The Black Coach rolls out of the grave-mists behind a team of nightmare steeds, its cairn-wraith driver silent on the box, its outrider spirits keeping pace like a guard of honour. It is a hearse, an engine, and a promise all at once, for the casket it bears is not empty. Within lies an entity suspended between states of being — neither alive nor dead, neither spirit nor flesh — dreaming its way toward a rebirth the realms will regret.
Every death near the Coach feeds the thing inside, and so the Coach grows stronger as the battle deepens: its reliquary lamps burn a fiercer green, its wheels lift from the earth, its scythed hubs and spectral retinue strike with mounting fury. Veteran generals teach a simple doctrine — destroy the Black Coach in the first hour or spend the last one fleeing it. Among the free peoples its legend runs older and quieter: on nights when unseen wheels are heard on the road, doors are barred, candles are snuffed, and no one asks who the Coach has come for, in case it answers.