Mercy

Mercies resemble giant mosquitos (averaging six feet long, with a wingspan perhaps three times that) with no proboscis, bat-like wings and elongated human hands at the end of their forelegs. Their head appears like a human skull missing its lower jawbone. A mere touch from them can completely remove a wanderer's ability to resist; this touch, as well as the "voice" of the mercy, can be addicting. They are known for providing comforting, painless deaths to the suffering, and to protect the strong, but they absolutely should not be considered friendly or allies. They are cunning ambush predators who subsist on human blood.
==Behavior==
===Feeding===
Mercies spend most of their time feeding or looking for their next meal. They are able to walk on walls and ceilings with ease. Despite their size their long, thin bodies are able to fit into surprisingly small spaces. These factors, along with their ability of flight, allow them to carefully choose their encounters. A mercy will always attempt to flee hostile wanderers or entities if met on open ground; they attack only when they have the element of surprise.
The touch of a mercy has a numbing effect, causing a tingling feeling to spread throughout the body of the victim. Survivors of mercy attacks have described this feeling as relaxing or even euphoric. Movement and thought will become more and more difficult, but the average victim will be perfectly content in the soothing clutches of the mercy.
Once a victim has lost all will and ability to resist, the mercy will begin to feed. As many as a dozen needle-tipped tentacles will emerge from beneath its skull-like head and attach to the helpless target, beginning to drain its blood. This does not cause pain, but only heightens the victim's sense of pleasurable relaxation. If the victim was already suffering from severe mental or physical trauma prior to the mercy attack, or if the attack takes place on a level that a weakened wanderer is unlikely to survive (generally a level with a survival difficulty of class three or higher), the mercy will simply drain all the blood of the wanderer and leave behind its exsanguinated corpse.
Alternatively, if the victim appears to be strong bodied and in good mental health, and the attack is taking place on a relatively safe level, the mercy will drain only about forty percent of the victim's blood (approximately four pints for an average adult human). This is still enough to put the victim in a comatose or near-comatose state. The mercy will stay with the victim, encircling him or her with its wings, until they regain consciousness. This takes around eight hours; the victim's recovery from such a massive loss of blood can best be characterized as extraordinarily fast (most likely an as yet unidentified agent in the mercy's saliva facilitates this rapid healing). Still, without medical treatment, a victim should expect to feel extremely light-headed for at least sixteen hours after awakening and physically weakened for at least a week.While engorged with blood (which takes only a minute of feeding and lasts for approximately sixteen hours afterwards) large areas of the mercy's body and wings glow red and the mercy emits a low humming. This humming varies from mercy to mercy but generally consists of at least two distinct, simultaneous "voices": one deep and droning, the other soft and melodic. Each wanderer will experience this humming somewhat differently, but almost invariably report it as comforting and specifically associated with maternal love, whether that be literal (evoking particular treasured memories of one's own mother), imagined (a wanderer who came from a broken home feeling they are experiencing unconditional love for the first time) or figurative (feeling the warm, safe embrace of "mother" earth itself). It may be worth noting that mercies do not have sex or gender (see reproduction, below).
While comforting to human wanderers, the most important function of this hum is to repel other entities. The hum can be felt in a radius of about one mile. No entity will willingly enter the radius of the hum, and any entity within the radius will focus all its energy on leaving as soon as possible. It has been suggested that the red light the mercy emits causes even stronger aversion in entities, but, naturally, there have been minimal opportunities to observe this. Thus the mercy protects both itself and wanderers while they recover from feeding.
===Psychology and Society===
It is no mystery how mercies earned their name: sparing the lives of the healthy, while providing comforting and painless deaths to those who would otherwise experience a horrific end in the backrooms. Evolutionary psychologists, however, warn against attributing any particular benevolence to them. Current theories suggest that they are simply maximizing their food sources: preserving stock that will likely survive to be fed from again, while draining all they can from stock that would die soon anyway.
The nature and degree of a mercy's intelligence has not been well established. They seem to be able to perform complex evaluations of a wanderer's well-being that involve high levels of observation, empathy and critical thinking. They are also quite cautious and clever in stalking prey and avoiding predation themselves. On the other hand, no mercy has been observed to attempt anything like communication, either with other mercies or with wanderers. They do not co-operate or share territory, do not build or use tools and do not establish homes or alter their environments in meaningful ways. This seem to suggest an animal-like intelligence; especially disconcerting given the process by which mercies are made (see Reproduction, below).
