skopen
"You ask, child, why we still speak of the skopen when they are long gone? We tell stories about the ancient skopen so we never forget this dark chapter of our history and make sure never to repeat it. Unlike the humans and @orcs which seem to constantly produce ogres and wendigo with every generation." -Nambra Jocan, wood elf huntress
"Indeed, Nambra speaks wisely. The skopen are no more, and if one did show up, we would surely protect you." -Elwin Daexina, skopen masquerading as a normal wood elf hunterThe proper name for an elves afflicted with Cannibal Sickness is skotadpein (singular and plural), but it is commonly shortened to "skopen" (singular and plural). Pretty much only stodgy scroll heads still use the term "skotadpein." Once very common, after some major purges in the Red Era, skopen are now all but unheard of in modern times, or so elves would like outsiders to think.
Transmission & Vectors
Like others with Cannibal Sickness, skopen pass a taint on to their offspring.
Most ogres and wendigo are eager to indoctrinate their children in the family practice and will feed their children mortal flesh almost as soon as they are weaned. Skopen are different.
Many skopen choose not to raise their sons and daughters as skopen. Other skopen avoid reproducing altogether or sometimes even slay their children as infants.
A child of a skopen who has never tasted mortal flesh is going to probably be a bit wiry and agile for an elf and have somewhat above average senses which can be a plus. Such a child is going to probably be skittish and have trouble adapting to slow time relative to average elves which is a social handicap, but on the whole a child with "skopen taint" can probably lead a more or less normal life, most likely completely ignorant of his or her heritage.
Note, such a child growing up might have a morbid curiosity for wondering what mortal flesh tastes like and if as an adult they engage in cannibalism even once, they are probably going to go full skopen.
Symptoms
Relative to ogres, wendigo and other mutant cannibals, skopen symptoms are far less obvious to casual observers meaning that skopen can often hide in plain sight longer than other cannibals.
Because the physical changes of skopen are so subtle, in ancient times when skopen were more common, a lot of innocent elves were put to death for the crime of cannibalism because their physical appearance was slightly different from the elf norm.
In a way, skopen are elfier than normal elves. Relative to humans, elves have greater speed, agility, and more acute senses. Relative to normal elves, skopen have greater speed, agility and more acute senses.
Skopen that have been skopen a very long time do gain some body mass, but this is much less pronounced than with ogres. The change is subtle enough that a skopen could masquerade a normal elf who simply excercises a lot.
Skopen are more durable than normal elves, but this is hard to see until the skopen survives a wound which would kill or cripple a normal elf, but this could still be written off as a normal elf with dumb luck.
Skopen that have been skopen a long time, have somewhat larger ears and larger noses than normal elves. They also have unsettling stares, also known colloquially as "crazy eyes." That said, a large minority of non-cannibal elves manifest these traits.
A skopen's senses get sharper as they get older becoming supernaturally good at detecting mild sensory stimuli. A few even have hearing that is so good they can mimic the sonar of a bat or kalazotz letting them function perfectly in total darkness.
The downside is that skopen are vulnerable to sensory overload, often being stunned by unexpected loud noises, bright flashes, or pungent odors. Again this is something that normal elves occasionally suffer from giving a skopen plausible deniability (as long as they don't demonstrate anything supernatural to onlookers like having sonar).
A lot of skopen find employment as warriors because they are so fast, agile, and accurate with their strikes. To normal elves, this is very impressive but plausible.
More experienced skopen can move with obvious supernatural speeds for short bursts moving so fast as to appear to be a blur. No ordinary elf witnessing this can rationalize that what he is seeing is normal which is why skopen normally only use this power when moving in for the kill.
While it seems that skopen only gain beneficial physical mutations and no baneful mutations, skopen do suffer a terrible downside: madness.
Any Scarterran that regularly consumed mortal flesh can easily fall into madness but for a skopen, madness is certain.
Normal elves smoothly transition between "slow time" and "fast time" as circumstances require. Skopen rapidly lose their ability to enjoy or properly process slow time and often develop nervous twitches. They often tap their feet impatiently during slow moments and otherwise show psychological signs of boredom common to humans but rare among elves.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Different skopen have different forms of madness based on their life experiences and personality but it is fairly common for skopen to develop split personalities and it is extremely common for skopen to develop hallucinations. Often skopen believe they hear the voices of former victims whispering at them.
Sometimes skopen are driven to suicide or the indirect suicide of engaging in highly risky behavior.
Treatment
Much like with ogres, Purification magic can temporarily suppress an skopen's unholy appetite but to cure Cannibal Sickness an afflicted needs to have genuine remorse, be subjected to Purification ●●●●●, and then go on a lengthy and dangerous quest while resisting the urge to eat mortal flesh the whole time.
While it is rare for an ogre to be redeemed, it is all but unheard of for a Skopen to be cured in this fashion.
The regimen to cure Cannibal Sickness was developed by humans in the Third Age. In the Second Age and early Third Age, most elves would choose to "treat" skopen by giving them an arrow in the neck. If a modern elf encounters a skopen, he or she will probably choose to use the old school treatment.
Prevention
The best way to not get Cannibal Sickness is to not engage in cannibalism. The same goes for skopen transformation. An elf that doesn't eat mortal flesh will never turn into an skopen. The more mortal flesh an elf eats, the more likely his or her transformation is, especially if they are eating the flesh of other elves.
History
During the Second Age when elves were the dominant race on Scarterra, cannibalism was considered a severe taboo and a criminal act among nearly every tribe and nation.
