What They Don't Tell You About Will o' Wisps - D&D

when traversing dark dangerous swamps it is common knowledge to never follow the lights some say they are evil spirits that died in agonizing death and now they seek to torment others in the same way others say they are tricksy face spirits who seek to direct you into a trap while others claim they are servants of dark monsters like hags and evil wizards who use them to lure adventurers right into their grasp regardless of the truth you never ever follow the lights before we go deeper let's go ahead and see first what the fifth edition monster manual says about the willow wisp it says here that willow wisps look like bobbing lantern lights in the distance though they can choose to alter their colors or wink out completely down here it continues saying that they lure unwary creatures into quicksand pits monster lairs and other dangerous places so that they can feed on the suffering of their prey and revel in their death screams yikes an evil being that falls prey to a willow wisp might become a wisp itself its woeful spirit quote lazing above its lifeless corpse like a flickering flame it does continue here saying that if an evil being perishes in a land permitted with powerful magic they can also turn into one of these monsters which is interesting they thrive in swampy bugs and bone-strewn battlements trapped in these desolate places of lost hope and memory will a wisp lure other creatures towards dismal fates and feed on their misery down here he goes on to say that willow wisps sometimes make relationships with evil creatures the wisp draws the creatures to their deaths by the hands of monsters while the wisp itself feeds on their misery now here we have the character sheet and the first thing we can notice is how difficult they are to hit they have a 19 to their armor class which is wholly based on their outrageous dexterity make no mistake willow wisps are really really fast they're also immune to lightning and poison with a bunch of resistances to a lot of elements they also resist non-magical weapons willow wisps can speak but they sound like faint distant whispers with this ability they can basically finish off a dying character in order to regain hit points which makes sense considering that they feed off the emotional traumas of dying people they can move through objects as if they weren't there and they can change the brightness of their colors their only form of attack here is a lightning shock though they don't really explain to us how they can make this happen electricity just seems kind of random based on the info that we're given like why is it electricity and lastly we're told they can magically turn invisible though i should mention that their ability to turn invisible is actually not magical at all you can't detect an invisible willow wisp with detect magic for example nor can you dispel its invisibility with a dispelled magic spell the willow wisp is simply naturally transparent and when it turns off its light it is basically invisible but we'll talk more about that in just a moment first let's go ahead and talk about what the monster manual does not tell you about this creature the first thing that i want to talk about is how different this monster sheet is from the previous editions in the 5th edition monster manual the willow wisp is only immune to poison and lightning and the only reason that it is immune to even poison in here is because they consider the monster an undead though keep in mind that the willow west was actually never undead in any of the previous editions this is actually new the thing about dnd is that the world is fairly malleable when you have gods that can turn you from one thing to another when you have wizards able to cast wishes when you have the power of magic at your command things fluctuate a lot the reality is there are actually different kinds of willow wisps what you have here are the undead variety the ones that spawn magically from evil souls that perish in agony but they're also naturally born willow wisps and then there's the fey willow wits which are also very different most of them behave in basically the same way but might have different properties here and there that differentiate them this new variety of willow wisp is actually quite tame weak actually the real ones the fae ones the natural ones those are actually completely immune to magic this is from first edition quote while any weapon will harm a willow wisp most spells do not affect it the only spells which can affect the creature are protection from evil magic missile and maze end quote that refers to the very high level maze spell by the way now this is from 2nd edition quote those attacking a willow wisp with any form of physical weapon are able to inflict damage normally persons making use of magical attacks however will find their powers almost ineffective against them as a rule the only spells which have any effect on the will of west are protection from evil magic missiles and maze end quote and this by the way just continues this is third edition and you can see here it says pretty clearly on the stat sheet immunity to magic and then down here it says quote a willow wisp is immune to most spells or spell-like abilities that allow spell resistance except once again magic missile or maze end quote both the fey willow wisp and the natural willow wisp have this perfect immunity to magic the undead one from fifth edition does not describing a willow wisp is difficult because they are there but also are not there they are also different somewhat depending on the type that you're talking about obviously sometimes they can tangibly affect you with shocks but then they can also just go through objects as if they weren't even there they are immune to magic which is also interesting because it baffles the mind how could a literal existing entity be simply just not affected by elements or magic of any kind is most bizarre an ancient elven manuscript described the willow wisp as quote a lattice of information with no material substance a scroll with no parchment much as is a symbol or a cleric's glyph of wording it is crystalline energy self-sustaining and potentially immortal in the quote now this description describes perfectly the face style willow wisp now like i said there are three types of willow wisps this is the type of willows that i like to describe