Sotaik

Age
 Creature-kind
 Height
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 Manna Type
 Kingdom of Origin

Sotaik is a monstrous creature of unnatural composition and deformed proportions, born from a failed cacodemon possession.

It lurks in the quiet, isolated regions of Caprine, and, for the most part, keeps to itself. Though it is irresistibly drawn to energies that are abnormally strong or awry, and will travel beyond its haunting grounds to seek the source—requiring intervention from centaur sentinels to chase it back into its designated zone.

While Laeka'Draeon and his companions travel through the Gardens of Grey-Path they are ambushed by Sotaik. The creature is unusually far from its territory, and dangerously close to Elenoelian, and though it is never explained why it travelled so far from its lurking-place, the fact that it honed specifically on Laeka'Draeon's group gives rise to the suspicion that it was drawn from its territory because of them.

## Appearance

Sotaik is a creature known as a gollow-gellidi; which is a faeren title, and means 'Hollow Soul'. A gollow-gellidi is an unnatural creation; a resulting abomination when a demon attempts to possess a body, reaches the fusion process, but then fails to take complete control. The repercussion tears both the demon and original spirit of the host from having any control of the body and traps them within. The consequence of such violent fusion of energies leaves the body horrendously mutated.

Sotaik's form is a hideous abnormality of plant-like fleshy segments, clustered tentacles, and giant insect-like abdomen. Its skin is citron-coloured and smooth, with incredible elasticity. It has two, webbed feet which it uses to drag itself forward in slow, cumbersome, swaying motions.

The abdomen, arguably twice the length of the rest of its body, is semi-transparent and attached via grotesque claw-like ligaments growing from its back. The tentacles are clustered around its lower neck region and look like a giant, writhing root system. The tentacles, though long and flexible, are incredibly strong, capable of crushing tree trunks.

Its head is horned and has withered, whisker-like appendages lined along the cheeks. Its eyes (seven in total) are pitch black and glisten like beetle husks. When it opens its jaw, it's revealed that its entire inner mouth and throat are lined with sharp teeth that curve inward.

When Laeka'Draeon attacks Sotaik and pierces its flesh with his fangs, bitter black liquid spurts from the wounds (instead of blood).

## Personality

All individual traits and quirks that once made up the original creature that is Sotaik, are long gone; frayed and erased by the gollow-gellidi transformation.

Sotaik is essentially a mindless creature, incapable of maintaining (or restoring) any true sentience. It behaves on pure instinct, and even then, those instincts are not of any natural order. It does not hunt or sleep or procreate like other animals, behaving instead more like a wraith (entities that haunt specific regions and are completely reactive—never really actively seeking a purpose or design).

Sotaik's original being was a wood sprite named, Taiko. The demon who attempted (and failed) to rout Taiko and become a cacodemon was a demon of Contempt, named Solvus. Only the purest desires of both sprite and demon drive Sotaik's actions; a confliction of grief, malice, and the need to heal the distortion in living energies.

## Trivia

**Valadilian Trivia:** Sotaik is the first gollow-gellidi to form in Caprine. There have been three other cases of gollow-gellidi transformations in the kingdom of Gelian in documented history; sixty-four in total across all eleven kingdoms of Valadae.