Question about Shadow Wraiths

[Delbareth]

   A Shadow Wraith appears when somebody is affected by the Shadow Orchid. Ok. But in the description of this flower, it is written "The scent of this flower is powerful and affects the brain of many animals like a drug". It means clearly that animals can be victims of the narcotic effect of the Shadow Orchid. But what happens after? Do they metamorphose in a sort of animal Shadow Wraith? Nothing is written about that...

   My second question concern the Shadow Wraiths themselves. These creatures are "extremely aggressives" and "virtually fearless". My question is : can they withdraw? For example if a wraith is attacked by dozen of guards, does it really continue to fight?
   It seems to me that Shadow Wraith is too aggressive to withdraw. But it considerably reduces the life expectancy of this creature. After its transformation, the wraiths will attack anybody and, as it is said, "the local authorities will act quickly to dispatch the creature". In this case, the probability to encounter a wraith (so a "young" wraith) is very low.

[avisarr]

Good questions.

1. An animal that consumes the shadow orchid will transform into an shadow wraith version of itself. i.e. a shadow wraith dog, a shadow wraith bat, etc. Likewise, a shadow wraith dog would attack dogs in preference of all other life forms, just as a humanoid shadow wraith will attack humanoids above all others.

2. A shadow wraith will not withdraw. Even if facing overwhelming odds, it will continue to attack until it is hacked to pieces. A shadow wraith has only animal intelligence and is, essentially, drugged and half-crazed. It is not thinking rationally. It's drive to kill and feed outweighs any sense of self-preservation.

Because of this, the shadow wraith has a very low life expectancy. Usually a shadow wraith will begin hunting and terrorize a few farmers or travelers. Eventually, the local authorities will find out and the nearest town will send out its militia or perhaps the farmers will unite into a mob with pitchforks and hunt it down. In any case, the shadow wraith will eventually come up against a large, well armed group. It will eventually be killed (likely taking a half dozen people with it). Because of this, almost every shadow wraith that is encountered is a "recently created" wraith. They just don't live that long because of their behavior. They have a short, spectacularly bloody life.

The average shadow wraith lasts only a few days or a couple of weeks at most. It is unlikely that a shadow wraith would last a month unless it happened to be in a very remote, desolate area and wandered for many days before encountering civilization. It's also possible that a shadow wraith  might encounter and attack a larger creature that would kill it. A dragon would make a quick meal of a shadow wraith and more civilized areas would never know that a shadow wraith had ever been there.

And yes, overall, the odds of running into a shadow wraith are very small. You would only ever encounter one if you happened to be in the right area and the right time. Hence, the frequency of this creature is listed as Very Rare.

One last thought on this... here are some other possibilities that could occur with the shadow wraith.

1. Imagine, if you will, a mad wizard who is cultivating shadow orchids around his tower and capturing peasants from the valley below. He force feeds the orchids to his prisoners, intentionally creating shadow wraiths. Some of these he sets loose on the farming villages down below in the valley. Others he keeps and studies in his lab. It's possible that he might have a shadow wraith in a prison cell which he has kept alive for years, feeding it victims, etc.

2. It's possible that when the local farmers unite against a shadow wraith and confront it with pitchforks, but then they look at the tattered clothes still clinging to its body and the necklace around its neck and they recognize it as one of their own. Perhaps even a brother or a best friend. They might hesitate. They might try to capture it rather than kill it. Perhaps their hesitation allows the shadow wraith to kill them. Perhaps they manage to capture it and they keep it in the town jail in hopes of finding a priest or sorcerer who can cure it.

There are all sorts of possibilities.

[Delbareth]

What happen if a group of persons are infested together?
Can it form a group of shadow wraith? Do they attack each other? Is the incubattion time too various to allow simultaneous transformation?

[avisarr]

1. Yes, it is theoretically possible that you could have a group of people become infested together and they could form a group of shadow wraiths. Although this would be rare. This would require several shadow orchids at the same place and that everyone in the group ate the orchids at roughly the same time and transformed at roughly the same rate. See below.

2. Shadow wraiths identify most things by scent. They tend to hunt by scent. And they identify friend from foe by scent. This also comes into play when the shadow wraith decides who to attack first. A shadow wraith which was formerly human will be enraged by the scent of humans (it stirs some primitive territorial response) and hence it will attack humans in preference of any other targets. In this same fashion, shadow wraiths recognize each other by scent (each has a faint, almost imperceptible scent of the orchid about them) and they won't attack each other. Whether or not they band together or wander off in different directions is up to the game master. If they were formerly friends or adventuring partners, they might stick together through some flicker of memory and recognition which urges them to do so.

3. The incubation period varies from 7 to 12 days depending on a number of factors: race, gender, physical stamina, current health, stress and many other factors. Suffice to say, that it's up to the game master. If the game master wants a group to change at relatively the same rate, then that's fine. Or they could change at very different rates resulting in some very interesting situations. Whatever the game master decides will be the most fun for the game. If the transformation rates are very different rates, it's possible that some people might flee the group as their former comrades are changing since they still have some sense of intelligent thought about them. Those who transform earliest are the first to lose their capacity of rational thought. There are many possible outcomes.

[Kristian]

Is there anyway to stop this metamorphosis while it's happening? Can it be done through magical means? And it it is possible, what happens if someone is cured in mid-metamorphosis? Do they keep on being a pseude-shadow wraith or do they revert to their normal form? Becuase the virus rewrites the genetic code I would think they didn't revert, but that's just a guess.

[avisarr]

I think that would be up to the individual game master. If he wants to introduce a curative spell or something that stops or cures the metamorphosis, that's possible. And whether or not it reverts the change or just stops it, that's up to the GM too, depending on the nature of the cure and how he wants to play it.

Personally, I think a mage could cure it with magic if he was a very talented spell caster and if he studied it very closely. But he'd either have to have a specimen to work with or be infected himself. This would be a rare thing. So far no one has come up with a cure, so it'd be a big project to find a cure. Plus, even if a mage did find a cure, the cure would not be publicly available right away. Keep in mind there's no wide spread information network. It would be more like rumors of a mage "in the next kingdom" who has a cure or something like that.