The Beast Fears Fire - Wisps

Wisps [Disaster 2-3]

Impulse - Deny passage, lead astray.   Starting at the end.  Whatever they start as, evil spirits always end up as wisps, tiny glowing motes of memory and resentment, each particle grouping with the others out of a sense that they comprised a single being, once.  It can take centuries for a spirit to degrade to this point, or it can take weeks, depending on the personality of the spirit and the method they used to remain conscious.  By the time the spirit has degraded into wisps, it's not really capable of meaningful communication or recalling any of its knowledge or anything about its (their) identity.  Individual wisps can separate from the the main group and continue functioning independantly, but tend not to last very long.  Wisps have enough cunning to recognize dangerous features and situations and lure people into them in hopes of bringing them to grief.

Harm - Moderator Hard Moves.  Wisps try to get you killed.  They hang around dangerous terrain features (swamps, rocky passes, ravines, rivers) or in the vicinity of flesh-hungry beasties (many of whom recognize the potential boon that wisps represent and play along), and try to convince people to wander into the teeth of these dangers.  If it works, the wisps congregate to feed on fear, desperation, and the psychic energies that release upon death.  A well fed wisp colony can limp along indefinitely, and, at this point, self-preservation is one of the two things a wisp has.

The other thing it has is enough cunning to realize that most of the time, people are going to recognize a wisp for what it is.  Wisps can change their color, their brightness, become invisible if they want, spread themselves out over a large area, flash in patterns, control which individual wisp is lit and which is dark, they can resemble little flames or crafted sprites (little balls of light), but what they cannot do is undo all those warning tales about them.  Occasionally, they will trick a person into following them, sure, either because the person is desperate, ignorant or believes an ally is sending a sprite to help them.  Most of the time, though, it isn't that easy.  Small children get lots of warnings not to follow lights in the dark without verifying their identity, and wisps are just clever enough to take that into account.  They are expert herders, preying on the knowledge people have of them and indecision, or, failing that, they lead monsters right to you.

The Blue Light Special
When wisps are active in an area you are trying to travel, face Disaster.
On a Hit, you manage to skirt the dangers the wisps had planned for you, but the Moderator can have them keep harassing you with a Soft Move.
On a Hard Hit, you can choose to turn the tables on the wisps, lose them completely, or turn the tables on any monster the wisp was leading to you.
On a Miss, you done goofed.  Moderator Hard Move.


Shine an everloving light on me.
Wisps aren't exactly corporeal, so unless you are a breaker or have some charms about, swinging at them is not going to help you.  They are pretty suceptible to will and even a non-practitioner can cause a couple wisps to wink out with some focus and desire to do so.  That said, they aren't completely defenseless, and screwing up when facing off against their Malevolence is badly disorienting and results in the same outcome as missing disaster against them.

Depending on what kind of evil spirit they were before, destroying individual wisps can cause their energy to crystalize into one of the seven supernatural minerals.  For this reason, there are people who specifically hunt them, usually shadow witches or folks who are adept at spritecraft (you can craft sprites specifically to kill wisps, and, in doing so, the added energy makes it all the more likely that the wisp will produce crystals) and are good at navigation.  There is the occasional story of some villain who arranges for people to form into wisps after death in order to farm the minerals off of them, but this seems... Impractical, if not unpracticable.