as a fey willow wisp and we'll talk about why just in a bit later but basically this willow wisp is just floating information floating energy what makes this particular willow whis so interesting though is that it is the evolution of an already existing monster a monster that you just don't get to see anymore a monster that appeared in first edition and then basically just disappeared from the face of dnd that is the bogart a bogart is a monster that has dozens and dozens of forms imagine like a sort of shapeshifter except that it can't really control any shape for too long and as such it constantly shifts through forms and shapes they are vulnerable to normal weapons but completely immune to any kind of magic except as you can imagine magic missiles and the maze spell see the face style willow wisp and the bogart are actually one and the same so now the reason why i call it the face style willow wisp is because bogarts to me seem pretty faders never explicitly described as being fae is just a name that i'm using for it to really set it apart from the others in any case to better explain how this all works i will have to go through reproduction note once again that this is specifically for the face style willow wisp the other whips will work differently now quote there are three genders of willow wisp to all intents and purposes identical in appearance powers and behavior all are required for the production of the offspring the reproductive act itself takes place usually deep within an impenetrable marsh necessary for the protection of the participants the three willow wisp will draw close together and apparently merge their forms together becoming one the event is over in a moment almost immediately the tripartite with a wisp flares to intolerable brightness then splits once more into three left behind is an infant bogart if one wished to destroy a willow wisp now would be the ideal time since the three parents are in a severely weakened state after the meeting mating appears to take place in cycles adult willow whips congregate rarely but when they do they tend to mate three or sometimes more times within a period of about a week when the bogarts are born the parents share the nursing chores after the bulgars are capable of hunting the parents leave them to fend for themselves the bogarts however tend to stay together i know not whether for social reasons or simply because three can hunt more efficiently than one until they reach maturity end quote the bogart once it is born it is born in the form of a rough humanoid but without any distinguishing features no telling gender or any form of descriptor really just a rough shape of a humanoid it'll grow rapidly to the point that within two weeks it is the size of a two-year-old human during all this time the willowist will feed the baby bogart energy as nursing once it reaches two years of age the bogart will develop electrical powers that will allow it to hunt at which point the willow wisp will abandon it in order for it to fend for itself so for those first two years of life the bogart will look like an odd just non-descript humanoid but then at the two-year mark once it is left for its own to hunt it'll start to randomly without any input and without any volition or warning start to transform into a wisp the only momentarily it'll turn into a wisp and then back to its normal shape this is the spark that starts its maturity after a bit it'll go back to being a bogart but instead of turning back into a rough nondescript humanoid shape it'll come back as a shape of an individual that it has seen or met and this will keep on happening over and over again every time this cycle happens the bogart will get bigger and bigger or rather the transformation makes him bigger and bigger then at the age of 5 the bogart will make its final transition to an adult with a wisp form where in a big flash of burning light it'll transform into an adult willow wisp permanently quote when the bogart shifts from corporeal form to non-corporeal form like for example from humanoid form to will wisp form the body of the creature literally disintegrates the position of every atom in that body is remembered by the non-corporeal creature the matter that actually made up the body is converted into energy some of this tremendous energy yield is consumed fueling the non-corporeal being of the creature the vast majority is channeled off to the negative energy plane it is this close connection with the negative material plane that grants the willow wisp immunity to most magical spells only those that disturb the actual non-material lattice of the willow wisps existence can damage it when the reverse change occurs the body is rebuilt following the template in the mind of the bogart the actual matter required for the body is recreated using energy withdrawn from the negative material plane end quote though keep in mind that once the bogart makes the final adult transition it is final and it'll never have a bogart shape again from that point on all you would see is a will a wisp so there that's what i call the face style willow wisp but then we have what i call the natural willow wisps which are formed by nature itself and are for the most part not really magical at all this is how these ones look without the light sometimes similar to a kind of spore quote a willowist body is not a single solid mast but rather a cluster of 12 to 15 gas filled nodes stuck together in a spherical shape by a transparent spongy substance these clear nodes are covered with porous membranes that pulse as the wisp breeds end quote keep in mind that it looks like it has a color here but they're supposed to be transparent they are basically invisible naturally now these willows feed off of both natural gas and emotional energy but before i go any further i should mention how generally will a wisp feed because we haven't really touched on that on the fifth edition monster manual we were told that they feed on fear and despair and that they drink the agony of a last breath and savor the sensation of life going out in creatures eyes it sounds pretty macabre but it is literally how they feed but unless fantasy terms will wisp feed on the theory of electrical activity given off by the brains of panic stricken individuals as they realize that death is inescapable this is why they like to bring adventurers right into traps like quicksands