Warpstitcher

A warpstitcher preys upon sapient creatures, targeting spellcasters who manipulate the fabric of the multiverse. Terrifying to behold, these aberrations have several barbed, insectile legs supporting a massive, bulbous torso that writhes and roils with the flesh of victims they’ve grafted into their bodies. The warpstitcher’s back has five slender appendages that each taper into needle-like points of extraordinary sharpness. The creature’s infamy and name stem from their hunting strategy: they pin down their victim, skewer its flesh, and use shimmering thread to sew the hapless creature into their bodies.
Those few who’ve survived being sewn to a warpstitcher claim the stitches pulse with energy that trigger disturbing visions, such as the victims’ deaths in alternate realities. For most, the revelations prove so painful or incomprehensible that those survivors’ minds suffer irreparable damage. A rare handful instead experience different visions entirely, emerging from the near-death experience with an ineffable sense of revelation and euphoria. This possibility has led desperate sensates to hunt down a warpstitcher on the off chance of attaining this strange enlightenment, as survivors sometimes achieve unprecedented witchwarping powers. Most die, however. Once a victim’s consciousness has been utterly destroyed, a warpstitcher absorbs the body that continues to kick and contort from unseen nightmares. No one knows for certain if a warpstitcher feeds off its victims’ flesh, thoughts, energy from other timelines, or something else entirely.
Warpstitchers hunt those who wield powerful magic or technology recklessly, believing such abuses create dimensional echoes that damage alternate realities. Upon identifying a target, warpstitchers stalk their quarry relentlessly, confirming their suspicions before striking. They favor targeting witchwarpers, whose magic frequently violates numerous warpstitcher taboos. Other potential prey for these aberrations include those who wield supernatural power, especially irreverent solarians and engineers of space-bending technologies. Warpstitchers hold a special hatred for Drift engines, believing that starships that have them inflict terrible wounds on extraplanar ecosystems.
Although they’re most often encountered as remorseless assassins, warpstitchers regularly communicate with others telepathically. In some cases, they might deliver a grim admonition to an amateur spellcaster practicing their first cantrips, only to disappear seconds later. More often, warpstitchers assert control over a group of weaker creatures through lies and manipulation, promising to tell their subordinates’ futures or open a portal to extradimensional riches in exchange for obedience. For all the aberrations’ power, they almost never have the capability to fulfill these promises. Instead they rely on coercing others into making up for their shortcomings, such as by transporting the warpstitchers to other worlds, providing magical support, or securing rare lore that might help the warpstitchers find their way home and undo the Gap’s damage.
Warpstitchers’ most dangerous lies, however, might be the ones they tell themselves. Many warpstitchers believe that eons ago, when the infinite fabric of the multiverse amounted to no more than a single thread, the gods created their kind to sew together the space between alternate realities. There, warpstitchers reinforced cosmic boundaries and mended tears resulting from interdimensional paradoxes. That is, until The Gap, when warpstitchers woke to find themselves ripped from their interstitial realms and condemned to live among mortal creatures. Many warpstitchers blame witchwarpers for the Gap and the warpstitchers’ subsequent exile. The aberrations’ own mythology insists these spellcasters greedily altered reality to eliminate warpstitchers and to access immense magical power before creating the Gap to erase the memory of their deeds and hide their betrayal.