“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?”
-Chuck Palahniuk
Dem Bones
Dem Bones, known as DB for short, are a rather unique group of creatures to be found wandering around, caught between this life and the next. DBs hail from all races- from equines to canines, and therefore, the shape they can take varies greatly depending on what they existed as in their first life.
To bring about a DB, a great force must be gathered, fueled by raging emotions or strong feelings and desires. Most frequently, the emotion that causes a DB to rise up in an area is sorrow or rage, as these are the most common. However, rare cases of love or happiness causing DBs to form has also been reported. These DBs caused by positive emotions act more like guardians, whereas DBs created by negative emotions need to continuously feed off the emotions of both the living and the dead to sustain themselves, making them frightening predators.
DBs can be controlled or summoned if a human has strong enough willpower, though not many survive the summoning because DBs tend to turn on their masters and consume their souls, a fuel source that keeps them moving much longer than simple emotions. The more powerful the DB, the more likely it has consumed many souls.
However, more and more cases of a sort of 'contract' between feral; DBs and random humans have been appearing. In return for the emotions of a living individual, a DB will grant the human protection and part of its abilities, taking on the role of a familiar.
Feral DBs are predictable- they haunt the same locations, or at least similar locations, depending on what they were in life. It is rumored that a DBs are attached to what they knew in life, though since most of them seem to be emotionless themselves, just the embodiment of death energy, it is unproven that they attach themselves to memories from their past life.
You can accurately determine what a DB was in life based upon it's exposed skull, the one physical aspect that all Dem Bones have in common.
Confirmed Types, In Order of Discovery:
Canine, Avian, Human
