Dark-dwellers
Dark-dwellers (also called Efnysien's Children) are the bastard children of Efnysien as a result of his mating with a corpse—they were born from her womb, hundreds and thousands of them, and have stalked places of death since, across both the Unworld and the Anchored Realm. Because of their father, their origin is the Unworld, but they are also linked with the mysterious and elusive realm of the dead. They are monstrous creatures that haunt battlefields and places of death. As their name suggests, they generally come out only at night, as they are sensitive to the sun. Sunlight does not kill them, but it does weaken their abilities, energy levels, and strength. They feed on souls as well as blood and flesh. They generally stay away from populated places, as they fear fire, light, and laughter. They are about the size of a person, and they crawl/walk hunched over. They have pure black skin that blends into the shadows. Their eyes are red. They have many sharp teeth and claws. They do kill and eat people, but generally they prefer to feed on the already deceased.
There is a distinctive stench left in the wake of dark-dwellers—blood crackling on flames, charred dogwood, smelted iron.
They are repelled by bonfires, usually ones imbued with magical protection. They can slip through the portals easier than other species, being mostly made of shadow. On Spirit Nights, they can traverse between the realms very easily. They are drawn from the Unworld into the Anchored Realm by the smell of blood, death, and chaos.
Dark-dwellers radiate dangerous levels of chaotic energy. Their very touch could, if one was exposed long enough, begin to devour the flesh, eroding it all away in a wash of pure chaos, pure destruction.
Tali's description of the dark-dwellers: They were hideous, garish things—as black and impermanent as shadow, hairless, misshapen. They moved in loping crawls, hissing as they scurried to rip apart the bards limb from limb, their mis-angled bodies moving with ungainly speed. The sharpness of their claws flashed through the dim light, beady black and razor-lined. Their nails were at least three inches long and half as thick, the jewel-like surface covered in tiny, near-invisible razors. -Blood of the Otherworlds, A Quest for Sleeping Dragons: Book One
Genetic Ancestor(s)
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