Pathfinder Second Edition
Compendium
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Wight
Wights are Undead humanoids that, much like wraiths, can drain the life from living creatures with but a touch. They arise as a result of necromantic Rituals, especially violent deaths, or the sheer malevolent will of the deceased.
As many types of wights exist as types of people from which they might be created. Hulking brutes, skittering sneaks, and cunning tinkers all make for different wights with different niches to fill. Environment, too, plays a part in determining a wight’s special abilities and Defenses. Frost wights, for instances, can be found in the parts of the world where exposure is a Common end. Regardless, wights typically haunt burial grounds, catacombs, or other places of the dead. But their hunger is targeted toward the living—those individuals who remind them of the shackles of mortality and whom they feel compelled to “free” to the state of Undeath.
A single wight can wreak a lot of havoc if it is compelled to rise from its tomb. Because creatures slain by wights become wights as well, all it takes is a single wight and a handful of unlucky graveyard visitors to create a veritable horde of these Undead. Thus, canny priests and adventurers know that the best solution to a wight problem is swift and total eradication. Care must be taken, though, to destroy wight spawn before attempting to destroy the parent wight, for spawn without a master gain the ability to create spawn of their own.
Durable and sustained as they are by Negative energy, wights can last in harsh environments without decaying the way some lesser Undead do. They might dwell in high mountain passes, sealed passageways, or submerged in bogs or lakes for decades or even centuries before the passage of an unsuspecting traveler rouses them from their rest.