Pyrs

## Physical Description & Abilities:

A Pyr is a physical being of any species. They are special in that they are a being who has multiple souls within its own body. There is a single soul that is in charge and this soul is the soul of the original who became a Pyr. The rest of the souls are of those the Pyr consumed over its time as one. These souls still have their own thoughts but are completely obedient to the master soul.

## General Miscellaneous Information:

### Spiritual Skeleton / Essence :

Underneath the skin, alongside its physical innards, is a sort of spiritual essence or skeleton. This essence takes the form of a sort of pulsating sentient gas. This gas can shift its form into being liquid or solid, and can change shape easily as well. This essence can be controlled in any way by the Pyr. The amount of this spiritual essence a Pyr has stored within themselves is proportional to how many creatures they have consumed. The less spiritual essence a Pyr has, the weaker they will be. If a Pyr still has plenty of spiritual essence, and dies, they they can simply resurrect themselves, and usually pretty quickly too. If a Pyr runs out of all their spiritual essence though, and is then killed, they will be dead for good. This means that this essence is the measure of their life force, as long as they still have some left they will always regenerate.

### Familiar Manifestation:

One of the abilities of a Pyr is the ability to manifest physical forms of familiars. These familiars either take the shape of the person who they represent, or of the new shadow form of that person's soul. These Familiars can be directly or indirectly controlled by the Pyr and be used as soldiers or simply fodder to tire out an enemy they are facing. There is a danger in manifesting too many familiars at once for a Pyr. This is because it takes away some of their gathered spiritual essence to form a familiar. The more familiars produced, the more essence that is needed to make them and the less the Pyr will have left remaining in their body.

Familiar manifestation also lends itself to another ability. This ability is shape shifting. Pyrs have the choice to choose whatever form they want, if it is from any of the souls they have taken. For example, if a Pyr wanted to shape shift, they could simply take the form of the body of one of the souls they have consumed. The the Pyr is particularly smart & creative, they would even be able to combine the various appearances of multiple of their victims to create a new unique appearance. This is not as common as the basic shape shifting because of its difficulty to be done convincingly.

### Performance Boost:

Pyrs usually have vastly superior strength when compared to others of what it used to be. A Pyr’s strength is proportional to how much spiritual essence they have within themselves, which is proportional to how many they have killed and consumed. So basically, the more a Pyr consumes, the stronger they will become. There is not a cap for a Pyr’s power as they can simply consume more and more.

Note: A Pyr can gain more spiritual essence from consuming anything that is dead, no matter how long it has been dead, but it can only absorb the soul if the body recently died, and the Pyr will only be able to make a new familiar out of the dead body if they take the soul with it.

As for durability, proportionately to their other strengths, Pyrs do not have very tough skin or internals. Instead Pyrs rely on their regenerative ability. This ability to regenerate is the strongest defensive ability of a Pyr and also has the potential to be the fastest out of any living or non-living creature. Just like many of their other abilities, the speed of their regeneration (as well as their durability) is directly proportional to the amount of spiritual essence they have stockpiled. For example, it can take days for a weak Pyr to heal a single arm, but at a certain point, the only limitation to a sufficiently powerful Pyr's regenerative ability is simply how fast their body is being destroyed.

Basically, if a Pyr is powerful enough, it will virtually not matter how fast they take damage, their regeneration will counter the damage at the same speed as the destruction. Back to simply durability, this also grows as the Pyr gains more spiritual essence, but is puny in power compared to the regenerative ability. For example, a weak Pyr would be just as durable as a normal human, and even a very powerful Pyr would only have enough durability to be invulnerable to normal weapons, but still only mildly resistant to magical / spiritual attacks, or enchanted weaponry.

### How to kill / Weaknesses:

There is only a single way to kill a Pyr permanently. The way to kill one permanently is that a person must first be able to somehow drain a Pyr of all its spiritual essence, either from killing it temporarily over and over, or through some other means. After this they must simply stab the Pyr through the heart. This is because as long as a Pyr has a heart, they will always be able to regenerate from that origin point. Even if the brain of the Pyr is destroyed, the soul will still be linked to the heart and there would be a chance for the Pyr to be revived later. There are many ways to temporarily kill a Pyr, but the easiest way is to use weapons imbued with divine magic, or using spells that use divine magic, but by far the easiest way to fully drain a Pyr of its life force is to keep a Pyr out in daylight. This could be done by either eliminating all possibilities of shelter, or by restraining the Pyr through the use of sufficiently strong ropes, chains, or cables.

