Chaos Wight

Chaos wights are what remains of fallen knights, both the Dark Queen's knights and honor-bound knights alike, along with assorted other unlucky souls, dragged back from death by a primordial chaos god. They roam in packs with a single purpose: to wipe out every form of life. Two kinds are known, the frost wight and the shadow wight, and both share a terrible power called nullification.

At a distance a frost wight looks like a person-sized whirl of snow, a tiny private blizzard. It appears only in polar regions, much to the relief of everyone who lives elsewhere. Its freezing touch deals 1-6 hp damage, which harms even creatures that cold normally cannot touch.

Once it closes to melee, the frost wight takes on its victim's own appearance and murmurs hypnotic words of hopelessness, slowly convincing the target that his or her life has no value. The victim must save vs. death magic at -2. On a failure, the wight's touch nullifies the victim: body and existence are gone, and every memory of the person vanishes from friends and family alike. Only written records, such as a great library's chronicles, show the person ever lived, and nothing, not even a wish, can bring a nullified victim back.

Cold cannot hurt a frost wight, and like other undead it ignores poison along with paralysis, hold, charm, sleep and death spells. Unblessed mundane weapons cannot hurt them, while magical weapons deal full damage. The killing stroke leaves a metal weapon so chilled and brittle that it breaks apart on its next blow; magical weapons save vs. crushing blow at +2 per plus, so a long sword +3 saves at +6. A holy symbol that touches a frost wight on a successful attack roll dispels it, but the symbol vanishes forever along with the wight.

Sunlight bothers them without causing harm. Fire deals double damage, and a character with any flame beside him, even a single candle, cannot be mimicked or nullified. A torch strike or a vial of holy water deals 1-6 hp damage, and raise dead destroys a frost wight instantly.

A shadow wight looks like a human-sized patch of darkness or black smoke. In truth it is a living hole torn in reality, so that onlookers see through it rather than at it. It mimics its chosen victim, locks eyes and whispers despair just as the frost wight does; the target saves vs. death magic at -2, and on a failure the wight's next touch nullifies him with the same total, unrecoverable result.

Plain daylight irritates shadow wights enough that they avoid it, but does them no harm. Light magic is another matter: faerie fire, dancing lights, light, continual light and even audible glamer disrupt them so badly that they can neither copy a victim's shape nor nullify. Fire and electricity deal full damage. Nonmagical weapons are useless unless blessed by a deity, though blessed, magical and holy weapons all hurt them normally, and a priest who lands a successful attack with a holy symbol in hand dispels one at once. Cold, poison and spells of paralysis, charm, sleep, hold or death do nothing to them, and holy water deals 1-6 hp per vial.

Both kinds haunt the bleak, empty corners of the world and make them emptier still. They gather in bigger groups than most creatures of chaos, sweeping across the land in packs or "clouds" and nullifying whatever lives along their route.

Two white dragon sisters dwelling on a vast southern glacier keep trying to break into an ancient dwarven catacomb beneath the ice, where a hoard of dwarven battle axes, each bearing powerful blessings, lies hidden. If they arm their walrus folk servants with those axes, the growing packs of chaos wights in the frozen wastes, and perhaps also the peaceful ice-dwelling human tribes, could be wiped out.

Frost wights are even more single-minded than other undead or other servants of chaos in destroying all life they catch. Powerful wizards and priests might dream of a spell or item that erases an enemy and every memory of him, but nobody is known to have succeeded in using the wights' essence that way. Whether anyone has ever tried is unknown, since a failed experiment may well have nullified the would-be inventor along with all memory of the attempt. Using a frost wight's captured essence for cold magic, a wand of frost for instance, is a somewhat safer project.

Shadow wights, if "exist" is even the word, likewise seek to erase all life, body, soul and memory. In theory their essence would make fine ink for darkness, 15' radius scrolls or power other darkness magic, yet every expedition to gather it has failed to return, and no one even remembers anyone setting out to try.