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Elements Bestiary: A-13: Ghoul

The unfortunate and widely feared result of the Ghoul Plague, Ghouls are to be avoided at all times and mercilessly exterminated whenever possible.

Their height is generally difficult to ascertain at first sight due to their near-constant hunched stature, but they tend to measure between eight to twelve feet tall, depending on their initial height and race. The most distinctive aspect of their anatomy are the bright, sickly green crystals jutting out of their skin. Other unique markers of a ghoul include the extremely gaunt and tall physique, the absence of flesh of their fingertips, and the horizontally slit pupils of their eyes.

A Ghoul’s throat is perpetually bloated with various sacs and glands created by the plague, which allows it to produce vast quantities of a toxic, noxious gas in surprisingly little time.

The gas, their main form of attack, is both lethally poisonous and extremely infectious, and they can belch out several cubic meters of it in a matter of minutes.

But even respiratory protection is not enough on its own to protect from the Ghoul Plague; nearly every part of a Ghoul is a deadly biological hazard. The air they breathe, their bodily fluids, and even simple contact with their skin can all cause the infection to spread. No aspect of theirs, however, is as virulent as their distinctive crystals; as they are made of hardened pus in which viral samples are kept viable for months. Any contact with a Ghoul or its byproducts is cause for severe concern, but handling their crystals is often a death sentence on its own.

Healthy individuals infected with the Ghoul Plague tend to die within a week if left untreated. It is at the point of death, however, where the plague truly becomes a problem. A person killed by the plague undergoes a terrible transformation as the disease takes over and reanimates the body into a Ghoul.

Their entire skeletal structure stretches several feet from crystalline growth, pulling their flesh taut and thin, while the rest of their bodies mutates to align with the usual ghoul biology; pupils split, fingertips rot off, and the throat bloats with gas sacs.

In a twist of dreadful misfortune, the plague is also readily capable of infecting and reanimating bodies killed by other means as long as they are still relatively fresh. Victims of the plague fully turn into ghouls within hours of their death, and infected corpses take about two days.

Ghouls tend to naturally behave in a way perfectly suited to spreading the infection to as many victims as possible. They rarely kill, and often prefer to throw their toxic breath into large crowds or stab individuals with their crystals before fleeing to engage others. A cornered Ghoul will demonstrate surprising strength, agility and resilience, however, and often proves lethal to unprepared attackers.

While dangerous, one of the few fortunate aspects of Ghouls is their relatively low intelligence; Ghouls are barely more aware than a rabid animal, and are utterly incapable of using weapons or strategy when fighting. They live only to infect, and show a suicidal lack of self-preservation in their actions.

The extremely deadly nature of both the Ghouls and the plague they carry makes them an utmost threat to any population, and even a single Ghoul can often wipe out entire unprepared settlements, creating dozens more to spread the infection.

There are only two rules among Ghoul hunters: “don’t get infected” and “carry a cure, because you *will* get infected.”

When expecting to fight a Ghoul, one should always wrap themselves in several layers of puncture and laceration-resistant attire, and be equipped with heavy-duty respiratory aid. And, of course, be carrying a few scrolls, potions or spells to cure diseases.

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Elements Bestiary: A-12: Amalgam Beholder

Widely known and feared by many, Amalgam Beholders are the catastrophic result of magical mishaps that caused a certain spell to be banned in most civilizations in the world.

The Beholder Burst is an immensely powerful scrying spell, so powerful that it is mostly impossible to cast alone. The spell scans, analyses and catalogues every possible information about every single place, creature and object within a one-mile radius of the caster. Single-person casting of the beholder burst is incredibly ill-advised regardless, due to the secondary complication of the spell; it gathers and imparts such a staggering volume of information that any single mind is all but guaranteed to overload from it. The most likely result of this is the caster’s instantaneous death.

