Children of Dust
Lesser Dead
Dead by Famine
When the rains don't come, the land dries up and crops fail. The small-holders and day labourers who make up most of Creation's population who go hungry, and their children are worst affected. Their empty bellies swell and their limbs wither to become stick-thin. The children die and are buried in the dusty ground. But their hunger prevents them from passing on. Plagues of rats or locusts appear that scream with children's voices and the wind gnaws at fruit on the vine. Eventually the rats grow bold enough to attack sleepers, and a traveller may stumble upon a town where nothing is left alive, for even the vermin have fallen on each other in their ceaseless hunger.
Children of dust are young famine victims taken during times of mass starvation. They seldom occur individually, and in the lands of the Dead they form feral packs. Their teeth become sharp and rat-like, they move on all four stick-thin limbs like beasts, and they endlessly shed flakes of dusty skin. The marks of a famine victim in life are exaggerated; their bloated bellies look morbidly obese, even though they are otherwise so thin that every rib can be counted. Their passions force them to eat and eat and eat, but no matter how much they devour they can never be full. Instead, they simply grow larger and their appetite grows commensurately.
These ghosts plague the lands of the Dead, for they only appear in times of mass death when things are already in turmoil from the suffering of the mortal world. Starving children of dust attack settlements of the Dead for grave offerings to devour, stripping them bare, and they fall easily into the practice of sin-eating, so will attack other ghosts. Moreover, in times of mass death small shadowlands form and this allows them to crawl back into Creation. Their nature grants them powers over hungry beasts - rats, mice, locusts, toads and other such creatures. They ride their senses and can force them to eat and eat. One child of dust can influence a sizable swarm, and a pack of children can bring a cataclysm to a town.
Necromancers summon children of dust to ruin cropland, or to control animals as spies. With training and the acquisition of new Passions, a child of dust can mitigate their hunger somewhat, though they remain mentally young and prone to pranks and poltergeist mischief. For an exorcist, a plague of these ghosts is a great challenge. Even if they can avoid having their flesh stripped from their bones by swarms of hungry rats and successfully lay the child of dust to rest, as long as there is famine more will likely form. Such exorcists often reach out to wandering priests and the like to try to coax the gods into bringing rain.
