Blood Beasts

Blood Beast Artwork.jpg|Official Creature Artwork

Another phenomenon attributed to the infamous necromantic smog of Rathleton is the existence of the blood beast. As hideous and disgusting as these creatures are, the secret of their creation is even more disturbing. It seems sometimes decaying corpses of animals become that imbued with the unstable necromantic residue, that their carrion blood becomes the carrier of some dark force when it somehow reacts with glooth. This blood behaves almost as sentient. It is known to creep around and even hide itself. It's searching for more blood, changed like itself and through metaphysical means is obviously able to sense it. Over time more and more of this mix of blood and glooth finds together, building sometimes enormous pools in underground caverns. Those pools act like a beacon for the spirits of predatory animals that died in pain and anger. If such a creature comes close to the pool a part of it splits and devours the spirit, becoming a separate entity on its own. The so created creature knows only the basest and cruellest instincts of the beasts. With a malleable body of soiled glooth and unclean blood it follows the needs of a predator. The blood beast lurks or hunts like ordinary animals would do, but it reveals a cunning beyond that of animals and a cruelty that is frightening. It is unknown if the creature actually needs food or at least has to replenish blood by its kills. The blood beast was immortalised by Hainnbert Shuckletons novel 'The beast from the shadows' which spread knowledge of these creatures throughout the world and painted a mostly false and overly romantic and tragic picture of the cruel predator. Rumours attribute the blood beast all kinds of unverified abilities like flowing beneath doors or through wall cracks or wall crawling and even lurking on ceilings. Most of this misleading information is spread by novels that tried to copy Shuckletons success and lead to the demise of more than one know-it-all adventurer. To complicate things even furthers there actually IS evidence to support some of the wilder claims made about the abilities of the creature. For instance it is extremely probable that the blood beast can reform itself after being slain. If it is via sentient blood creeping all their way to its spawning pool to be reborn or somehow else, there is proof that victorious blood beast slayers was attacked at his home, often in sleep by a blood beast that showed disturbing knowledge of its victims combat tactics. The gravest danger though is to dismiss the existence of these creatures as purely fiction and be utterly unprepared to encounter one.