For this reason, the Beholder Burst is usually ritually performed in groups of three or more. In the best case scenario, all the casters fall into a week-long coma while their minds partition and sift through the information while discarding 99% of the data, and they then emerge with whichever information they hoped to acquire -and likely much more than that.

But even casting the Beholder Burst in large groups puts heavy strain on the minds of the participants, and in some cases, one or more of them get overwhelmed. In such situations, the mind simply breaks, becoming void of reason and incapable of further participation in the spell. This sudden failure increases the stress applied to other participants, and it often leads to a chain reaction in which all or most of the casters suffer this catastrophic mental failure.

In those cases, the magically interlinked network of brain matter suddenly finds itself devoid of direction; and the flesh itself, with powerful magic binding it together and a vast repertoire of information at its disposal, spontaneously births a new mind to direct itself. Thus are born Amalgam Beholders.

The very first action of every Amalgam Beholder is to intuit and apply a powerful metamorphosis spell to produce a true, physical link between its various brains and secure their connection through both flesh and magic.

Amalgam Beholders, despite possessing all the knowledge and memories of their constituent casters, are extremely hostile and averse to people. As such, the second action of their lives is usually to attempt to murder everyone in sight. With the combined magical might and skill of several high-tier psychomancers, this tends to prove disturbingly easy.

With time, Amalgam Beholders eventually discard most of their bodies, keeping only the heads and any particularly useful bodies they own. A quick way to gauge the age of a particular Amalgam is to spot how many of their bodies they still hold onto. The eldest eventually rid themselves of all of them, having outgrown the need for hands or any other limbs and continually levitating as their main form of locomotion.

An Amalgam Beholder’s number of heads is a poor indicator of its overall power; those with fewer heads were likely made from very powerful and confident casters, while those with large numbers had weaker casters but thus possess a statistically much more varied repertoire of skills, knowledge and cunning.

Capable of speech, the few Amalgam Beholders who deign speak of their intentions usually profess a profound desire to kill all they witness, if only so that no one may live to threaten their existence. Deeply malicious and recklessly selfish, Amalgam Beholders are evil to the core and an immense danger to all.

As they possess vast amounts of personal knowledge, Amalgam Beholders are especially dangerous to the friends, families and associates of their constituent casters. They are far from opposed to using this knowledge to manipulate, bait, and exploit those unlucky few.

Due to the extreme dangers of the possibility of creating an Amalgam Beholder, and the highly invasive security risk it poses even in the best of situations, the Beholder Burst is outright banned in most civilized regions and heavily regulated in most of the world regardless. The standard bare minimum of safety protocols calls for several battalions of warriors and spellcasters to stand by whenever the spell is being cast, in order to terminate all participants as soon as the fleshy tendrils erupt from the backs of their heads.

For one aiming to destroy a fully-manifested Amalgam Beholder, it is wise to remember that all of them are master psychomancers, as well as naturally adept metamorphosists. They likely possess a staggering array of magical capabilities from the other schools of magic, and are both extremely difficult to surprise thanks to their numerous eyes and ears, as well as tough to kill due to the fluid and malleable physiology of their central nervous cluster. Severing the tendrils to separate the heads from the central mass does little to impede them, as the magical connection is still present and most of an individual’s knowledge is redundantly shared between their various brains.

To this date, an individual caster has never been successfully separated from an Amalgam Beholder and restored to their former personality.

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Elements Bestiary: A-11: Crystarachnid

Rarely seen by common folk, Crystarachnids are reclusive inhabitants of the deep caverns of the world.

Gifted with a strongly magical biology, Crystarachnids are mostly composed of inorganic minerals. They are spider-like creatures made of stone, with purer crystal growths sprouting from specific portions of their bodies. Microscopic veins of an oily organic slime have been found to infuse most of their bodies and are theorized to be the actual creatures, with the minerals being a mere medium upon which they sustain their forms.

