L ittle is known of banderhobbs, for the wise do not speak of them. They boil from the shadows into the benighted world, and wherever they appear people vanish, never to be seen again. Then the monsters too are gone, like shadows evaporating before the dawn or the fading remnants of nightmare.

Fools scoff at the notion of truths too dangerous to tell, dismissing rumors of banderhobbs as children’s tales or superstitious nonsense. Those who talk too much inevitably disappear, though, leaving behind only silence. Yet sometimes threads of truth survive, woven into the fanciful fabric of stories passed on in the bright light of day, far from shadow. Such speculative accounts are all that exist concerning these elusive marauders from the Shadowfell.