Pressure-Wraiths
Wind-Ghosts of the Silent Gale that make small pockets of empty air around their prey and suffocate it.
Overview
The Pressure-Wraiths are Wind-Ghosts of the Silent Gale that kill by taking the air. Each makes a small pocket of emptiness around its prey, and the prey suffocates in the middle of a hurricane.
Appearance
Like all Wind-Ghosts, a Pressure-Wraith is unseen. Where it settles, the blown dust and grass go suddenly still in a small round space, as if under a glass bowl, and the gale streams around the edge. The traveller inside feels the ears crack, the chest tighten, and the breath go out and not come back. A thin mist sometimes forms at the edge of the pocket, and that is all anyone has seen of one.
Habitat and Range
They live in the moving air of the Gale and are rarer than its other hunters.
Behaviour and Temperament
They hunt the breathing: they are drawn to the rise and fall of a chest and to warm breath in the cold wind, and they settle over a sleeper or a panting traveller and hold until it is still. They let go of the dead and drift away.
Abilities
A Pressure-Wraith empties a small space of air and holds it empty. It can be broken by the prey moving far and fast out of it, or by enough others pushing in.
Uses and Dangers
They are the reason travellers caught in the Gale are told never to sleep in it, and to keep moving in short dashes between shelter.
Lore and Belief
Herders in storm country call a death without a mark "the wraith's kiss", and some believe it happens outside the Gale too, when the wind is high. Physicians put most such deaths down to other causes.
Where It Appears
In the Writers’ Guide
- Gust-Stalkers A Bestiary of CaeldonHabitat and Range
- Pressure-Wraiths A Bestiary of Caeldon
- Wind-Ghosts A Bestiary of Caeldon