The Waking Nightmare
- Intent: To Create A Wraith Species
- Image Credit: XX
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: N/A
- Name: Dread Wraiths
- Designation: Semi-Sentient
- Origins: Dathomir
- Average Lifespan: 150 years
- Estimated Population: Rare
- Description: The specters, outside their ghastly appearance and skin tone, have red-glowing orbs where their eyes once were. Thier long white hair, is stringy and vine-like, while at times it could me matted or displaying an image of a spider web.
- Breathes: Type I, Type II, Type III, Type IV
- Average Height of Adults: 1.2 meters (4 feet)
- Average Length of Adults: N/A
- Skin color: Grey
- Hair color: White
- Distinctions: Each Dread Wraith is female, a wraith born from the restless dead of a Nightsister. With white, stringy vine-like hair and a grey hue to their skin tone, they now have red orbs in their eye sockets, a testimony to the evil they possess along with absence of the green spirit ichor associated with the Nightsisters and their magic. Along any flesh that is exposed, grey like hairs in various lengths protrude from the fleshy pores, and their lips are cracked and ruined, exposing rotted teeth. Thier entire body is slightly engulfed by a black like mist, that can be mistaken for a shadow and moves in tandem with the wraith.
- Races: N/A
- Force Sensitivity: Force Dead
- Will Sappers: The Dread Wraiths possess a haunting and horror aspect that surrounds them like the black mist that engulfs them. With their appearance and dreadful shrieks and ear-piercing howls and festering smells of rot, they will sap the will and courage of any unfortunates to be ensnared in their presence.
- Disappearing Acts: The Dread Wraiths can disappear and reappear, the later in different places from their original starting point.
- Lullaby of the Damned: Once believed a myth, now in fact reality, the wraiths have a calm soothing tone to a lullaby they are known to sing. The song itself has a peaceful and calming feeling that most species find alluring, and upon hearing it could potentially put one in a state of hypnotic bliss.
- Sharp Claws / Teeth: Dread Wraiths have extremely sharp claws, for cutting and ripping through flesh, and most materials in the known galaxy. This makes it efficient for them to get to the one food source they crave, livers from other species. The teeth are designed to tear and rip through flesh, like the coveted liver, with each tooth in the monstrous mouth being serrated along the sides like some edged blades, and a sharpened tip point made for piercing into flesh, and most materials.
- Exposure To Sunlight: The Dread Wraiths are nocturnal specters, coming out only after the setting of the sun. Under the full weight of the sun, any wraith caught in the ultraviolet rays of sunbeams will destroy them instantaneously.
- Low Intelligence: Dread Wraiths are low in the intelligence department. Outside of solving low menial problems and basic tactics to attract prey, they are not very bright. Can be easily fooled or tricked by a well-rounded individual's ability to outsmart or outthink them.
- Blinded By the Lights: The red orbs in their eye sockets, having replaced their original sets, are extremely sensitive to bright artificial lights. Even just a few fleeting seconds of artificial light can render them temporarily blind, whilst remaining in the beam, and prolonged exposure can have long suffering effects; including up to permanent blindness.
- Energy / Plasma Discomforts: The fact the wraiths appear to have a ghostly, ethereal-like body, which in fact is the case; and thus, they can be destroyed by energy weapons (i.e. blasters, energy bows) and plasma weapons (i.e. lightsaber blades) more easily than most sentients.
- Diet: Carnivore (Livers Only {beast and non-beast alike})
- Communication: Howls and Screeches
- Technology level: N/A
- Religion/Beliefs: N/A
- General behavior:
- Nocturnal: The Dread Wraiths are nocturnal; living under the eyes of the moon and dancing under the stars in the darkness of night, but are shunned by the light of day, and the wickedness of the sun's rays. They hunt at night, luring their prey to doom.
- Solitary Apparitions: Dread Wraiths live in complete solitary, away from each other and away from anything resembling the living; for the exception when they crave the desire to feed. Even though they are an abomination of their former lives, they hold a symbol of vanity for their appearance and what they have been warped into.
- Huntresses: The wraiths, when in the throes of hunger, are expert hunters. Outside singing their attractive lullabies and their heart stopping appearance, they can track a prey as good as any apex hunter. Because they desire the liver for its high concentration of protein and fat, they will hunt and eat anything they can catch.
The Dread Wraiths have only been haunting the planet of Dathomir shortly after Battle of Dathomir in 20 BBY and grew more in population during the occupation of Dathomir by Imperial forces during The Imperial Era. It is unknown what caused the restless spirits of the dead Nightsisters to rise out of their burial pods or from the hardened surface of the planet but rise they did; and from rising of the dead, a myth was born.
There is a myth, told among the Covens and Clans of the Nightsisters, that Dathomir, the Mother of All, wept her tears at the death of so many of her children, that each tear drop carried within it a curse to all who walk among her surface in the form of the rising of these undead, the Dread Wraiths. It is said, through this myth, that each Dread Wraith that scours the planet was born from one single drop of tear. Further to enhance this myth, it is also believed that when a Nightsister dies by the hands of an intruder or interloper, that Mother Dathomir sheds a tear for her slain child, and the dead Nightsister is reborn as a Dread Wraith.
Though the Dread Wraiths were once Nightsisters in life, and thoroughly believed they are the children of Dathomir herself, the undead see no difference between intruders and living Nightsisters; to them, including the beasts that roam the planet, all are sources of food to be consumed. The Dread Wraiths do not consume the flesh of their kills, rather instead they seek the high, rich protein livers from the carcasses. They will rip, shred, and tear through flesh, rupturing bones and rib cages to get their hands and teeth on their precious meal.
The wraiths are scattered all across Dathomir, though they tend to be found haunting sites associated with death, pain, and suffering. Both ancient and abandoned sites of burial pods seem to be their most attracted areas, as well as places of battle where the stench of so many deaths call to them like cold whispers, or places of down and wrecked ships that resulted in the loss of lives. Even burial pod sites that are still in use by local villages has been known to attract the wraiths, resulting in more interactions between the ghostly apparitions and the Nightsister Covens and Clans.
