of the following effects:

• Frenzied rage. The Baroness is driven into a frenzied rage by the sight of creatures who violate her lair with their presence. On her next turn, she may make an extra attack with her corrupting touch. Additionally, if she used her Wail on her last turn, until initiative 20 on the next round, she has advantage on attack rolls against any creature which succeeded on its saving throw against the Wail.
• Hopelessness. Overwhelming hopelessness floods the mind of one creature Baroness Brantifax can see within her lair, sapping its will to live. Target must succeed on a DC13 Wisdom saving throw, or become vulnerable to necrotic damage and get disadvantage on attack rolls. Its speed is reduced to 0 and it won't willingly move. Target may repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns and whenever it regains hit points, ending the effect on a success.
• Dreadful presence. A dreadful presence and unearthly chill fills a 40'radius of Baroness Brantifax's choosing. All flames within the area are extinguished and any beasts caught in the area must succeed on a DC15 Charisma saving throw or be frightened. A chill permeates the area and creatures caught within it are vulnerable to necrotic and psychic damage as the negatice energy of the zone weakens the resolve of both their bodies and minds. If a creature in the zone is resistant to those damage types it simply loses its resistance instead.

Lair description

Thick layers of dust leave stark impressions along the crumbling stonework as you descend into the burial chamber. The only life apparent here is the lichen that clings to the cracks running through several pale frescoes. Here you can sense the presence of death all around you as a monument to the temporal. Here, it is easy to forget the sun altogether, in this place where bones crumble to meal and rot counts the decades.

The shadows deepen, becoming black abysses within which swim sinister shapes. You can move the light to banish the shadows, but the presences just slip into the next darkness. Hateful voices whisper from every direction, but never where you look, always from behind or above you.

A bitter wind whistles through the passages of this family crypt, the arched alcoves in the walls are filled to the brim with skulls, the wind coursing through them making them howl like moaning spirits. An altar stands along a wall, an open book in its center and flanked by a candle on each side. Four sarcophagi look as if their lids have been moved to one side or the other, or are broken altogether, but further investigation reveals that such lids have been savaged by their occupants, and not graverobbers. A gust of wind runs through the chamber, rustling the pages on the book on the altar and a greenish glow flows from it. Running through the entire chamber, altering its appearance, to a replica of Baroness Brantifax’s study room in Chalet Brantifax.