Melchahim (Mel-Kai-ah-him)

Cursed immortals trapped in decaying bodies, the Summoners of Clan Melchahim have delved into forbidden lore in their attempts to save themselves. Flesh-sculptors graft material from unwilling sacrifices to their own bodies to cover their putrescence, while soul-wrights call on the powers of the Ethereal Plane to fuel their battlefield sorceries of destruction, protection, and summoning. 
Last of Kain’s lieutenants to be raised, and the weakest: Melchiah was an immortal cursed with a body that was nonetheless decaying; he was an immortal forever destined to be treated as inferior by his brethren. While Melchiah flayed human victims and used their skins to cover his putrescence, to him the ability to reformulate his body was a unique gift that in time could make his Clan the most powerful as well as the most numerous. For now he hid his festering resentment behind a mask of civility and unquestioning service to the Vampire cause. To do anything else would be to invite his humiliation or destruction - Kain was an unforgiving god.
From their patriarch, the Melchahim inherited the same outward weaknesses and secret potential. While in them it was still a latency into which they had yet to grow, all were filled with mingled dread and excitement about the fate that awaited them. Vain - and jealous of the beauty of the Razielim especially - the Melchahim experimented with any number of ways to strengthen their bodies and hold off the underlying decay. Scientists and alchemists laboured over strange concoctions which they force-fed or transfused into human slaves. Hundreds were sacrificed, hideously disfigured or poisoned from within, but as long as the Melchahim used only the old or sickly, this wastage was tolerated.
While some Melchahim researchers muttered resentfully among themselves, sure that if they had better stock on which to experiment they would have greater success, others felt that this was a distraction from the true answer to their plight. There was a secret that Melchiah shared with a few of his most trusted counsellors and generals, and at his command they began a new line of study: the path of necromancy.
Unbeknownst to his brothers, Melchiah had delved deeper than any other into the mysteries of the Ethereal Plane, an arid realm parallel to the one they all inhabited and populated by the lost souls of the dead. Melchiah’s researches were focused initially on trying to halt and ultimately reverse the decay which was the bane of his existence. Speaking with the dead, manipulating souls, and siphoning their life energy were all avenues of exploration for Melchiah and his chosen helpers, and while they had little success in reversing their own condition, the necromancers did discover a wealth of other mysterious arcane lore about what they came to call the Dry Lands.
Being the children and descendants of Lieutenant Melchiah, who received the lowest amount of Kain's gift, it makes the entire clan arguably the weakest of all Vampires; even so they are still incredibly dangerous towards mortals, who will often fall victims to them.  The scuttling beasts use the Necropolis as their primary territory, although they have also infested the nearby ruins similar to the stronger Zephonim who also did not expand their territory's borders. As the retreat is not naturally reachable to creatures that do not fly or swim, it is presumed that they instead had large burrows leading into this area. Melchiah's weakness has been passed on to the Melchahim, leaving them with inheriting an unusual physical frailty as well as consistently decaying flesh, their undead bodies barely capable of holding itself together. To overcome this, they must constantly hunt, and skin their victims in order to stitch the skin onto their own forms. They appear too "weak" to wear regular clothing, and will only wear loincloths and rags, which show their clan sign as is customary amongst their kind.
Their deformity forces them to limp as if lame, and their fighting styles appear clumsy and choppy and nearly zombie-like, but they show a tenacity at furiously fast burrowing. As their dark gift involves a natural affinity to the ethereal plane, and their burrowing abilities may in fact have more to do with a primitive version of plane shifting over actual burrowing strength, though this has never been proven. When killing victims, they will first drink their blood through telekinesis and then chew off the flesh and skin of the dead in order to patch themselves up.
Suspicions arose amongst the other clans that the Melchahim had been resurrecting long-dead corpses into vampires instead of creating them from still-living Humans, and this act was considered low even for the Vampiric Empire's standards. This is a ironic as the clans have been kept from knowing that the lieutenants themselves had also been raised this way.

Sapience level - Sapient
Lifespan - Immortal
Average height - Humanoid Height
Average weight - Frail human weight
Location / range Middengoth
Language Old Vampyric
Diet - Hematophage
Social unit - No
Nature - Aggressive and violent
Population status - Data Deficient
Danger rating - Lethal
Subspecies - N/A
Related species - Zephonim, Rahabim, Dumahim, Turelim, Razielim