Edimmu

The Edimmu is attracted to places of death, it feeds upon death by consuming the souls of the departed. They are rare and solitary creatures that roam the material plane in search of their next meal. How often they need to eat depends on their activity level. An Edimmu is commonly thought to be the Ghost of a human that did not go through funeral rites, dating back to Sumerian society. The link between the two is understandable, as the physical form of the creature is roughly humanoid and the skin has a color and texture (if one is brave or stupid enough to touch it) similar to that of a dead body. The natural state of the Edimmu is as an ethereal being, with no true substance. It manifests itself within the physical world as it wishes to, but does not have to to feed.

Behavior

Edimmu are cunning, cautious, and perverse creatures. They have not only have a thirst and hunger for death, which they then feed off of, but also a deep hatred of the living and life itself. They are nomadic solitary creatures, rarely settling into one area for more than a few days, perhaps a week at most. They can smell and taste death on the air, drawn in by sickness, rot, decay, and despair. Their desire to feed is as deeply ingrained into them as the need for a junkie to get high.

Lucky for the living the Edimmu hate each other almost as much as they hate the living. They will violently fight each other attempting to feed off of the potent and concentrated (and stolen) Aether should any two actually meet. Though they take great pains to not cross paths and only fight each other if directly confronted face-to-face with one another.

When threatened an Edimmu will often flee, unless their lust for death and hatred of life overcome them, in which case they have been known to fight viciously with anyone who threatens them. Most often this response is directly relative to how hungry the creature is.

Abilities

They are known to have the following abilities, but there are conflicting reports and the creatures are very rare and thus difficult to study. Such entities may have different or more abilities than listed here, but it is believed that all of them have at least these.

Life Drain

The creature can soak in the Aether given off by living beings. This method does provide some sustiance but it isn't easy, as the soul of the being is still strongly anchored to the material plane. Most often this is used tactically as an offensive or defensive measure. The affected creature will become physically weaker and over time begin to suffer the effects of accelerated age, though they don't actually age the body just begins to degrade rapidly in a similar way.

Emotional Darkness

The emotional energy in the area becomes tainted with the dark nature of the Edimmu, depression, despair, helplessness, and a prevailing sense that death is the only escape begins to take hold. If used over a significant amount of time, the Edimmu can cause even the most psychologically stable person to go insane. While one might think that the Edimmu could use this to cause death, results vary. The reaction of a person as they descend into insanity is unpredictable though it is often fatal in some way.

Inspire Fear

The creature itself exudes an unnatural aura with a terrifying visage, something they can use by focusing the tainted Aether from within onto someone. Any living being seeing one will be have an instinctual reaction of fear. Living creatures that act on instinct (such as animals) will be almost entirely helpless to against the instinctual need to flee. Even among sentient beings, it will be difficult to overcome this when the Edimmu turns their focus upon a person.

Combat

Their physical form is incredibly powerful in terms of physical attributes like strength, dexterity, and reflexes. When manifest they have been known to attack animalistically with large razor sharp nails extending from each finger. They have powerful jaws and mouths of razor sharp teeth, while they do not hesitate to use them to kill, being known to literally bite into a person's skull then spitting the bits of brain and bone out while they feed upon the soul of the attacked.

Using abilities costs the creature, while they use their energy at a certain rate just existing the more abilities they use or the longer they are manifest the more energy they use. The creature is always hungry but if forced into a confrontation, they will quickly become depleted. While cunning, the Edimmu is full of rage and hatred, meaning if one is unable to flee they will use everything they have to kill their attacker(s). The more hungry the creature is the more fierce it becomes.

Creation

The Edimmu are created when so much malice and hatred are brought together into a single spot and the people who have brought those emotions together are killed in a violent act intense betrayal. The souls of the dead consume each other until they bare no resemblance to their original, this new entity is not a Ghost, and is able to feed off of the death which surrounds them. The shared betrayal mixes with the rest and manifests into a singular will, a will to feed, to feed from the living.

Death

The Edimmu cannot die, there is no confirmed case where one has been actually killed. Though once defeated to the point that they have no energy left to draw upon nor a ready source of energy, they will revert to their natural state. In their ethereal state they are both invisible and intangible. It is believed that one never actually is destroyed but only vanquished and left to wander until it can feed off of enough death to become manifest again.

Edimmu & Vampires

An Edimmu is not a Vampire, despite both feeding and obtaining sustenance off the living. An Edimmu will feed off of a Vampire as readily as any other creature. In fact, Vampires have a mixture of fear and hatred of the Edimmu as there are instances where an Edimmu consumes the soul of a person at the point they die but before they are raised again as a Vampire. Certain very old texts of questionable authenticity suggest that Vampires were somehow created from the mixture of the essence of the Edimmu and that of a human or even and elf.