The Will'o'Wisp (Granther Willow's Lantern) is often said to represent an malevolent entity that makes its home in swamps, bogs, and moors. When encountered in the wild, Will'o'Wisps normally appear as faintly glowing balls of light. They can alter their own color, shape, and size to some extent and can be easily mistaken for lanterns, light spells, and similar sources of artificial illumination. A Wisp subsists by luring unsuspecting creatures to their deaths amid the natural hazards of such places and feeding on the energies which their death struggles release. However, there also seem to exist Will'o'Wisps who are said to guide travelers or lost children onto the right path for home. As these mysterious creatures do not communicate with people directly (unless in fairy tales) it of course is very difficult to judge its intent. However, it is also said that when a traveler finds himself on the right path again, the Wisp vanishes leaving no trace of its existence...

Image description. The miraculous Will'o'Wisp, part of many stories and legends. Picture drawn by Ashknight Merridor.

Appearance. Will'o'Wisp are about 12 nailsbreadths in diameter. Considering they are only balls of light, the creature itself (if there is one within the mass of glowing light) would be considerably smaller. The ball of light however can be any color the "fairy" wishes (providing one can call the being actually behind the Wisp's appearance this way), it can fluctuate from bottle green, light green, purple, white, gold, amber, red, blue, sky blue, light blue... in fact any color it really feels like. Travelers and researchers alike believe these creatures actually change their color to their feelings. For example if the glowing orb is a reddish color, then the "fairy" may be angry. If the color is in fact white or gold, then the "fairy" is happy or amused and so on. But to be honest there has been no real explanation into why the creatures change color, or even how... Wisps are among the most mysterious entities of the Caelereth world and are rarely sighted.

Weight in all honestly cannot be determined as the ball of light the Wisp represents has never been touched or held. If however a fairy does reside in its bowls then the fairy would have to be at the most a single or double ladle in weight.

Special Abilities. Although Wisps possess no direct possibilities to attack, their command of magic allows them to pose a considerable threat to enemy forces. The most commonly used of these spells is dancing light. The dancing light illusion tries to confuse the watchers by basically spraying the area full of copies of itself basically producing "clones" to confuse the attacker or watchers so that the real entity can escape undetected. Wisps can also rather strangely cast illusions of the watcher's deepest desires such as a fresh lake of water, or a table laden with food, almost a mirage. These tricks however are very rare and have only been seen by travelers or lost people and may only be hallucinations, or hallucinations evoked by a Wisp.

If they do not attack, Will'o'Wisps are able to utterly blank out their glows, rendering them invisible to all those who cannot spot invisible objects.

Though Wisps don't actually communicate with people, they must have a language of their own. Will'o'Wisp language is a very unusual one, being purely optical in nature. All communication between Will'o'Wisps seems to work by means of changes in color or brightness, many of which are far too subtle for the average observer to notice. Because this form of exchange is almost impossible to mimic, it is extremely difficult to follow Wisp-communication and evern more nearly impossible to "talk" back. Exceptional examples of this race have mastered a very simple sound-based language. producíng sounds by vibrating very rapidly and thus have a shallow and ghostly-sounding voice when they "speak."

Territory. Will'o'Wisps can be found whereever swamps and dark moors are and can even be seen in some orchards and forests depending on the inhabitants of the area. They most keenly stay around settlements of elves and nature loving humans, such as druids and so forth.

Habitat/Behaviour. For the most part, Will'o'Wisps will be found on their own. On rare occasions groups of up to three may be found near a particularly fertile hunting ground. In the latter case, they will work together to trick victims into the traps which they have arranged. They do however have some strange dancing rituals and ceremonies that to the watcher has no meaning, but, when seen, a large green oval shaped disc sits in the center, and on VERY rare occasions, hundreds of the glowing balls of light can be seen floating and dancing in the air around this disc even up to 16 to 20 peds in the air. These rituals are rare, though they have been reported from different sources.

Diet. Although difficult to say with certainty, evidence indicates that the Will'o'Wisp feeds on the fury of electrical activity given off by the brains of panic stricken individuals as they realize that death is inescapable. In order to prolong the suffering of their victims and increase the amount of "food" which they give off, Will'o'Wisps will typically lure their victims into areas like quicksand pits which promise a slow and frightening death.

It seems certain that the unusual environment found in bogs and swamps is important to the creature's existence in some way, but the exact nature of this link is uncertain. It seems probable that the ominous and haunting nature of these places increases the fear and dread which their victims feel, and thus the energy which they give off prior to death.

Mating. A mating ritual is vastly unknown, but the balls of light known as Wisps have actually been seen multiplying from one another as if the light has come directly from the wisp and just floated away. It is said that the birth of another "Will'o'Wisp" is basically a clone of the parent, but as these beings seems to be only of ephemeral nature (at least to human eyes) it is nearly impossible to say if one just saw a real reproduction or only a magical cloning. No more is known about this creature, only that the balls of light seem to just appear and float from within the parent, a very mysterious event indeed.

Myth/Lore. Myth and lore seem to say that the Will'o'Wisp seem to be from another plane or dimension explaining why they can appear and disappear in a moment. Rumor has it that the Wisps are actually fairies that live in an opposite dimension and come to Caelereth to feed on the living. The "good" Wisps from the other dimensions are said to be able sense the fear or loneliness of a traveler or child and transport themselves to this world to help him or her. Others believe they are just myth and don't exist at all as they are seen very, very rarely, and probably have their true home only in the imagination of a lost wanderer...

Some fairy tales contained in "Master Tribell's Miraculous Narrations", especially the legend of the "Search of Marinna" even claim that it is possible to traverse time and space with the assistance of Wisps, but whether this is only a fairy tale or is possible in our reality, none can say, as the purpose and laws of the Wisps still remain unknown to us.