Crystarachnids feed primarily on the stones of the tunnels and caves they inhabit, scraping dust and particles off the surfaces with their razor-sharp crystal mandibles. They have, however, the capacity to consume living creatures as well, and will do so whenever the opportunity arises as a form of obtaining quick and easy energy. Purely stone-fed Crystarachnids are noticeably less active than those who occasionally devour organic prey.

Crystarachnids are rarely aggressive, and are usually content slinking in the shadows. Not territorial, Crystarachnids only attack sapient trespassers if bothered directly or if extremely desperate for living prey. The fairly common cave insects are usually enough to satisfy them in any case, making Crystarachnid attacks a rare occurrence.

Crystarachnids are sometimes sought after for the very crystals they grow upon their bodies; the purity of these can be quite astounding, and the spiders themselves are believed to be naturally refining them through their biological processes.

In battle, Crystarachnids mostly employ their dangerous crystal knife-like forelegs to defend themselves, although they are also capable of producing a small variety of webs and launching them fair distances. Crystarachnids are also quite adept at stealth, using their stony bodies to expertly hide among the natural stones of their surroundings to ambush foes.

On the rare chance that one should find themselves embroiled in conflict with one of these mineral spiders, they would do well to remember to assault them primarily with blunt weapons and that both their webs and their bite can be poisoned.

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Elements Bestiary: A-10: Cobalt

A strange and particularly disliked imp species, Cobalts are a greedy and aggressive plague upon many settlements and societies, which they often harass from the depths of their underground burrow-cities.

They stand roughly two feet tall, and their skin is a rare shade of pale blue with an odd, faintly metallic sheen. It is extremely rare to actually see their skin however, as they cover themselves head-to-toe in layers upon layers of heavy armor and remain encased in it for much of their lives.

Like most impish humanoids, Cobalts have an overwhelming tendency to possess an all-consuming obsession, which they gleefully indulge to the fullest whenever possible. What makes Cobalts particular is that their obsession is shared by the entire species instead of a deeply personal quirk.

The impish obsession of Cobalts is an absurd greed towards the exclusive possession of all metals. Cobalts believe every ounce of forged metal, and every vein of ore in the entire world belongs exclusively to their race and none other. Cobalts see any non-cobalt creature using, owning, or merely carrying any amount of any metal as a deeply offensive act of theft and impropriety.

This viewpoint predictably leads to conflicts between Cobalts and the civilized races of the world, with the small blue pests raiding villages and ambushing travelers with the sole goal of stealing every piece of metal they can carry back to their holes.

During these conflicts, the creatures prove extremely difficult to drive off or kill, as their metal-hoarding obsession leads to them wearing often ridiculous amounts of life-saving armor. Thankfully, this same amount of armor also dramatically reduces their mobility, even despite their near-supernatural ability to carry weights that should rightfully pin them to the ground.

Their obsession is such an important part of their hatred towards people that, when approached by someone wearing no metal at all, they are actually somewhat reasonable and peaceful. They would not particularly care either way about “tall-folk” civilizations if not for that obsession. These rare peaceful encounters are the basis of the collected knowledge about their society and language.

While individual Cobalts are relatively slow and nonthreatening, they tend to attack in large groups, sometimes even staging mass simultaneous assaults via tunnels dug underneath their targeted settlements. This, and their armor making them extremely resilient, often proves very difficult to handle for even seasoned warriors. As such, it is ill-advised to attempt to invade their own tunnel-cities to take back the vast quantities of precious metals they steal and hoard.

Strangely enough, the blue coloration of their skin has been found to be caused in large part by trace amounts of the rare blue metal named after them, indicating that they are somehow able to consume and metabolize it. It is even possible to extract and refine it with the help of magnets and specialized processes, if one were so unhinged as to consider slaughtering and skinning thousands of Cobalts for the production of a single ingot.

When battling Cobalts, mobility is often one’s greatest tool to outmaneuver them and avoid being swarmed by the creatures. Magic, capable of bypassing their thick defenses, is also one of the best ways to deal with the small humanoids.

