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| Art by Chaoclypse (Brandon Yu) |
Hatespawn are humanoid creatures spawned by the hate of sentient beings.
No, you can’t kill them with love, but you can harm their reproduction by healing social wounds in nearby communities.
Hatespawn are of the most evil, demonic variety. Malicious, man-eating imps. In regions of especially strong hatred between dominions, where brutal, dishonorable wars are often waged, Hatespawn thrive in the Mythic Underworld. They emerge to provoke further spats and violence, as this feed the reproductive cysts that spurt them into this reality. Even the hatred of humanity against their own kind empowers their ranks. The older rotten Hatespawn colonies raid the most innocent of villages first for their livestock, then pillage their specialized tools, and finally attack to openly feast upon what's left of the village elders. Leaving the young alive breeds more hate.
The physical aspect of the Hatespawn varies from manifestation to manifestation. They typically begin life as a hunched white bundle of wiretight muscle. Completely hairless, earless, and noseless and exuding a thin sweat of sticky slime. Long-fingered hands end in spade-like claws. Needle teeth chatter. As they grow, which for small Spawnholes is an unlikely event for such vicious creatures, their shape becomes more human, more upright. A bump for a nose. Their jaws unhinge and new sharkteeth grow. Their eyes never stop growing. They are all asexual. They all look like bone white men.
Art by Chaoclypse (Brandon Yu)
Killing them in wrath only makes them stronger. A cold, nearly sociopathic distance or self-righteous fervor is required to effectively exterminate Hatespawn. This has led to the foundation of a few mercenary groups who pride themselves on their "dispassionate training." Scholars of Hatespawn find these merc groups to be a catch-22, and more dangerous than helpful, as the tensions between competing creeds capable of great physical violence co-habitating within a region tend feed Spawnholes. A notable exception is The Hypnotic Order, those trained in the ways of "dispassionate violence" via hypnotic techniques. The live plain lives until their service is called upon. Then the temporary Order disbands, and their members must disperse to other settlements of their region, or further.
Of course, other methods of effectively eliminating the Spawnhole’s offspring have been implemented in the past. Before castles were left to ruin, they were filled with traps; resident magic-users invoked a temple's dangerous environments to keep Hatespawn within their pits. Volcanoes have even been forged under the fleshy growths which spew the foul creatures, born for seconds as they drop into molten rock. (Though this technique also resulted in The Cursed Volcano of the Olpheds, and such extreme measures are frowned upon.) Other times, abundant Hatespawn attract other monsters to their nests, which feed on the young Hatespawn, and grow fat and strong and bold.
The best technique, however, is prevention. Dominions familiar with Hatespawn quickly dismantle warmonger dominions. Another tactic is to keep limited diplomatic contact between dominions in tentative peace. As a surplus of and lust for wealth tends to be the key ingredient in inter-polity conflict, several Anti-Avarice cults have taken power in areas that have managed to survive prolonged Hatespawn infestations.
Art by Chaoclypse (Brandon Yu)
Such Anti-Avarice cults, like The Followers of Auntie Mabel, hire Adventurers to investigate Hatespawn outbreaks. Their goal being to eliminate the problem at its source: The Spawnhole. These are incursions into reality from a despicable plane of existence, and while a dark magic-user can conjure one, they are more often created from acts of hate within a nearby community. Once the Spawnhole's location has been discovered, a magic-user must close this psychically-generated birthing orifice with a ritual involving a member (or affected descendant) who was involved in the acts of hate that allowed the Hatespawn to tear into this reality.
But more often, folks won't have the guiding principles of Auntie Mabel or the Hypnotic Order around. And unless the PCs are from a very cosmopolitan high fantasy-leaning city, or scholars of the cacodemonic planes, they are unlikely to know the intricacies of the Hatespawn's psycho-reproductive cycles.
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I dunno, I had a thought and followed through with it a bit. I'm not much of a fantasy game writer, so I thought a blog post would be a good place for this.
