BLAIDDS

"You feel it. Your entire body gripped by a sensation that you cannot ignore. Around you the world has gone quiet, the dense woodland once alive with the sound of birdsong now silent. An oppressive feeling of inexplicable dread grips you and you feel eyes watching you. Eyes filled with malice and evil and hunger. You feel for the first time in your life what a prey animal feels like in the presence of a predator. Perhaps you'll see it, briefly. A flash of movement through the trees out the corner of your eye. Or maybe you'll discern a shape amongst the undergrowth and tree branches. Tall and powerfully built. Fur and... claws. A muzzle long and jaws filled with teeth. And eyes... eyes that shine of their own. Perhaps you'll see that shape watching you and perhaps you'll be able to live to tell someone about it. Chances are they won't believe you. But what would happen if that thing watching you decided to attack? How would you defend yourself? You can't. If it decides to attack the best you can do is run. Run as hard and fast as you can and hope and pray to whoever is listening that it gets bored and leaves you be. Otherwise you'll be just another missing person. One more soul who went missing in the woods."

BLAIDDS are a species found across Otherverse and Earth where they have come to be known in the public zeitgeist as Dogmen. Large powerfully built canine headed creatures with fur, claws and digitigrade legs capable of running on all fours. On Earth they have been sighted on every continent from rural backwaters to bustling urban sprawls. There exists a wealth of photographic and video evidence of them yet most if not all are blurry and of poor quality, thus the creature remains a cryptid or mere fantasy like Bigfoot.

Yet Blaidds are very much flesh and blood creatures. They were the creation of the Great Ones as shock troops in their ancient war against their enemy, the Shai'Nari. Fierce, powerful and intelligent the Blaidds would outlive their creators and proliferate across Otherverse, moving from world to world via the sub realm of the Eternal Forest. They are adaptable and truly only exist to hunt and survive. They are untameable and are akin to wild animals despite their intelligence.

On Earth they rarely stay for long though there are small communities of them in wilderness regions. They will often clash with the Travellers, the hairy hominids who inspired stories of Sasquatch. Quite why this enmity exists is unknown yet the more peaceful and spiritual Travellers will not tolerate a Blaidd presence in their vicinity for long. As both species utilize the Eternal Forest for travelling between worlds it is odd they hate each other so.

Their ability to traverse the Eternal Forest is why they can appear and disappear with ease, passing from the Eternal Forest into real space and returning with no trace left behind. Sometimes they will drag a victim through a portal and into the Eternal Forest, hunting them down in a quite sadistic game free from outside interference.

If Blaidds have a wider community beyond the pack level is unknown. They are highly secretive and rarely respond to diplomacy.

They are, simply, apex predators who hunt and kill for pleasure and to survive.