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Elements Bestiary: A-9: Stranglevine

Relatively little needs to be said about this nearly-immobile species of carnivorous plants.

Stranglevines lie in wait for prey, preferring narrow openings between obstacles in the environment and draping themselves in the passage. When a living animal attempts to cross the tangle, the Stranglevine’s coils tighten and expose toxic thorns to paralyze and choke the creature. Once the animal has died, the Stranglevine extends roots into the body to slowly siphon nutrients while it decomposes.

Once a meal has been entirely consumed, the Stranglevine either resumes lying in ambush at the same spot, or slowly crawls away to find another. Movement takes quite a while for Stranglevines, as they have never been seen to travel faster than five feet per day.

Should another animal try to steal a Stranglevine’s meal, it is likely to retaliate with the same toxin-filled thorns it used to capture its meal in the first place. Thankfully for the would-be-thief, Stranglevines tend to go no further in the defense of their catches. Particularly stubborn or dim-witted scavengers might need to be stung more than once to understand that this meal will not be theirs, but rarely go so far in their aggression that the Stranglevine chooses to kill them as well.

An interesting fact about Stranglevines is their ability to sprout roots from any part of their body; they need not be firmly rooted in any one spot. Whenever they lie still for long periods, they simply grow roots from whichever part lies closest to the ground. These roots end up drying out and getting shed once no longer necessary.

The best advice to deal with Stranglevines is simply to learn to recognize their tangled masses and avoid touching them. If the need arises to slay one, flames and cutting weapons work well on the ropy plants.

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Elements Bestiary: A-8: Galern

Galern whales, also referred to as galern eels or simply galerns, are coastal predators commonly found around the oceans of the world. They use their clawed fins to grip the sides of the submerged tunnels they dig through seaside cliffs.

They generally prefer softer stone for their habitats, as their horns are not truly suited for digging. As such, their technique for digging involves piercing the rock with the horn and blowing water into the tunnel to widen it through pressure and erosion.

Usually passive, Galerns will only attack when sufficiently provoked. Their hunting habits tend to favor much smaller prey, but as with most wild carnivores it is best not to tempt their appetite.

Despite what most would assume when seeing them, Galerns are actually amphibian, and can survive on land near-indefinitely. They rarely do so for more than a few hours at a time, as their skin dries and becomes irritated when their surface stays are prolonged. On land, their clawed fins allow them to drag themselves forward at a surprising pace, helped by their propensity to slither in the manner of snakes.

Galerns often congregate in large, loose colonies, united only in the fact that their burrowing preference tends to draw large numbers to the same locations. Still, they can peacefully cohabitate, and even work together to drive off aggressors or hunt prey.

Some populations consider Galerns a harmful nuisance, as their habit of burrowing into seaside areas quickly leads to increased coastal erosion and the loss of land. Island communities particularly despise them, and will often offer bounties for their horns or otherwise encourage hunting Galerns for food.

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Elements Bestiary: A-7: Worm

Worms are vicious omnivorous predators found in nearly all warm, moist or temperate climates. Capable of burrowing obscenely fast by simply eating tunnels through the earth, they are both extremely difficult to find, and difficult to avoid.

When standing on the surface, Worms typically reach roughly eight feet in height, and tend to be fourteen to twenty feet long from head to tail. Despite their lack of any skeletal structure, they manage to possess defined limbs through a series of tough, inflatable bladders surrounded by dense muscle. Their mouths are made of a pair of steel-hard carapaces filled with teeth, and their lidless eyes can be found on each side of their head.

Voracious beyond measure, Worms will eat absolutely anything, constantly. Any organic matter is fit to their tastes, and they spend most of their days searching for and consuming anything they please.

The ends of their limbs house deadly claws of hardened chitin, and the shearing scissor motions they are capable of with the ones on their “arms” can cut through even the toughest leather with ease.

