Bryrvath
For many creatures, light is a source of hope and healing, often associated with benevolent gods and their servants. For others, light is an abhorrence to be shunned at all costs, as it causes disorientation and pain, if not complete extermination, upon exposure. For adventurers, light can be an invaluable resource, guiding them through uncharted territory or acting as a beacon to draw them home after they have become lost in the darkness of space.
For bryrvaths, light is a plaything that they twist into an impossible spectrum. Dwelling primarily on the foreboding planet of Aucturn, bryrvaths are a bane to creatures that use light for survival. A bryrvath appears to feed upon any source of light it can find, regardless of whether the light is natural, technological, or magical in origin. It can absorb light in its immediate vicinity, using the waves and packets of photons to nourish itself. Speculation endlessly spins around whether a bryrvath actually consumes light out of hunger or whether it seeks to snuff out light as a source of perverse pleasure. The truth may be utterly alien to any sane mind.
A bryrvath is difficult to describe because of the way its body interacts with light and darkness. Those who have seen a bryrvath and survived provide conflicting accounts of the creature. Cobbled together, these many tales tell of a multilimbed humanoid (some say two limbs, some say eight, while others say an infinite number) whose head is constantly masked by swirling shadows. At least one pair of its limbs ends in obsidian claws. Its body has several lipless gashes that open to draw in light. A bryrvath appears to have no actual skeletal structure, moving like rubber— sometimes upright, sometimes on all its limbs, and other times tumbling and clambering about in chaotic locomotion. Whenever it moves, its body seems somehow out of joint with itself: its limbs may appear detached in one moment, and then in the next, its entire torso may seem to split at an impossible angle, as if viewed through a pane of cracked glass, never quite aligning in a way that makes sense.
In the act of feeding, a bryrvath emanates a distorted aura of colors that can’t possibly exist in this multiverse; some who see this display have horrific dreams for the rest of their lives, envisioning alien cities or whole planets baking beneath a sun that blazes with hues no eye has ever seen. Oddly, such victims also display a tendency toward a mental condition that prevents them from properly recognizing color, rendering them fully color-blind.
Many occult scholars posit that what can be seen of a bryrvath’s form is only a fraction of its true self and that it exists simultaneously in several other dimensions. This theory goes on to explain that a bryrvath’s impossible aura is but a glimpse of the aberration’s other facets (hence the strange, mind-bending colors). The academics who put forth this hypothesis have yet to present any kind of proof, though they work tirelessly to fabricate the necessary detection equipment to prove or disprove the theory. This has given rise to an obscure branch of study called esoteric optics that blends the physics of light with various arcane rituals. Though not many in the Pact Worlds have heard of this field, it occasionally appears in news vidfeeds, such as when an expert is committed to a psychiatric hospital after splashing acid in his eyes and raving about “the impending refraction.”
While bryrvaths are very intelligent, they don’t appear to have an advanced society of any kind. They occasionally gather in small groups for unknown reasons, usually near a source of bright light, much in the way certain animals congregate around a watering hole. Also, despite their intelligence, bryrvaths have very little use for tools, as their unusual feeding needs don’t require them; they instead rely on their spell-like abilities and natural weapons to defend themselves.
The average bryrvath is 6 feet tall when standing upright and weighs approximately 250 pounds. While often found in areas that are primarily covered in darkness—presumably to plunge those who carry artificial light sources into terrible inky blackness—a bryrvath shows no fear of natural light, though it tends not to linger in areas exposed to it.
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