Abominations
Abominations are living remnants of the God’s War, creations built to destroy the followers and defenders of other Powers That Be. Abominations are terrifying to behold, and often fashioned to destroy and eradicate anything. Since the God’s War, most of them have fashioned some lair or found some place, for they do not fit into the circle of life of the world itself, and do not often need to feast on anything other than the followers of the Bright or Shadow Powers That Be.
Beholders
Beholders are the product of Dusit and Pallor getting together with Melane an exceptionally long time ago and creating something new. They became weapons meant to change the course of the war, and they still get mighty upset when folks forget how important they were, sweeping across the land in vast groups of them, and they would have been unstoppable “if it weren’t for the damn Elfin”.
They are why one can come across a field of statues, or a swatch of vegetation that is new amid the old. The last attempt at a census of them identified twenty-five before the last of the team was slain.
A Beholder has a roughly spherical body surrounded by ten tentacles that each end in ten tendrils. In the center of its front and back on each side is a single large eye situated above a horizontal slit and a many toothed maw. To the side of the Central eyes on each side are two smaller eyes on stalks, much like a snail, and they are considered the danger, though there is much worse.
Beholders have small servants that are often near them.
Hypnarach
The Hypnarach are eight limbed – four limbs on each side, capable of bending in multiple directions. Each limb is roughly seven feet long. These are attached in groups of two to gut sections about three to five feet long each. Behind the gut sections is a large, six to eight-foot-long bottom section much like a spider’s abdomen, while ahead of it is a chest and head section. The head looks somewhat human, though it splits open into four sections revealing the inner maw with its many moving parts that can cut through steel as if it were paper. They have six eyes, two forward, one on each side, and two above that can also see forward. The eyes are human looking. To either side of the head, in what might be thought of as the “shoulders” though no limbs come from it, only strange cilia used for manipulation, are sets of spinnerets.
Hypnarach are mottled shadow black, covered in long stringy hair that is usually tangled and matted and coated in filth. They make musical, pretty sounds that can calm and lull creatures. They lair in places that people do not go, where they fashion a burrow usually about fifteen to twenty feet deep that is lined with webbing that is slick and frictionless. They give birth to live young three to five per birth, and they eat any kind of moving protein. Preferably while alive, as dead is tasteless.
Hypnarach are not spiders – each of their limbs ends in a five fingered hand, they are warm-blooded, and they think. It is believed that they may have once been human, like Yuma, and were or are corrupted by something. Their vital organs are in a soup in the large “belly,” and in some cases an entire person has been found within it, pale and hairless.
They lure victims in, calm them with their song, and then wrap them in a cocoon that seems to have a surface paralytic. When they eat, the “head” burrows into the cocoon, and they feast while the flesh is still warm and the victim alive. The cocoon is then eaten after. They are experts in trap building, lure making, and incredibly strong, agile, and fast. They do fear fire or intense cold, and do not move or go out when it is too cold or raining.
Some theorize that they are the servants of Pallor in the world, for their lairs often have imps and other creatures around them as helpmeets.
There is little that one can do for a victim of a Hypnarach. The filth around them often carries infections and illness, and few survive.
Many a Yuma has come to be because of them.
Hontakila
A cross between a cat and a bear, they aren’t considered beasts because of their six equidistant limbs and the hard armor plates beneath their fur. They are deeply hated. They can climb nearly any surface, burrow in soft earth faster than a man walks, and they are vengeful in the extreme. Wounding one draws its ire, and they have the ability to smell a person at ten miles away and can track without rest or pause until they locate their target, who they will kill or be killed by.
They have clutches of 10 to 20 young at a time, their furry eggs said to be delicious. It has earned them the moniker “the last meal”. One of the greatest fears of most settlements is having one set free or loose in a settlement.
