Setting up a sentient weapon in 5e, advice needed please (Curse of Strahd spoiler)

[Geometer]

I'm DMing Curse of Strahd in Unity, and my players are about to acquire the Sunsword (a sentient sword dedicated to vengeance will, probably, fall into the hands of a Paladin of Hoar, God of Vengeance - couldn't be sweeter). I'd like to set it up so that I can communicate directly and privately with the player as the sword's sentience, using "whisper". I'm guessing that the way to do this is to create an NPC to represent the sentience and keep it permanently invisible in the Combat Tracker. Am I right or is there another/better way to do it?

[Zacchaeus]

Whispers will always show that they are from the DM - you can't whisper as any other character. So any of the usual methods will work.

[Arghun]

Do it on Discord or on whichever platform you're using for voice

[Geometer]

Do it on Discord or on whichever platform you're using for voice

I really don't want to do it by voice if I can avoid it. The PC will be having a confidential telepathic conversation with the sword that the other PCs won't be party to and as the player's partner is also playing, she will have to leave the room if it's audible. I'd rather not ask her to do that, and besides, I just want to learn how to get the best out of Whispers.

[Geometer]

Whispers will always show that they are from the DM - you can't whisper as any other character. So any of the usual methods will work.

Ah, so there is a better way, I thought there probably would be. I'm afraid I get a bit lost amongst all the options that FG offers, what would be the "usual" methods?

[Zacchaeus]

Either typ /w <playername> message in chat or create a chat bubble in a story entry and drag the bubble and drop it onto the player character portrait at the top left of the screen.

[Geometer]

Either typ /w <playername> message in chat or create a chat bubble in a story entry and drag the bubble and drop it onto the player character portrait at the top left of the screen.

Thanks, but that's not quite what I'm trying to achieve. I probably didn't express myself very well so I'll have another stab.

There's a way for a DM to send a private whisper to a PC as if it's coming from a named NPC, isn't there? My question is, would setting it up as an NPC be the best way of setting up a sentient sword as above?

Not a big deal if it isn't, I can always do the chat bubble thing, I just thought it would be neat.

[Zacchaeus]

You can certainly set up an NPC as the sword, but as I say any whispers always show as coming from the DM even if you are ‘talking’ as the NPC. As DM you can ‘talk’ in an NPC voice in direct chat to all players, but whispers always show as coming from the DM. So in other words there’s no need to set up an NPC since it will not show the whisper as coming from the NPC but as coming from the DM.

[Geometer]

As DM you can ‘talk’ in an NPC voice in direct chat to all players, but whispers always show as coming from the DM.
I think that might be where I'm going wrong. You can "chat" to the party in NPC voice, but not privately as NPC to individual player/PC, yes?

[Zacchaeus]

I think that might be where I'm going wrong. You can "chat" to the party in NPC voice, but not privately as NPC to individual player/PC, yes?

Correct

[Geometer]

Correct

OK, thanks.