The feature they are most known for, however, is their uncanny, unnatural healing speed: Worms can heal from almost any wound near-instantly. This ability even extends to wounds that would be absurdly lethal to any other creature, such as being decapitated or entirely bisected lengthwise. Some worms have even been reported to willingly use this ability to reproduce, using their razor-sharp claws to slice themselves in half and allow both ends to regenerate into a full individual.

Thankfully, this healing power is still reliant on their metabolism to a fair degree, and a starving Worm loses much of that power. Worms (or their disembodied pieces) who try to heal more than their mass would allow end up shriveling into emaciated strips of jerky, starving themselves to death of both nutrients and energy from the strain of reconstructing so much flesh so fast.

This seems to be a major part of why their appetite is so developed and insatiable; bloating themselves full of mass and fat allows them to have more than enough spare flesh to heal from anything.

For anyone expecting to fight a Worm, it is recommended to bring fire. Mundane or magical, flames are particularly damaging to a Worm’s flesh; causing painful, withering scars that the beasts can’t seem to fully heal from. Immediately cauterizing wounds with whatever is at hand is a favored tactic of Worm hunters, and magically burning weapons are a must for such encounters.

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Elements Bestiary: A-6: Gorma

Strange bipedal reptiles living in arid regions of the world. Gormai favor warm temperatures, which they use to stockpile large amounts of heat to fuel their signature innate semi-magical attack.

Avid carnivores, Gormai are solitary hunters. They usually ambush prey with a surprise strike from their signature attack, the fireball tackle; a streak of flame shooting forward from hidden nooks in the rocks is often the last thing their meals see.

As this attack expels a great quantity of body heat, it often leaves the gorma exhausted and sluggish, and is thus a carefully calculated risk every time they must use it. They have however been observed to use it as a quick way to cool down when temperatures become especially torrid.

Gormai will often nap after a successful hunt, both to relish in the bliss of a full stomach and to recover the expended heat while lazing in the sun. “A fed Gorma is worth two starving ones” is a common proverb among locals of the regions they inhabit, both to teach of the dangers of greed and gluttony and as a hunting tip to remember.

The tough bone plates covering a gorma’s head have long been used as shields or materials with which to make armor, with archaeological finds of such use going back several thousand years.

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Elements Bestiary: A-5: Shadow Stalker

Parasitic predatory spirits who hunt by hiding within their prey’s own shadow.

They can spend days or weeks hiding thusly, sustaining a lowered energy consumption through their victim’s life at such a low drain that they are unnoticeable. They use this state to study their prey, learning and copying their physical and mental attributes as well as their movements and skills.

Once they are confident they can match their host in combat, they detach themselves and take form, mimicking the victim’s shape to assault them. The link between the two, while subtle enough to go unnoticed during the parasitic phase, causes a sudden shock in the victim by being abruptly severed this way.

The host’s disorientation and confusion often gives an edge to the Shadow Stalker, allowing them to murder the victim easily.

Once this final step of the feeding process is complete, the Shadow Stalker consumes a small part of the host’s soul and can use it to permanently retain one small aspect of the host while the rest fades away.

Thus the Stalker shrivels back into a formless mass of shadow and goes to seek another prey, the tiny portion of all their previous victims giving them greater strength to take down their next meal.

The best ways to counter this fate is generally to travel in groups, so that the stalker is outnumbered to the point where it dares not take form, or is easily destroyed when it does. Additionally, Shadow Stalkers tend to panic when discovered before they are ready, and immediately detach themselves to attack prematurely or to flee. The main method of detecting whether someone is being host to a stalker is to carefully watch their movements to see if their shadow fails to follow them properly, or does so with a slight delay.

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Elements Bestiary: A-4: Spark Dancer

Similarly to their fatal weakness to fire, Smoke Dancers are just as easily destroyed by electricity, as their smoke-based physical form is extremely conductive.

