Wraiths

Finish all your business before you die. Bid your loved ones farewell. Write your will. Apologize to those you've wronged. Otherwise, you'll never truly leave this world.

– Paule Vikar, peasant healer, advice to a dying man

Clerics and scholars are forever debating whether spirits do in fact journey to another world after death, one where eternal joy or suffering awaits. Both groups agree, however, on what happens to spirits who, for one reason or another, remain in our world after their body breathes its last: they transform into wraiths. To hear their mournful howls, one can surmise this is not a fate to be envied.

Wraiths are usually encountered at night, near cemeteries, catacombs and other such burial places, or else near the places that were important to them in life: abandoned homes, crumbling castles or forgotten bridges.

Wraiths suffer endless, indescribable pain. Filled with anger and a sense of having been wronged, they both envy the living and brim with overwhelming hatred for them. Like other specters, they are immaterial, meaning they are not harmed by fire, poison or weapons designed to provoke bleeding.

Wraiths can turn immaterial and are at such times very difficult to wound. One can, however, force them to reassume a physical presence by trapping them with the Yrden Sign or by hitting them with slivers from a Moon Dust bomb. As with any such ghostly being, one should fight them using silver swords, preferably ones smeared with a thick coat of specter oil. Note as well that wraiths are particularly dangerous on moonless nights.