But with so many millions of elves in the world, inevitably some of them fell to practice of cannibalism either out of perversion or desperation for food. Skotadpein were rare but were fairly well documented and they were aggressively hunted.
During the Second Unmaking with most farms in ruins and harsh winters causing game to be scarce, unprecedented numbers of elves had to turn to cannibalism simply to survive. It was at this time that the term "Skotadpein" fell out of favor and "skopen" became the normal word used.
At the start of the Third Age there were over a dozen different elf tribes but by the Feudal Era, there are only four.
A lot of these tribes fought each other or the emerging humans as there was an attempt worldwide to purge Skopen from the elven ranks. Also, a lot of innocent elves were put to death by humans or other elf groups on spurious accusations of being skopen.
Humans were often especially bad at recognizing the symptoms of skopen and some didn't care, retroactively saying "oh yeah, they were all skopen" to justify acts of genocide.
That is not to say every lesser elf tribe was wiped out by fighting skopen or on accusations of being skopen. Once it became clear that they were living in a human world, a lot of the smaller tribes chose to assimilate into the wood elves, dark elves, or grey elves, and these groups were happy to take in some new blood. A few elf tribes got along with the humans very well (wink wink) and the end result was full humans with very mild elfin features.
Since the start of the Feudal Era, skopen are all but gone. The four remaining elf nations generally live in food rich environments. In the unlikely event they face a famine, all the elf nations have back up plans in place. If dark elves or grey elves face temporary food problems, they can cut the food rations of their human slaves or peasants, respectively.
If wood elves or sea elves face temporary food problems, they can increase the intensity of their foraging actions and turn to edible but poor tasting local flora and fauna that they usually turn their noses up at.
savage skopen by Eron12 with Hero Forge
Sometimes bands of survivors were willing to turn a blind eye to cannibalism in their midst but other times elves and skopen warred on each other even as the Void demons and Faceless remained a threat.
After the Unmaking drew to a close, food was still relatively scarce for the era nicknamed the The Little Unmaking. Entire intergenerational families of skopen were fairly well entrenched.
Cultural Reception
Most modern elves claim skopen are a thing of the ancient past and that skopen no longer exist at all.
Once in a while, elf societies produce the occasional serial killer or psychopath that indulges in cannibalism for the sheer perverse thrill of it, but this is usually swept under the rug.
Grey elves and wood elves usually take it completely for granted that skopen are unwanted relics of the past. They are far too civilized and moral now to produce skopen.
Once in a while these elf societies will accidentally produce a sociopathic serial killer that is also a skopen. Not only are skopen's mutations subtle, it makes it even harder to identify a skopen pretending to be a normal elf because no one is looking for skopen.
If a skopen's dark activities are exposed, elven authority figures will often execute the skopen as a murderer but will willfully ignore evidence of cannibalism in order to save face or out of true denial because everyone knows skopen are long gone.
The dark elves are slightly less naïve about the threat of skopen in their midst, at least among themselves. They would never admit the presence of skopen to outsiders.
A few sadistic slave owners take delight in eating the flesh of disobedient slaves. When exposed, dark elf nobles will often arrange "accidents" for these skopen. Some have gone as far as to "accidentally" give the skopen's slaves access to weapons while also slipping a mild poison to the skopen to slow them down a bit. The authorities will then execute the "treacherous slaves" and sweep the whole affair under the rug.
Dark elf society values magical prowess greatly. Some dark elf mages opt to become skin changer witches as a means of personal advancement.
According to Kahdisterian law, this is not only maleficium but this is a capital offense.
As long as the witches are useful agents, dark elf leaders will willingly turn a blind eye to the depredations of skin changers in their midst, but the second they have a public failure or their appetites become a liability, the skin changers are exposed for what they are and executed.
Though it is not unheard of for very cunning dark elf skin changers to hide their extra-cirricular cannibalism entirely and these individuals can advance very far politically...until they eventually become too arrogant and make a crucial mistake which given their incipient madness, is inevitable.
Among sea elves, skopen might not exist at all.
Sea elves are pretty good at finding food even in lean times and their small population is so tight knit it would be near impossible for a sea elf to engage in cannibalism clandestinely.
The sea elf dialect of Elven has completely forgotten the words "skopen" and "skotadpein" and they now use the terms Mermish word for "cannibal" if the subject comes up at all.
What about half-elves?
half-human half-elves are essentially a coin flip whether they manifest traits of ogres or skopen. A half-elf cannibal that was raised by humans is roughly 70% likely to manifest ogre traits rather than skopen traits, even if the half-elf never met an actual ogre. Likewise a half-elf cannibal that was raised by elves is roughly 70% likely to manifest skopen traits rather than ogre traits, even if the half-elf never met an actual skopen. A second generation half-elf cannibal with one cannibal parent and one normal parent is 90% likely to manifest the mutations of the cannibal parent and 10% likely to manifest the hypothetical mutations of the non-cannibal parent. In the unlikely event a half-elf mule engages in cannibalism, the end result is anyone's guess. The mutations could come from either, both or neither side of the mule's heritage. All the problems that half-elves have fitting in are magnified nine times over for half-elf cannibals. Almost every half-elf cannibal is a loner. The Half-elf run city state of Apseldia is not self-sufficient and relies heavily on food imports. If the port city was ever blockaded, famine would be sure to follow. A few civilian and religious leaders have quietly made contingency plans for policing cannibalism should this occur.
Type
Supernatural
Parent
Origin
Mutated
Cycle
Chronic, Acquired & Congenital
Rarity
Extremely Rare
Affected Species
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