--Widows--

Widows


These creatures are completely harmless in most cases. They are spirits, their form a see-through, human-shaped silhouette which resembles fog in the moonlight. These aren’t the corpses of ghosts of people who died in the forests like the zimbo’s, but remainders of the people the victems left behind.
Widows are a result of the people in mourning for the ones lost to the forest. Villagers, friends, family members from the people taken by Burglinde’s curse and unable to find peace with what happened - their sadness, anger and desperation calling them to the forest to be reincarnated as these beings.
They don’t do much but sit or wander about the forest, quietly sobbing, weeping but sometimes loudly moaning and screaming in their everlasting sadness, ignorant to or ignoring people passing them by. They only attack when they’re disturbed.
It takes a lot to disturb these beings too, or rather, very specific things. You can shine a bright light in their eyes or even walk straight through them without them minding – it will merely make them look up at you for a moment. When they do briefly notice you, you’d better not do something to remind them of happier days though, smile or laugh for example, because their jealousy and longing for happier days will cause them to jump into attack immediately.

Strenghts: When they are disturbed they go from harmless emo ghosts to dangerous entities in the blink of an eye and when this happens their ‘body’ goes from a light, silver fog to a foul, black smoke.
They’re main strength is they don’t have a physical body so they can’t be touched by material things. Then there is their ‘possesion’. They can take over a human body and make it their own and when they succeed in this it can be incredibly hard to get them out again.

Weaknesses: they can be talked out of their possession easily in some cases, in which case their attacks are more a waste of time than anything else. Also, they’re powerless against opponents with extremely strong wills; they can withstand the possession and keep the widow out of their bodies. They can only posses others and use their bodies as the object of their attack.

Extra - possesion: after having possessed a person, force isn’t always necessary to exorcize a widow. Sometimes asking nicely, reasoning with them is enough to get them to leave out of free will, sometimes they can be negotiated with. But other times it takes a lot of effort, strength and even violence or heavy magic to get it to leave.
After being forced out of ones body – this usually taking a heavy toll on the victim mentally and physically - the widow is destroyed for good. After voluntarily leaving it behind, the widow returns to the forest to resume it’s regrettable existence.
Of course they’re only rumors… but it is whispered that some of the people in Penrose, villagers or travelers, are possessed by a widow. These widows use their hosts as a tool to leave the sad surroundings of Burglinde forest and have adapted to their new life so well no one noticed. It is said you can see if someone’s possessed by looking them in the eye, but as that is a very vague rumor, no one has quite figured out what that means… and since very little people believe it to be true, not a whole lot of thought was put into finding out.