Great wight

A great wight was an especially powerful wight that acted as a leader of lesser wights.
==Description==
Great wights were significantly more powerful, hardy, intelligent, and disciplined than other wights. While some scholars claimed they were also much larger than the average wight, it was not necessarily possible to discern a great wight from a regular wight at a glance, although certain signs made it obvious. These included how they used weapons and armor and how they spoke and behaved. Their bodies were also more intact or otherwise in better condition than the bodies of the average wight, although this was because a more intact body simply increased the likelihood that a wight would have the strength to become a great wight.
==Personality==
Great wights had more control over their dark urges than did a regular wight, and also the intelligence to strategize, speak cogently, and make use of magic weapons and armor. They were also capable of experiencing and displaying emotions, such as with a hearty evil laugh at the expense their victims.
They generally lay dormant in their tombs until disturbed by intruders. The were also antagonistic toward any other powerful wights.
==Combat==
When they detected intruders in their barrows, great wights equipped themselves using weapons and armor and would lure enemies into traps, perhaps by using treasure as bait. They were rarely encountered alone, preferring to fight with a mighty retinue of wights and half-wights.
They were much more resistant to turn undead than average wights.
==Ecology==
Great wights were leaders and tacticians among leaser wights, who deferred to their authority and would seek them out for aid when threatened. It was believed by scholars that normal wights were unable to disobey the commands of a great wight. Any given group of wights did not necessarily include a great wight, and there was never more than one.
Any wight could in theory become a great wight by draining enough life force from living victims. Wights became stronger and more in control of their mental faculties as their absorbed more life energy, and a wight that drained a large quantity of life energy in a given month could become sufficiently energized to ascended to a leadership role among its fellows. That said, true great wights often had drained more than this minimum threshold by a factor of seven. Any wight that achieved this feat then went on a killing spree, eradicating all other nearby wights who had also absorbed a great deal of life energy in order to remove all rivals. Once this slaughter was completed, this wight became a true great wight.
==History==
Some of the best sources of primary information about great wights came from Trykan the Wanderer—who once observed a great wight beating a rival into submission—and Bishop Sherganil of Waterdeep—who lived to tell the tale of a great wight's shocking resilience against his efforts to turn it.
As of the mid–13 century DR, there existed a common misconception that great wights could only arise from corpses of the nobility. This was propagated by the scholar Jilda the Sage, who further claimed that the great wight must have had royal blood and been a follower of a lawful good deity, before falling from grace before their death. While there was some truth that great wights tended to have been nobles in life, this was because the corpses of nobles tended to be better preserved and therefore stronger than the rotted bodies of commonfolk.
==Notable Great Wights==
* Vinjarek, the Mound King, who dwelt in the Tombs of Deckon Thar and threatened the peace of Luruar in the late 15 century DR.
* An unnamed male great wight once commanded a horde of wights in the catacombs under Waterdeep sometime before the mid-to-late 14 century DR. He was slain by allies of Bishop Sherganil after the Bishop had driven off the horde.
==Appendix==
===Appearances===
===References===
Category:Undead