===Surviving and Combating Mercies===
Although there are certainly worse entities in the backrooms, the threat of the mercies should not be taken lightly. Even a momentary touch can render one helpless and, worse, many victims of the mercy become addicted to the comfort it provides after only a single feeding. Even just hearing the hum of a mercy can be enough to create an addict, although this is much less likely and only with prolonged exposure. Mercy addicted wanderers will actively seek mercies to feed from them and are more than willing to put themselves and others in danger to do so. Their mental condition will continue to degrade over time until a mercy finally decides the addict's sanity is too far gone and drains them completely.
Company and confidence are some of the best defenses against mercies. Even very thick clothing does not provide protection from their numbing touch, but a mercy will almost never engage groups of more than one wanderer, or even a single wanderer that looks well-armed and belligerent. It should be noted, though, that while scaring off a mercy is easy, it is often a temporary victory. If conditions allow, a mercy will follow wanderers for hours, waiting for a moment of vulnerability.
If possible, a good offense may be the best option; if the mercy is dead, you don't have to worry about it stalking you, waiting for you to sleep. Although many factors make them extremely difficult to engage (their natural abilities that enable retreat combined with their skittishness; the long reach of their limbs and wings and the almost instant numbing they cause) it should be noted that the mercy is relatively fragile and susceptible to physical trauma. Engaging with ranged weapons, even improvised ones such as stones or other debris, can be effective if one can surprise the mercy or otherwise prevent its escape.
==Biology==
===Description===
Mercies have the basic body plan of a frontrooms mosquito, albeit one that has grown to about six feet in length. Their wings are structured more like a bat's than an insect's--leathery skin stretched between hyper elongated finger bones. While enormous, these wings can fold very compactly against their thin bodies to allow the mercy to pass through surprisingly tight spaces. Of their three pairs of legs, the frontmost end in human-like hands with fingers three to four times longer than those of an average adult. Portions of their exoskeleton resemble human bones--most notably, their head looks very much like a human skull lacking a lower jawbone. They lack the iconic proboscis of a frontrooms mosquito.
Their coloration is always in shades of black, grey and white, showing red only when engorged with blood.
===Ecology===
Mercies are not apex predators. Although their numbing touch works to a degree on other entities, it is far less effective than on wanderers. Many predatory entities will gladly kill and consume a mercy if given the chance. Thus, mercies thrive by avoiding notice.
Although mercies' bodies are fragile in certain ways--slightly more vulnerable to physical violence than a regular human--they are extremely resilient in others. Specifically, mercies seem to be completely immune to most environmental hazards: no amount of cold or heat seems to damage them, similarly they are left untouched by acids, toxins and poisons, ingested, inhaled or contact. By wrapping a wanderer in their wings, mercies are able to confer some of this resistance to victims they have fed from while they recover.
===Reproduction===
It is unclear exactly what triggers the reproductive drive-in mercies. To begin, it must already be engorged with blood from a feeding in the last sixteen hours. Such a mercy with at least three and no more than five helpless wanderers in the same location may choose to initiate the process. (This happens most often when a group of addicts willingly gives themselves to the mercy, since a mercy will not typically engage multiple hostile wanderers at once.) It begins quite similarly to feeding, but once attached to a wanderer, the mercy injects its own blood into the victim. Rather than stay with one wanderer, it will quickly move from one to the next. Once all the helpless wanderers have been seeded with the mercy's blood, the mercy will seal them tightly into its wings (the weight of three to five adults being a massive load that strains the wings to their limit) and crawl on to a ceiling or other high surface, forming a sort of cocoon. As with a normal feeding, the mercy's hum will protect it from other entities while in this vulnerable state. As time passes, the parent mercy's hum and glow will become weaker, while the glow and hum of the newly forming mercies inside the cocoon grow stronger. After about eight hours, the parent's light will have dimmed to almost nothing, the newly transformed mercies inside the cocoon will be fully formed and they will tear their way out through the wings of their parent, ending the parent's life and beginning theirs. The young mercies will immediately part ways, moving in opposite directions from each other and, if possible, finding exits to other levels.
==Notes: Potential Practical Application==
With their ability to repel entities and protect wanderers from many extreme environmental hazards, a compliant mercy would be an invaluable tool in exploring some of the Backrooms' most deadly levels. Sadly, any attempts to capture, train or bargain with mercies have so far been immediate and utter failures.
Category:Entities
Category:Safe
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