Joywraith
A joywraith is a pale, smiling shape that drifts through the cold it carries with it. Where it passes, lamps gutter, breath fogs, and the warmth goes out of a room before anyone can name why. It does not hunt the way a wolf hunts. It simply arrives, and stays, and feeds, and the feeding is the cruelty: it draws the joy out of every living thing nearby the way cold draws heat out of a hand pressed to a window, until what is left is a flat grey numbness the victim cannot account for.
Folk who survive an encounter rarely remember it as violent. They remember it as a thinning. The smell of a grandmother's kitchen, the warmth of a first kiss, a song they loved, all of it goes distant and colorless at once, as though those memories had always belonged to someone else. Stand near a joywraith long enough and you stop being able to imagine that you were ever happy, or ever will be again.
What a joywraith is, where the first ones came from, no one living can say. They do not breed, exactly. They gather, the way frost gathers, in places thick with despair: old battlefields, asylums, the deep cells of forgotten prisons. The Folk did not make them. The Folk made the mistake of thinking they could be put to use.
The Wardens of the Veil
For most of the Concordat's history, joywraiths kept the Wizard Prison. It was, on paper, an elegant solution. A creature that needs no food, no wages, and no sleep; that cannot be bribed, bargained with, or talked past; that drains the will to resist out of any prisoner before a resistance can form. For nearly two centuries the triangular fortress on its black island was run by wraiths, and for nearly two centuries no one escaped it.
The cost was written into the building. The black pillars at the prison's foot are inscribed with the names of inmates who died of despair under the wraiths' care, not executed, simply emptied out until there was nothing left to keep living for. The hollow heart of the fortress still pulls light and hope inward and swallows them; that is two hundred years of the wraiths' appetite, soaked into the stone.
By the 1980s this had become an embarrassment the Concordat could no longer defend. Reformers argued, correctly, that housing prisoners with joywraiths was not detention but slow execution, and that a treaty body founded on surviving the cruelty of others had no business administering cruelty of its own. In 1987 the Assembly ordered the wraiths removed from the Wizard Prison and the facility handed to a human warden. The order was carried out.
The Scattering
You cannot fire a joywraith. You cannot decommission one, or store it, or kill it in any way that takes. Reduced to nothing by ordinary force, a joywraith disperses like fog and re-gathers within a few nights wherever despair is thickest. The Concordat's enforcement corps drove them out of the prison and then discovered, too late, that "out" was not a place they could keep them.
The wraiths scattered. Where they went, no one knows. A creature drawn to misery does not lack for destinations in the modern world, and a joywraith abroad in a human city, feeding quietly in a hospice or a prison or a war, is both a humanitarian horror and a catastrophic Veil risk. People notice when the warmth goes out of a place. They notice the cold, the dimming lights, the rash of suicides in a building where nothing is wrong.
The Lamplighters
The scattering landed on the desk of the Lamplighters, the Concordat enforcement corps's small standing unit for the things ordinary enforcement cannot simply kill, the dangerous entities that have to be tracked, bound, and contained rather than destroyed. Hunting joywraiths is not what they were founded to do, but in recent years it has become nearly all they do: locate the scattered wraiths, contain them, and account for the ones unaccounted for.
When the work is wraiths, a Lamplighter cell is built around the one thing that reliably stops one: present, genuine joy. They go into the field carrying it deliberately, a remembered triumph held hard in the mind, a charm that holds a moment of real love, a practitioner whose gift is to make people glad. Where ordinary enforcement carries blades, the Lamplighters carry warmth, because warmth is the only thing a joywraith will retreat from.
They are understaffed, underfunded, and quietly terrified, which is appropriate. They are also the only people in Folk society whose job is to know where the wraiths are. If they ever stop knowing, they do not advertise it.
Encountering one
A joywraith announces itself before it appears. The cold comes first, then the dimming of every light that is not held by something living, then the slow draining of the will to do anything about either. By the time the pale smiling shape resolves out of the murk, anyone nearby is already half in its grip.
A joywraith does not pursue prey that flees, not out of mercy but out of patience. It does not need to chase. Despair comes to it. It settles into a place of suffering and stays until the place is hollow.
The thing the Lamplighters fear, and the thing they exist to prevent, is the Hollowing. When a victim is too weakened to resist, a joywraith can draw out not just a memory or a mood but the whole bright animating thing that makes a person a person. What is left is alive, and breathing, and entirely empty: no want, no fear, no self. It is not death and cannot be raised as death. Only the most powerful restorative magics have ever brought a hollowed person back, and most never come back at all.
Driving one off, and being rid of one
A joywraith can be driven back, briefly, by an act of real and present joy. Not the memory of joy, the wraith feeds on those, but joy happening now: a genuine laugh, a moment of triumph or love that the wraith cannot stomach the warmth of. This is the principle every Lamplighter cell is built on, and it buys minutes, not safety.
Being permanently rid of one is far harder, because force alone never finishes the job. A joywraith reduced to 0 hit points by weapons or spells disperses into a fog of half-heard laughter and re-gathers, fully restored, within 1d4 nights, wherever sorrow is deepest nearby. The Concordat has no reliable, repeatable method of destroying one outright; "containment" is the official word for a reason. The Lamplighters trap, bind, and warehouse what they catch, and they do not pretend it is the same as a cure.
