Weeping Wight

-=Fae=--=Thallain=-

The Weeping Wights are a Thallain kith of changelings.

Every blind turn that invites car crashes, every cursed bridge or cliff, every “hanging” tree, all have one thing in common: they all play host to a wight. These creatures perpetuate all sorts of lethal legends, coercing the weak-willed into altering their courses just enough to succumb to accidents or take their own lives.

Wights care not for the lives of the individuals they choose, they only care about perpetuating their legend. Compulsively driven to keep darker stories alive, these Thallain latch onto the notion of curses and hauntings. While most favor quick, usually lethal, methods and legends, others gravitate toward more elaborate and theatrical performances. Each wight finds its own calling and stakes its claim; those that excel in perpetuating their myth enjoy the fear it sows, but not so much as the defiance that leads foolish beings to test it. These brave individuals often realize far too late that fate is best left untempted.

In order for any legend to truly become so, it must have a set of rules that it follows. Wights are the protectors of these rules, ensure that only the proper candidates are chosen, and that their ends are met in the correct way. One masquerading as a mad hitchhiker that preys on sympathetic women will never attack men, another only responds to calls made into a mirror at precisely the stroke of midnight, and a third only looks for victims in the pouring rain. Without exception, every rule must be met for these Thallain to respond to their summons.

Appearance

Weeping wights are wretched things, and have the downtrodden look of someone permanently plagued by bad luck. Their eyes are wide and sad, their worry lines are prominent, and even the happiest of their smiles is wistful. In their fae miens, these things are twisted and malformed. They are often heavily scarred, have bones that have too many joints, or appear as having suffered heavy abuse. They give off an aura of despair and hopelessness.

Endowments

• Living Legends: On a successful Manipulation + Empathy roll, resisted by the target’s Willpower, a weeping wight can coerce the target into fulfilling a specific set of circumstances. The more successes, the more precisely the target complies. A wight cannot botch Manipulation rolls.

• Ghostly Visage: By spending a point of Glamour, a weeping wight can take on a translucent, spectral appearance. It always appears as a victim of its chosen accident would. The wight can keep this form for 30 minutes for every point of Glamour spent. In this form, it is incorporeal and cannot be harmed by anything but cold iron.

Vulnerability

• Creatures of Habit: The compulsion to replay horrible incidents over and over is central to a weeping wight’s existence. Preventing them from carrying out this compulsion causes them to fixate on it, and they focus on nothing else until they can continue. Prevention may be as simple as building a fence on an open cliff face or as difficult as permanently blocking an accident-prone roadway.