Shadows

### Loyalty

While not necessarily loyal, all shadows serve the dark, for such is their nature

### Base

Originates from the Void

Esshâí (**Älorin:** *es*, *shâ* and -*í*, meaning "shadows" or "animate darkness"), commonly known simply as "shadows", are the ghostly darkness that creep towards the light, sometimes referred to as the drops of the Night, for they spill fourth from it, and become what they are thru the touch of creation. In themselves, shadows are incorporeal, powerful and vacuous darkness that both admire and envy the living, and so yearn to be part of life.

Shânraí (**Älorin:** *shâ*, -*nra* and -*í*, meaning "dark ghosts" or "spirits of darkness"), are the ghostly darkness that creep towards the light, sometimes referred to as the drops of the Night, for they spill fourth from it. Shadows are, at their simplest, powerful but vacuous darkness eager for life, that both admire and envy the living and thus creep toward them, and even hate the living they haunt for the lives they will not share yet spend so carelessly. Thinking shadows are infatuated with the concept of divinity and long to be centered with it, something they seek to do by becoming idols of worship themselves.

Avon is a constant place of shadow, with its radiant sanctuaries ever surrounded by deathly darkness. With the inevitable coming of each Night the world is drowned in crushing darkness, and with the burning dawn Avon is haunted anew. Where the light shines the brightest shadows are the weakest, yet it is there they long to be the most.

In being ghosts of the dark, shadows are beings of death, yet, their gifted souls hum with life. Thus, shadows are perceived as expressions of death, for creation has no graceful concept for beings as devoid of place as shadows are. Yet, their base desire for the light that they cannot have curses them with insatiable madness and need to possess the living in all manners that they may, being it through consumption, subjugation or by invasion of the mind and spirit.

## Types of Shadows

### **Shânusir**

Shânusirí (**Älorin:** *shâ*, *nusir* and -*í*, meaning "dark corpse"), commonly known as wights, are vacuous shadows driven by base desire. Lesser shadows cannot assume a form of their own but must possess a vessel of life in order to experience it. Such experiencing proves inadequate, however, for rotten flesh and dark spirit can never be at peace nor find clarity, and so they possess, repossess and repossess again and again in their infinite and unnatural need.

When succumbed to disparity and possessed by the dark the living become wights themselves and begin a hunt of their own for whatever may fill the gaping hole inside of them, usually by stealing life from the living.

#### **Shânraí**

Shânraí (**Älorin:** *shâ*, -*nra* and -*í*, meaning "dark ghosts" or "spirits of darkness"), are the ghostly darkness that creep towards the light, sometimes referred to as the drops of the Night, for they spill fourth from it. Shadows are, at their simplest, powerful but vacuous darkness eager for life, that both admire and envy the living and thus creep toward them, and even hate the living they haunt for the lives they will not share yet spend so carelessly. Thinking shadows are infatuated with the concept of divinity and long to be centered with it, something they seek to do by becoming idols of worship themselves.

### **Shânor**

Shânorí (**Älorin:** *shâ*, *nor* and *-í*, meaning "dark wraiths"), commonly known as wraiths, are thinking shadows endowed with dark divinity who manifest as heirs of the Night, endowed with nightmarish power and cursing miasmas. Thru sheer presence they alter the world around them, only ever rivaled by the strongest radiance and the rays of the saving sun. Wraiths are perceived as deific incarnations of the deathly darkness of oblivion and as they roam Avon they corrupt the lives around them thru auras of heart-breaking disparity.