Statblock
Medium undead neutral evil
Armor Class 13
Hit Points 67 (9d8 + 27)
Speed 0 ft., fly 40 ft. (hover)
Saving Throws Wis +5, Cha +7
Skills Perception +5, Insight +5
Damage Resistances acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder, bludgeoning, piercing, slashing
Damage Immunities necrotic, poison
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 15
Languages understands the languages it knew in life but cannot speak
Challenge 5
Incorporeal Movement. The joywraith can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. It takes 5 () force damage if it ends its turn inside an object.
Aura of Despair. Nonmagical light within 30 feet of the joywraith is dimmed one step, and the air there turns cold. A creature that starts its turn within 30 feet of the wraith and can see it must succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or gain the grieving condition until the start of its next turn (a grieving creature is overcome by hopelessness: it has disadvantage on ability checks and cannot take reactions). A creature that succeeds is immune to this wraith's Aura of Despair for 24 hours.
Sustained by Sorrow. At the start of each of its turns, the joywraith regains 5 hit points if any creature within 30 feet has the grieving, frightened, or charmed condition, or is at fewer than half its hit point maximum. The wraith disperses (see Reforming) only if it starts its turn with 0 hit points and no eligible creature is in range.
Repelled by Joy. If a creature within 30 feet performs an act of genuine, present joy, real laughter, a moment of triumph or love, or a spell or effect built to evoke the same (GM discretion), the joywraith must succeed on a DC 15 Charisma saving throw or be unable to move closer to that creature, make attacks against it, or target it with any ability for 1 minute. The wraith repeats the save at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on a success. The same source of joy cannot trigger this twice.
Reforming. When reduced to 0 hit points, the joywraith is not destroyed. It disperses into a fog of half-heard laughter and re-gathers at full hit points within 1d4 nights, in the place within a few miles where despair is deepest.
Actions
Drain Joy. Melee Spell Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 18 (4d6 + 4) psychic damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 15 Charisma saving throw or have disadvantage on Charisma checks and saving throws for 24 hours as its warmest memories grow distant and cold. The effect ends early if the target receives a spell or effect that restores hit points or removes a curse.
Memory of Mirth (Recharge 5-6). The joywraith fills a 30-foot-radius sphere centered on itself with the sound of half-heard laughter. Each creature in the area must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw, taking 21 (6d6) psychic damage and being charmed by the wraith until the end of its next turn on a failure, or half as much damage and no charm on a success. A charmed creature uses its movement to walk toward the wraith by the most direct route.
The Hollowing. The joywraith targets one creature within 5 feet that is incapacitated, restrained, or unconscious, or has 0 hit points, and draws out the bright animating spark of its self. The target must succeed on a DC 15 Charisma saving throw or be reduced to 0 hit points and hollowed: it is left alive but utterly empty, with no will, memory of self, or capacity to act beyond involuntary reflex. A hollowed creature can be restored only by greater restoration, wish, or comparable magic, and only within 24 hours; after that, the spark is gone for good. This is the act the Concordat outlawed and the Lamplighters exist to prevent.
Reactions
Bittersweet Reflection. When a creature the joywraith has reduced to fewer than half its hit points hits the wraith with a melee attack, the wraith may force the attacker to make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, the attacker is overwhelmed by a sudden, unbidden happy memory and weeps for 1 round, dropping whatever it holds.
Tactics
A joywraith opens with Memory of Mirth if more than one target is in range, then closes with Drain Joy on whoever it has charmed nearest. It fights to wear a group down rather than to kill outright, because a weakened, despairing enemy feeds it (Sustained by Sorrow) and sets up the only thing it truly wants. The moment any creature is dropped, restrained, or incapacitated, the wraith disengages from everyone else to attempt The Hollowing. Stopping that, by reviving the victim, by dragging them clear, or by forcing a Repelled by Joy save, is usually the real fight.
It does not pursue creatures that flee. If reduced below half its hit points it retreats into a wall, ceiling, or any solid feature within reach and waits for the room's despair to feed it back to full.
Notes
The full count of joywraiths removed from the Wizard Prison in 1987 has never balanced against the count that left. The prison's hidden dungeon shows recent use and holds a still, shadowed pool, which strongly suggests at least one wraith was never evicted, and that someone with access is still feeding it. The Concordat does not discuss this publicly.
The Lamplighters keep an internal register of confirmed and suspected wraith sightings worldwide; it is shared with trusted local enforcement and almost no one else. The Nawadzi School for Forgotten Folk library holds the only surviving copies of the original Concordat warden protocols from the prison's wraith era, sealed, and not lent out. The Unbound have, predictably, pointed to the wraith program as the Concordat's defining hypocrisy, and to the scattering as proof the Concordat cannot clean up even its own mistakes.
A loose joywraith is, above all, a Veil problem. Humans notice the cold, the failing lights, and the despair that pools wherever a wraith has settled, and that attention is exactly what Article I exists to prevent.