The slightest touch of electricity kickstarts an ionizing chain reaction that quickly converts all their magical energy potential into a raw flow of electrons, using their physical particles as a catalyzing medium for the process.

This is believed to be just as painful, if not more, than the effect fire has on them, and they likewise become consumed by a violent, frenzied, thrashing death panic that makes them lash out at anything nearby.

It is then a small mercy that this death is just as quick as the one fire brings them, and the recommended method of dealing with it remains the same: keeping away from the dancer until it is no more.

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Elements Bestiary: A-3: Ignited Dancer

While Smoke Dancers die when exposed to open flames, they do not do so instantly. Ignited Dancers are the result.

In constant unbearable agony, Ignited Dancers spend the very short remainder of their lives in a blind fury, lashing out at everything around them in a whirlwind of flames and violence.

The process of having their soul consumed by fire makes them all the more dangerous; the flames gnawing at their essence are thrown around with reckless abandon, in a desperate struggle to alleviate their suffering.

Thankfully for the rest of the world and mercifully for them, their incredible torment is short-lived; they seldom survive more than a minute in this state.

For these reasons, should one ever encounter an Ignited Dancer, one should simply back away and wait for it to die off.

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Elements Bestiary: A-2: Smoke Dancer

Ethereal demons existing mainly in the spiritual plane, Smoke Dancers can only weakly inhabit the material world. Smoke is their preferred medium, the one their essence resonates most strongly with; this leaves them with a rather weak and ephemeral physical presence.

The act of creating smoke from nothing is beyond the reach of all but the most powerful of these creatures, and those without smoke to inhabit cannot manifest or interact with the physical world. As such, whenever one manages to manifest, its main priorities include the creation of more smoke for its kin to inhabit.

This, in itself, is a rather perilous prospect, as a Smoke Dancer’s innate magical essence is volatile and flammable, and manifesting within the physical world allows mundane (and magical) fire to ignite them. Thus, most Smoke Dancers end their short physical existences in a powerful fiery conflagration that consumes their very soul.

When not carefully balancing on the edge of death while playing with fire, Smoke Dancers can be rather sadistic and violent. They delight in causing pain to any living beings they come across, with a particular fascination with doing so in the most graceful way possible. Their lethal dances assault the senses and bodies of their victims with a flurry of disorienting, fast strikes of their hands and feet, and an exuberant exudation of poisonous gases.

Reviled the world over, Smoke Dancers should be avoided at all costs despite their relative weakness. They are a danger to everything around them, either through their violent lives or their often explosive deaths.

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Elements Bestiary: A-1: Mogani

Moganii are skittish, fearful creatures that will almost certainly flee from any danger if at all possible. They will only attack occasionally if they deem it useful in their attempts to flee, and outright fighting is usually reserved for the direst of circumstances where they are cornered and absolutely unable to escape otherwise.

Nesting moganii behave much differently, with the female defending the eggs directly while the male uses its high mobility to scout out and direct threats away before they can approach the nest. As a rule of thumb, encountering an aggressive wild mogani generally means it is a male guarding a nearby nest, and it’s best to turn back.

In combat, moganii use their extreme mobility to keep away from most attacks, while making run-by attacks of their own. This can make them rather dangerous, as their hit-and-run tactics are difficult to counter without the aid of proper ranged options. Thankfully, they are not very persistent, and will cease their assaults if an opportunity for escape presents itself. Likewise, nesting ones will not pursue targets unless they somehow flee towards the nest.

Moganii are omnivores, with a preference for proteins and sugar. As such, their diets usually consist of fruit and small prey, which they hunt by simply outrunning them before they can hide. When sleeping or eating, moganii reflexively hold their tail upwards to discourage attacks. The tip of their tail naturally grows into a thick, bony mass that resembles their head, making it look like the mogani is watching its surroundings.

Moganii can generally be found in sparsely wooded flatlands and plains, or areas where woods and grasslands meet. The abundant food from the forests and ample space to run freely attracts these creatures.