because they are slow and it prolongs the suffering of the victim which gives us more food for the wisp this is why many willowists actually live in graveyards they simply go invisible and subtly feed off of the anguish and warning of those that visit the place now in the second edition monster manual they wrote quote it seems certain that the unusual environment found in bugs 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 end quote the reality is that whittle wisps actually also feed off of the putrid gases that are found on the swamp or at least the ones i call the natural willow wisps do it's hard to tell exactly how much of this actually carries over to all willowys but i'll carry on quote a wisp inhales the gas formed by decomposing plant and animal matter and process it in several ways it expels some of the gas to propel itself through the air with great precision and speed while absorbing the rest of the gas to fuel its biological functions digesting gas in this way produces a byproduct that ignites a heatless light when it comes into contact with air when a willow wisp exhales this byproduct flares up on the surface of its skin creating its flickering flames and the faintest smell of sulfur the wisp's alien digestion process also results in an internal buildup of electricity which the willow wisp uses as an attack form end quote this explains everything from why a wheel of wisp uses electricity to attack to how can it float and produce light to why it needs to feed off of the electricity in people's brains to why it lives in the swamp now this particular type of wisp has these membranes called nodol membranes and those contain tiny multipurpose sensory organs which the wisp can use to see and hear these nodes are created at a rate of once a month and they are produced at the core and they will push the other nodes outward the exposed nodes will age and tear quickly eventually they will deflate and fall off the creature are also at a rate of once a month if the wisp is overall healthy and feeds daily for at least half a year it'll then grow three extra notes on the outside of its body which will then break off together and form a completely new willow wisp which is how these ones reproduce the new wisp will develop more nodes over the next two weeks until it matures into an adult sized wisp in this form there is actually no limit to how many times this wisp can reproduce in this way though we cannot control the process at all it is really just a matter of how much food there is in the environment and whether or not the swamp can support more wisp if the wisp is fitting properly then it just reproduces now what's interesting is that for this natural willow wisp each single node is actually almost its own entity each node can think for itself although they die if separated from the main core a wisp can actually think with all of these mines at once and together and this gives this type of wisp an advanced intelligence which allows it to perform cunning tricks and plans in order to trick adventures into traps further since the original notes of a newborn wisp came from the parent the baby will have all of the memories thoughts and personalities as the progenitor which means all willow wisps from the same area are basically the same they all have the same memories and think of themselves as a single creature this is why willowists from the same area tend to work together because they see themselves as basically the same creature however serious rivalries can occur if willow wisps from different areas come into the territory and fighting between wisps can occur in those circumstances it is not unlikely to see wisps of different colors representing different strains fighting one another now these natural wisps do need to eat or they break down and die and they need both natural gases and negative emotions to eat and thrive if they have no trauma to feed off of they can only survive for up to three months on those gases alone but if they have no natural decomposing gases but all the trauma that they could ever want they would die in about a week the gases are more important than trauma it seems a single wisp requires at least one mile of swamp to sustain itself the graveyard of a small town is also enough to sustain a single wisp with the fumes and the gases of the decomposing bodies helping it lastly these willow wisps also need to sleep at least for a few hours a day these are the ones that you will find coming out of hollow trees or from caves when you pass by so as you can see there are tons of differences between all of the different kinds of willow wisps the bogart variation are magical and spectacular with transformations and fail-like wonder they are literally just bubbles of information completely in material literal and it is made out of light then there is the more natural wisps who have really no magic to them they they work as a natural biofunguy thing with bioprocesses that are very well explained and then there's the undead version of the fifth edition monster manual which are more like souls of the departed that are stuck in the world cursed at the end of the day what we do know that is shared among all of them is that they do feed off of agony and terror we know that they can turn invisible if they wish it and we know that they communicate with each other through a form of morse code by blinking in and out with their light and then they can communicate with adventurers through dark whispers and ominous telepathy we know that you should never follow them because they are universally bad for your health if you're ever in doubt about which one you're fighting i would recommend just casting magic missiles that has never failed anyone before i would like to personally thank my patreon supporters sac bowel ricardo fan barry maskant 5e magic shop daniel umar moroccan johnson 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monster was basically tied with the willow whisp so i'll be using that for the next one but then after that video i'll make another poll so that you guys can decide what's gonna be next after that but anyways guys thank you so much for watching thank you for being here thank you for liking and commenting and i'll see you all next time bye

Channel: MrRhexx

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Id: _x8e1LyBiqE

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020