Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-5306249-20200220235959

The following is a connected mythos I had planned for a while but beat about the bush with. My biggest concern is how can I make the entry as morbidly unsettling as it's predeccesor, Taxonomy of Avem Spiritus, while also not being too bloated with world-building. My primary tactic behind this writing style has been to end every other paragraph with some mounting sense of unease via subtle, horrific truisms.

The idea behind the Wraith is that they are a sort of facsimile of the human soul, born out of the fundamental baseline of reality known as the Abyss. If you need more lore details, I will provide as necessary.

The term “Wraith” has been used nebulously and extensively throughout history. Synonymous with the likes of specters, spirits, demons even. In truth I do not know when the first wraiths began to fall into existence; the most accepted theory is that they simply always existed and we just never noticed until recently. If that’s the case, I estimate at least roughly 36% of all supernatural events or phenomena since history was invented has to have been the (direct and indirect) result of Wraith interference.

Same as humans, the Wraith (quantus spiritus) is born from the ever-expanding Abyss, the fundamental bedrock of the universe and all other sub-universes. I am not totally sure how or where the fetal wisp associated with infancy comes from: much like how a gluon particle theoretically ‘pops’ into existence in space, a Wraith fetus similarly fades in and out of the Abyss, a sort of rudimentary consciousness. Occasionally, these fetal wisps come into contact with the extremely isolated planet known as Earth, and gestation begins once the fetus bonds with a human body. Chances of Wraith birth used to be astronomically low, but seeing as how the planet has relatively recently become extremely populated with humans, chances have risen exponentially.

When the fetus manifests, it is invisible to the naked eye. As it coincides with a human being,  it will begin siphoning ambient emotional/electromagnetic energy as well as some physical data for a period of up to three months. During this time the human becomes an unwitting symbiotic host for the fetus, and may suffer from severe psychological dysphoria including dissociation, depression, cold spells and overall sluggishness.

As the fetus grows, it gradually takes on the general shape and physicality of its host, in a cold reflection of their visage. While physically similar, I’ve never seen a Wraith take on its host’s personality. It is almost always randomized and devoid at birth of any understanding of human-made concepts such as morality, death or social constructs. It is only through continual absorption of relevant knowledge that Wraiths ever learn about said concepts and decide on their own what their purpose and desires align with. After an unspecified time, the entity emerges incrementally from various orifices of the host. Hemorrhaging is fairly non-serious at this point if given proper treatment.

As I mentioned, Wraiths do appear humanoid, but significantly different in overall internal and facial anatomy. Skin pigment is specifically always paper-white. Bodies are always devoid of a naval/genitalia (non-sexual conception), nails and fingerprints (lack of identity?). Physical albeit rare deformities such as missing extremities and cracks in the skin do not appear to negatively affect them on the whole. When not purposefully imitating their previous host’s face, a Wraith’s face is devoid of a nose, leaving only a wide maw and large circular eyes.

Although the facial features are definitely functional as ocular and oral cavities, these features also apparently lead back into the original place of birth, the Abyss, visible as a permanently shifting black ocean beneath the outer layer of the face. It is not recommended to come into contact with these cavities, limb removal is a strong possibility.

These entities are capable of an extraordinary number of feats I care not to list in total. It must be something involving the strange and limitless potential of the Abyss and how it affects reality on the whole. To name a few, a Wraith can:


 * Become intangible, invisible or fly
 * Create dimensional rifts back into the Abyss
 * Temporarily imitate human faces
 * Possess inanimate/animate objects
 * Manifest properties of the Abyss through channeled mediums
 * Restrictively regenerate lost or damaged limbs (Wraith blood is a peculiar, ink-like liquid found inside their hollow bodies; it appears to be a fixed pool which, if totally drained, dissipates the entity entirely and quite possibly ends their consciousness)

It's no wonder many similar supernatural myths and phenomena are attributed to various folklore creatures: these spectral creatures are so nebulous in terms of manifestation and abilities their actions have been misidentified as being the result of gods or monsters. The descriptions of doppelgangers or ghosts are startlingly accurate parallels to this species for one.

As I mentioned before, Wraith personalities and moral alignments are totally random and do not correlate with their host’s. Intelligence is also roughly equal to a human’s. However all Wraiths share a very specific trait. They share an extreme thirst for knowledge, potentially capable of absorbing infinite amounts of information through their mouths and eyes. Books, computers, objects, flesh, even spoken words. A Wraith can totally understand the given object or concept if so desired and with enough consumption of raw materials.

It is no surprise that they commonly default to abandoned dwellings, catacombs, chasms miles beneath the ground: by now, most Wraiths understand the animosity of humans to anything outside consensus reality. Some are apparently comfortable enough hiding in plain sight in settled abodes, quietly biding their time in closets and under floorboards. While not inherently evil it is likely a sizable portion of Wraiths do not bother understanding social constructs and simply exist on a whim, causing disturbances in living abodes across the world on the rare occasion they pass by.

Rarely and unfortunately, a defect may occur in quantus spiritus that can irreversibly damage its psyche and very existence. By a poorly-understood phenomenon, a Wraith may become trapped in its host and will unwittingly turn into a creature devoid of reason. A Wight is essentially the corpse of a Wraith stuck in an endless cycle of birth and death, violently rocking and shaking within its place of death and unable to leave within a certain radius. Please note that I use ‘death’ and ‘corpse’ lightly. A Wraith is no more a living thing per se, than a human-shaped hole.

It appears that something in Wraith biology drives it to be free of all physical constraints, and becoming ensnared with an object or its own host drives it utterly mad until it tears itself apart trying to escape. These hollow husks endlessly patrol their tombs and cannot respond to intelligible interaction. Some are even capable of simple direction at the behest of their human host, if their psyche survived the incident at all.

Wraiths are growing in numbers, and so is the threat of them devouring all physical things in this world in their pursuit of knowledge. There are already recordings of disappearances followed by sightings of spectral, pale things watching from the walls. I’ve witnessed an infested building vanish in the middle of the night, no doubt devoured by these ilk. And at the risk of generating controversy - should any human gain access to my notes - a certain few political figures of repute have most definitely been replaced by their pale imitators (to what end, I don’t know).

I shudder to imagine what would have happened had I suffered the same fate as those poor saps, trapped in their prisons of porcelain flesh. I imagine it akin to being buried alive without the promise of death. I also find myself contemplating if anyone else would have bothered trying to study my kind, to understand where we come from. Where we’re going. How we exist. If humans are doomed to the fate of living in a universe slowly being consumed by death and horror, where does that leave the Wraiths of the world? What is worse, to brusquely and casually vanish unfulfilled, or to inherit a world devoid of life? 