Dif's Underworld Creatures
In the spirit of the season I have decided to try my hand at a few more spooky critters of the Underworld, attempting to give it a bit more texture than none at all. For those of you who missed my batch from last year, you can find them here and here. But all that aside, here we go!
Loomers:
Old legends and folk tales speak of an ancient race of giants, proudly drawn from the roots of mighty oaks to shepherd the tallest forests and sculpt the clouds into pleasing shapes for the creators of the world. What little truth remains of these stories lingers on in the fog-shrouded lands of the Eastern underworld, where thunderstorms can yet walk silently astride the monsoons of blood and sleeting flecks of chipped bone. A loomer itself is rarely seen except at a distance, a towering mass thickly wreathed in the dismal and grey cloudscape, notable only for its slow gait as it slinks into a canyon or behind a low mountain. More commonly the creature goes unseen in its natural habitat of immense and lofty forests, thin legs and hunched-down forearms blending into the dense wood as simply additional pairs of tall, pale and upright shapes disappearing into the canopy above.
The plasmic beast lurks primarily at night, the cover of darkness combined with its unreadable magnitude granting it ample stealth to reach down through the branches and snatch up whatever it finds with barely a whisper through the leaves. Be it a missing pack animal, supply wagon or idle traveler, no sign but a rush of wind is ever heard or found in the wake of the passage of a loomer's grasp, belying its incredible size and lethargic speed. Occasionally these creatures lope their way across the border of a shadowland into Creation, carrying cold and sour stormclouds into the open Threshold plains. When caught outside of its favorable environment the illusion masking its plasmic form is easily shattered with the onset of twilight, revealing the immaterial loomer as a gargantuan and malformed humanoid skeleton clambering with all-fours across the countryside.
Its long ribs scrape the tops of trees and houses, a layer of dark cloudcover wicking over its skull from within the cavernous eye sockets and boiling out down its spine like a smoky cloak. Sometimes manifested loomers can be mistaken for approaching seasonal storms, collecting up a soaring thunderhead is it sporadically halts in mid-step with the impression of thoughtfulness for the surroundings. Many eastern tribes insist witnessing the bony limbs of a loomer pawing up the ground from a stormcloud on the horizon spells unfavorable death for all who see the beast firsthand, and ritually seal up all windows and doors until the inclement weather passes into morning.
Luckless:
There is no shortage of regrets in the Underworld, but the palpable injustice of a life which never had the option to thrive carries power all its own. The darkest of destinies shred to tatters at the descent of a newly-formed ghost, congealing on impact into litters of these snuffling, feeble creatures. Regarded by the inhabitants of the Underworld's major cities to be something of a nuisance, if not outright vermin, luckless are drawn like moths towards the light of capable and powerful beings as masters of their own fate.
Crudely canine in form and size but absent the distinguishing features, these plasmics lack eyes, mouths or even limbs, squirming along the ground in the ungainly fashion of an animal tied in a sack. Upon locating a being of notable skill and esteem during a moment of repose, the creature gingerly hooks the chin of its long snout around the neck of its unwilling companion and hangs lazily down her back, seeking to live out success and competence vicariously as a shoulder-slung observer. Neither strong nor especially cunning, most luckless find themselves roughly tossed aside out of disgust or irritation, but some ghosts find an unexpected appreciation for the creature's presence. Such close proximity to the luckless and its deep, nasal sighs against her ear are easily mistaken for a warm, audible breath along the nape of the neck and throat, while its misshapen body gives a reassuring though foreboding weight of recognition.
These traits invariably cause problems when one of these plasmics finds its way into the mortal world immaterial and unseen, searching for its latest makeshift courier. Any unfortunate subject to such a haunting can quickly develop a growing paranoia of being watched or stalked by unseen forces perpetually at her back, literally saddled by the uncomfortable and inauspicious feelings these beasts extrude. However, it takes very little effort for an experienced exorcist to cast a luckless away from a harried victim, though she will doubtlessly find herself confused to what degree the creature appears to truly bask in the practiced ease of its own banishment.
Lingers:
Just as raw meat left exposed to the elements will spontaneously generate maggots, due care is taken in the death-tainted lands of the underworld to never inter a formerly living body, lest the practice produce a clutch of these plasmic creatures to plague the surrounding countryside. Resembling a lengthy, gnarled digit of too many segments, lingers exist somewhere between worm and snake, leeching whatever living essence can be found seeping into the dirt of its birthplace. Its narrow head ends with a horse-like snout, the corpus of its withered lips and gums peeled tightly back from the bone into a rictus of blunted teeth for tilling soil.
Possessing no real organs for ingesting what it craves, spiritual or otherwise, most linger infestations are typically unsustainable and short. The creatures gorge themselves rapidly on the fertile health of the earth, leaving it stripped barren and unsuitable for any kind of growth, before dissolving away once the task is complete and leaving a crystal of petrified essence behind. These stones denature and become inert after some time, but if ground into a fine powder while potent can create a short-lived poison that causes nightmarish, even fatal, visions in both the living and the dead.
