Soot Creeper
Summary
One of the most ubiquitous forms of spirits on Veltrona, the titular Soot Creeper is a relatively small being, varying between hand-to-head sized balls in size. Its body is little more than a condensed mass of ash, dust, and/or soot, and pitch black enough not even light can pierce it fully. While some compare it to a spider, the soot creeper's shifting mass and endless tendrils make it much closer to a kind of sea urchin-like creature instead. Born from the remnants of fire, soot creepers are generally benign spirits who proactively seek out flames or cinders. They engulf the remaining heat, devouring it completely and then sweeping up any burned soot they can find into themselves. While this means they can, intentionally or not, stop accidental fires from running rampant, they also snuff out things like candles pretty regularly. Some historians theorize many civilizations moved onto wax or crysium-based light sources as the soot creepers seemed to not prefer such if other options were available. In fact, many customs around fire management may even make sacrificial flame sources soot creepers can access so they don't go after actually valuable flames. The constant and unending tug-o-war between people and soot creepers is one of history's funnier, if often overlooked, dilemmas. There is some contention about the intelligence of the soot creeper. They do display keen awareness of their surroundings, and often perceive dangers long before anything else around them does. While they never communicate, they display understandings of speech and can react to information they 'hear'. Some consider them to have a wolf-like intelligence in their cunning, but others argue they may be as smart as people. Soot creepers have a way of interfering with those they don't 'like', which is often believed to be a bad omen for the person. The larger soot creepers are sometimes called 'mommy long legs', due to the fact that smaller soot creepers crowd around underneath them. It's not clear if it's actually familial behavior, but soot creepers can move together in great packs, with the largest of them functioning as 'leaders'. Despite their entirely benign existence, they can and regularly do scare the life out of people because of how unafraid they are. More than one late-night cook has opened their stove only to have a tide of soot creepers crawling out with great fervor.Basic Information
Anatomy
The soot creeper's body is a condensed mass of ash, dust, and/or soot, resembling a black ball of darkness that not even light can fully illuminate. This pitch black void turns into ashy grays the further from the center of the soot creeper's body. The fur-like appearance makes them appear rather soft and fluffy, but much like ash, has no real density in itself. If one was to try touching the fluff, it would wisp away until the rock-hard center of the body remained.
Soot creepers have no defined set of limbs. Any one of them can have as few as two or three, or up to dozens or hundreds of more. This quantity has an impact on the 'strength' of their limbs, with fewer limbs having more size, bulk, and capability than many hundreds of limbs. Ultimately, the soot creepers make and use their limbs to move around, interact with small objects, or harvest soot they've found.
They're rather polite as they'll return objects they've moved to their prior position, making it seem as nothing happened at all.
Biological Traits
Fire Eater – Soot creepers consume fire and flame-adjacent heat sources with surprising efficiacy. There are limits to this, though; they cannot eat something like a military-grade fire magic attack. They'll try, but usually detonate like a string of firecrackers as a result.
Geographic Distribution
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