Lychwick Conclave

Lychwick Conclaves are said to be born where grief is left to rot: in forgotten family crypts, collapsed graveyards, and the niches of necromancers who bargain with bereavement. Folklore tells of a candle-seller named Brynvel who taught villagers to set out votive lights on All-Souls' Night; when he perished in a plague, his grief-bound candles multiplied and began seeking others' mourning. Over generations, the phenomenon coalesced into the dead-voice clusters called Lychwick, which feed on sorrow and the last breath of remembrance. Scholars such as the antiquarian Rinnet Mear have cataloged their habits: they prefer still, enclosed places and will drift toward open windows when a home holds fresh mourning. They do not eat flesh as other undead do, but they drain resolve—those around them grow listless, confessing secrets and abandoning watches. Several burial cults, notably the Veilwardens of Harrowfen, treat Lychwicks as omens: to see one at a funeral implies that a person's name will be forgotten within a year unless special rites are performed.

Imagine a cluster of small, human-wax candles, each about 3–6 inches tall, their stubs irregular, drips frozen mid-run. The flames are thin blue-white tongues that whisper outward as translucent curls of smoke shaped like syllables. The wax is pallid, veined with tarnished gray like old bone, and each candle's wick seems threaded with hairlike filaments that pulse when the Conclave murmurs. Occasionally the wax reveals faint impressions—thumbprints, the hint of closed eyelids—from the memories they hold. The entire swarm measures roughly 3–4 feet across when gathered; against a human figure it drifts at about chest height and can slip through narrow keyholes and broken windowpanes.