It is rare for a linger to ever escape a shadowland, but nefarious occultists and necromancers have been known to cultivate them to befoul harvests, vineyards and the geomancy of Wood-resonant demesnes or manses with a single vindictive summoning. The abundance of Creation is boundless and so too becomes the hunger of the beasts, keeping them an active blight upon the land far longer than the stasis of the Underworld would allow. Unless slain or banished, several lingers can devastate a small farm and portions of the nearby wilderness in a manner of weeks before finally wasting away. Only the small, dead stones of a linger's passing give any evidence to the cause.
Lamplights:
Ritual bonfires and the burning of sacred or valuable objects is common among many of Creation's cultures, particularly during prayer to the gods and funerals to bless the deceased with a favorable passing. The significance of these rites bleeds into the Underworld as gifted essence and grave goods, but some ghosts have discovered fresh applications for this object-sympathy. When the doomed stars of the Underworld align, ghosts of all social classes and occupations flock to "bonfires of vanities" to symbolically purge themselves of material found disruptive to conducting personal business in the lands of the dead, or overly-defining of their former mortal lives.
Normally the destruction of these ties places the safety of the hapless ghost at risk, but on a long enough span even the most powerful and influential begin the chafe against the dependency most dead carry towards meaningful objects. The mightiest would rather challenge the uneasy grip of Lethe than dangers found by probing for similar answers in the depths of the labyrinth. Such a challenge is the birth of a lamplight, so when the rituals are performed with the utmost care upon an item of significance, these small flecks of blazing ash and ember become animatedly infused with all the passions held within the object sustaining its relationship to its owner.
The name stems from the many standard practices to immediately bind the plasmic before it has the presence of mind to escape, from trapping it inside some manner of lantern, atop an old candle, or even within a moldering eye socket. The type of passion granted to the lamplight heavily colors its behavior, with objects of great sentimental value more passive and focused on serving utility roles like guiding its bearer to loved ones, while those of weapons or possessing suitably martial destinies draw the ghost who holds its leash towards conflicts and strife. Folklore tells tales of lamplights who persist long after their wielder has passed into either Lethe or Oblivion, becoming "freely roaming" sources of stability themselves in the transitory world of the dead, though the accuracy of these stories is difficult to judge. If a freed lamplight ever truly comes to pass, it is doubtlessly snatched up quickly by those with the most to gain by adopting the creature, and no doubt an elicit trade would fuel many a private market for wealthy ghosts seeking to cement their metaphysical standing.
Loomers:
Old legends and folk tales speak of an ancient race of giants, proudly drawn from the roots of mighty oaks to shepherd the tallest forests and sculpt the clouds into pleasing shapes for the creators of the world. What little truth remains of these stories lingers on in the fog-shrouded lands of the Eastern underworld, where thunderstorms can yet walk silently astride the monsoons of blood and sleeting flecks of chipped bone. A loomer itself is rarely seen except at a distance, a towering mass thickly wreathed in the dismal and grey cloudscape, notable only for its slow gait as it slinks into a canyon or behind a low mountain. More commonly the creature goes unseen in its natural habitat of immense and lofty forests, thin legs and hunched-down forearms blending into the dense wood as simply additional pairs of tall, pale and upright shapes disappearing into the canopy above.
The plasmic beast lurks primarily at night, the cover of darkness combined with its unreadable magnitude granting it ample stealth to reach down through the branches and snatch up whatever it finds with barely a whisper through the leaves. Be it a missing pack animal, supply wagon or idle traveler, no sign but a rush of wind is ever heard or found in the wake of the passage of a loomer's grasp, belying its incredible size and lethargic speed. Occasionally these creatures lope their way across the border of a shadowland into Creation, carrying cold and sour stormclouds into the open Threshold plains. When caught outside of its favorable environment the illusion masking its plasmic form is easily shattered with the onset of twilight, revealing the immaterial loomer as a gargantuan and malformed humanoid skeleton clambering with all-fours across the countryside.
Its long ribs scrape the tops of trees and houses, a layer of dark cloudcover wicking over its skull from within the cavernous eye sockets and boiling out down its spine like a smoky cloak. Sometimes manifested loomers can be mistaken for approaching seasonal storms, collecting up a soaring thunderhead is it sporadically halts in mid-step with the impression of thoughtfulness for the surroundings. Many eastern tribes insist witnessing the bony limbs of a loomer pawing up the ground from a stormcloud on the horizon spells unfavorable death for all who see the beast firsthand, and ritually seal up all windows and doors until the inclement weather passes into morning.
Luckless:
There is no shortage of regrets in the Underworld, but the palpable injustice of a life which never had the option to thrive carries power all its own. The darkest of destinies shred to tatters at the descent of a newly-formed ghost, congealing on impact into litters of these snuffling, feeble creatures. Regarded by the inhabitants of the Underworld's major cities to be something of a nuisance, if not outright vermin, luckless are drawn like moths towards the light of capable and powerful beings as masters of their own fate.
