Unbound Nightmare

Saves: Toughness +12, Willpower +13

Senses: Perceives all creatures within 120 feet regardless of sight, cover, or concealment

Unmoored. Reality misbehaves within 60 feet of the nightmare: gravity, light, memory, and distance are all negotiable at GM discretion, one new wrongness per round. It does not make Morale checks and is immune to fear, Suppression, and all mundane damage reduction bypasses short of warded or sanctified means (mundane attacks deal half damage).

No Fixed Shape. Attacks against the nightmare target whatever it currently is: area effects and warded strikes work normally, but called shots, precision abilities, and critical hit riders do not function against it.

The World Rejects It. The nightmare takes 10 damage automatically at the start of each of its turns while manifest — a clock in the party's favor, if they can survive long enough to use it. It cannot be killed on the field: at 0 Vitality it is forced out of reality, banished until called again. Completing a banishment rite, destroying its anchor, or starving it of what feeds it (GM-defined) inflicts 4d10 damage per accomplished step and is the intended path to victory.

Nightmare Bloom. A 30-foot zone within 90 feet becomes briefly untrue. Creatures inside make a Willpower Save DC 17, taking 4d10 psychic damage and suffering Corruption exposure on a failure, or half damage and no exposure on a success.

Erase the Ground. The nightmare removes one piece of battlefield within 90 feet from play — a stretch of cover, a bridge, a doorway, a vehicle-sized object. Creatures on or in it make an Agility Save DC 17 or fall, are Exposed, or are trapped as the geometry decides.

Take One With It. One creature within 60 feet makes a Willpower Save DC 17 or is folded out of reality: removed from play, lost until rescued through the same rite that harms the nightmare. Each round a creature remains folded away, it suffers Corruption exposure.

It Was Never There. Once per round, when the nightmare is hit by an attack, it may declare it was elsewhere: the attack deals half damage and the nightmare shifts up to 20 feet to a space it could occupy.

Morale: Does not make Morale checks — it has no self-preservation and no goals legible to sane observers. It ends when banished, starved of manifestation, or when reality finishes rejecting it.

Tactics: This is an objective encounter by mandate: banishment rites, anchor relics, evacuation clocks, and the entity's own attrition are the actual win conditions. Direct combat buys rounds, and rounds are the currency everything else spends. Decide before the session what feeds it and what starves it, and seed both — the party should end the fight understanding the rules they survived.

Loot / Evidence / Hooks: The anchor relic or rite-fragments used to force it out remain afterward, humming with the memory of it — priceless to Ordo scholars, and the first thing the next cult will come looking for.

An Unbound Nightmare is a reality-hostile entity operating without tether, anchor, or apparent limit — the category of threat for which containment doctrine exists and routinely fails. It does not fight the party so much as happen to them.

Use this threat as a campaign-scale disaster and objective encounter: the thing the arc's rituals, wards, and warnings were all about.

Extreme reality distortion, area-scale attacks, fear and Corruption saturation, no stable form, immune to morale and mundane harm, defeated by objectives and banishment rites rather than firepower.

Unmoored. Reality misbehaves within 60 feet: gravity, light, memory, and distance are all negotiable at GM discretion, one new wrongness per round.

No Fixed Shape. Attacks target whatever it currently is; area effects and warded strikes work, called shots and precision mostly do not.

The World Rejects It. It takes slow, automatic attrition while manifest — a clock in the party's favor, if they can survive long enough to use it.

Nightmare Bloom. A 30-foot zone becomes briefly untrue: creatures inside save or take psychic damage and suffer Corruption exposure.

Erase the Ground. Removes a piece of battlefield from play — cover, a bridge, a doorway — reshaping every plan that relied on it.

Take One With It. Attempts to fold one creature out of reality: save or be lost until rescued through the rite that harms the Nightmare.

Morale: No morale, no self-preservation, no goals legible to sane observers; it ends when banished, starved of manifestation, or when reality finishes rejecting it.

Tactics: This is an objective encounter by mandate: banishment rites, anchor relics, evacuation clocks, and the entity's own attrition are the actual win conditions. Direct combat buys rounds, and rounds are the currency everything else spends. Decide before the session what feeds it and what starves it, and seed both — the party should end the fight understanding the rules they survived.

Full Stat Block Priority: Boss