Pyrs also have a direct weakness against sunlight. Whenever they are exposed to it, their body will violently combust and burn intensely. Because of their body's destruction, their regeneration will kick in and slowly use up their spiritual essence they have stockpiled. Pyrs which have managed to accumulate a sizable enough stockpile of spiritual essence will be able to survive even in sunlight, although only for as long as their life force will last. This does not take away from the fact that doing so is still highly painful for a Pyr to experience. An average Pyr would last less than a minute in direct sunlight and a low power Pyr would last only for a few moments.

Note: Sometimes especially powerful Pyrs will walk out in daylight simply because they do not care for the wasted life force they must use to do so. When they do they obviously combust violently and continue to do so as long as they are in the daylight. In this state, these powerful Pyrs are basically walking skeletons which are perpetually on fire, with only a little portion of their muscles, organs, etc remaining untouched. The rest of their body, mostly their skin and muscles, will be in a constant state of regenerating themselves at the same speed at which they are burning. Because of this appearance, Pyrs out in daylight can sometimes be mistaken as some sort of flame demon or fire spirit. Neither of these types of creatures are normally anywhere near the same power as a Pyr which can afford to walk casually in daylight.

### Death:

When a Pyr dies, it is unique compared to other creatures. What happens when they die is that they simply dissolve. They dissolve into ash, which will often be swept into the wind.

Note: Whenever a familiar of a Pyr is killed, the soul of the familiar is freed from its tether with its master soul and can finally go on to become a true shadow for someone else.

## How they come to be:

### Spontaneous Mutation:

This method for transformation into a Pyr can happen to anyone, and at any time, although it is extremely rare. The way this works is that a soul has to either willingly give itself to an already living person, or to simply wander into another person's body by accident. This is so rare because usually they either stay by there corpse until a soul shepherd arrives, or they are able to go become a shadow on their own. A person is more likely to become a Pyr through this method if they stay around corpses more than the average person, either through something like a morgue, or being a warrior who kills their enemies, etc.

### Experimentation:

This is when either an individual powerful mage, or a group of mages use forbidden magic to bind a soul to another soul. This is different from the Wair because they are not fusing two souls into one soul, but tethering one soul to become the slave of another soul. The master soul then becomes corrupted and a Pyr, now with the ability to steal the souls of others by itself.

### Corruption / infection:

This is when a living person somehow gets the saliva, blood, or mana of a Pyr into their own body. This can be either willingly, or being forced by being bitten by the Pyr, etc. When a person gets the saliva, blood, or mana of a Pyr into one's own body, one of the servant souls of the old Pyr leaves it and gets tethered to the newly transformed Pyr. This newly formed Pyr itself will also be tethered to the origin Pyr, but for that to happen the origin Pyr must perform a short ritual. If the ritual is not done for any reason, the newly formed Pyr will be free.

### Divine invention:

This is when a living person prays to a god to become a Pyr. If their prayer is answered, their soul will be corrupted and the person will turn into a Pyr. The newly transformed Pyr start off weaker than through the other forms of transformation because they are not given a soul at the beginning, but these Pyrs tend to become stronger in the end.

## Types & Type Differences:

### Corrupted Pyr:

These are the basic type of Pyr, and they are made through any of the first three transformation methods. These Pyrs gain a servant soul upon transforming into a Pyr. These are also the type of Pyrs who are weak against divine magic.

### Divine Pyr:

These are the special type of Pyr, and they are made through the Divine Invention method of transformation. These Pyrs start out weaker than the other type due to not having a servant soul at the beginning, but tend to be more powerful overall after they start killing. These Pyrs are more powerful for two reasons. The first is because they have basically been blessed by at least one god (meaning that in addition to becoming a Pyr, they also essentially become a God Woekin), and as long as this god is in favor of this Pyr, then the Pyr will gain an additional performance boost relevant to the powers of the god they are blessed by. The second reason is because these Pyrs are more resistant to divine magic, as their creation was through divine magic.