Crudely canine in form and size but absent the distinguishing features, these plasmics lack eyes, mouths or even limbs, squirming along the ground in the ungainly fashion of an animal tied in a sack. Upon locating a being of notable skill and esteem during a moment of repose, the creature gingerly hooks the chin of its long snout around the neck of its unwilling companion and hangs lazily down her back, seeking to live out success and competence vicariously as a shoulder-slung observer. Neither strong nor especially cunning, most luckless find themselves roughly tossed aside out of disgust or irritation, but some ghosts find an unexpected appreciation for the creature's presence. Such close proximity to the luckless and its deep, nasal sighs against her ear are easily mistaken for a warm, audible breath along the nape of the neck and throat, while its misshapen body gives a reassuring though foreboding weight of recognition.
These traits invariably cause problems when one of these plasmics finds its way into the mortal world immaterial and unseen, searching for its latest makeshift courier. Any unfortunate subject to such a haunting can quickly develop a growing paranoia of being watched or stalked by unseen forces perpetually at her back, literally saddled by the uncomfortable and inauspicious feelings these beasts extrude. However, it takes very little effort for an experienced exorcist to cast a luckless away from a harried victim, though she will doubtlessly find herself confused to what degree the creature appears to truly bask in the practiced ease of its own banishment.
Lingers:
Just as raw meat left exposed to the elements will spontaneously generate maggots, due care is taken in the death-tainted lands of the underworld to never inter a formerly living body, lest the practice produce a clutch of these plasmic creatures to plague the surrounding countryside. Resembling a lengthy, gnarled digit of too many segments, lingers exist somewhere between worm and snake, leeching whatever living essence can be found seeping into the dirt of its birthplace. Its narrow head ends with a horse-like snout, the corpus of its withered lips and gums peeled tightly back from the bone into a rictus of blunted teeth for tilling soil.
Possessing no real organs for ingesting what it craves, spiritual or otherwise, most linger infestations are typically unsustainable and short. The creatures gorge themselves rapidly on the fertile health of the earth, leaving it stripped barren and unsuitable for any kind of growth, before dissolving away once the task is complete and leaving a crystal of petrified essence behind. These stones denature and become inert after some time, but if ground into a fine powder while potent can create a short-lived poison that causes nightmarish, even fatal, visions in both the living and the dead.
It is rare for a linger to ever escape a shadowland, but nefarious occultists and necromancers have been known to cultivate them to befoul harvests, vineyards and the geomancy of Wood-resonant demesnes or manses with a single vindictive summoning. The abundance of Creation is boundless and so too becomes the hunger of the beasts, keeping them an active blight upon the land far longer than the stasis of the Underworld would allow. Unless slain or banished, several lingers can devastate a small farm and portions of the nearby wilderness in a manner of weeks before finally wasting away. Only the small, dead stones of a linger's passing give any evidence to the cause.
Lamplights:
Ritual bonfires and the burning of sacred or valuable objects is common among many of Creation's cultures, particularly during prayer to the gods and funerals to bless the deceased with a favorable passing. The significance of these rites bleeds into the Underworld as gifted essence and grave goods, but some ghosts have discovered fresh applications for this object-sympathy. When the doomed stars of the Underworld align, ghosts of all social classes and occupations flock to "bonfires of vanities" to symbolically purge themselves of material found disruptive to conducting personal business in the lands of the dead, or overly-defining of their former mortal lives.
Normally the destruction of these ties places the safety of the hapless ghost at risk, but on a long enough span even the most powerful and influential begin the chafe against the dependency most dead carry towards meaningful objects. The mightiest would rather challenge the uneasy grip of Lethe than dangers found by probing for similar answers in the depths of the labyrinth. Such a challenge is the birth of a lamplight, so when the rituals are performed with the utmost care upon an item of significance, these small flecks of blazing ash and ember become animatedly infused with all the passions held within the object sustaining its relationship to its owner.
The name stems from the many standard practices to immediately bind the plasmic before it has the presence of mind to escape, from trapping it inside some manner of lantern, atop an old candle, or even within a moldering eye socket. The type of passion granted to the lamplight heavily colors its behavior, with objects of great sentimental value more passive and focused on serving utility roles like guiding its bearer to loved ones, while those of weapons or possessing suitably martial destinies draw the ghost who holds its leash towards conflicts and strife. Folklore tells tales of lamplights who persist long after their wielder has passed into either Lethe or Oblivion, becoming "freely roaming" sources of stability themselves in the transitory world of the dead, though the accuracy of these stories is difficult to judge. If a freed lamplight ever truly comes to pass, it is doubtlessly snatched up quickly by those with the most to gain by adopting the creature, and no doubt an elicit trade would fuel many a private market for wealthy ghosts seeking to cement their metaphysical standing.
