Worldly Fauna

All creatures and monsters located within this section can be found in 3 or more regions throughout Idalos. Regional specific beasts can be found in the specific regions fauna pages.

Lisirra's Blight Drinker

Credit: Symbri with input by Maltruism.

Native To: Southern Region

Quick Fact: Unintentionally beneficial Leech of Lisirra's

Lifespan & Development: Lisirra's Blight Drinker is an epimorphic organism, which means it does not change much as it grows, its body design and function being essentially changeless for its entire life. They are always white in color and hardly get any larger or longer than the average man's hand. They only breed in stagnant or slow moving waters and a healthy leech can have a lifespan of up to two or three years.

Abilities: Consumption of decaying material, and indefinite stasis of any chemical reactions from these materials. Uses: Medical benefits of sterilization through elimination of rotting tissue, and chemical advantages of delaying reactions of otherwise volatile compounds.

Perhaps one of the world's more misunderstood creatures Lisirra's blight drinker has a name that associates with an immortal that makes it seem like some tool for evil. In fact, this useful little leech is possibly one of the few creatures of nature that combat's Lisirra's influence on the world. These little white leeches don't drink blood like their brethren, but pus and decay.

Living in stagnant lakes and lazy rivers, these white leeches live off decaying plants and animal. And for that reason, they emit a near unbearable smell and have a taste that only the most starved of predators could bear. Often seen in rotten tree trunks or on corpses of animals near water, these small creatures can smell decay and will slowly crawl towards it to feast upon the decomposing dinner.

That said, what makes these tiny creatures true marvels is their inability to eat anything that isn't rotten or dead. These creatures, while symbiotic, aren't parasitic, in fact, they would likely starve on a live host. However, it has been discovered that these creatures can save gangrenous wounds and pox-filled infections of the flesh. Placing these creatures on infected wounds over the course of a night or even days can save injuries that no normal medicine or non-magical surgeon could hope to clean. Nature's grim janitors, these little creatures consume pus and rotten flesh alike leaving behind raw but otherwise uninfected flesh.

History: Lisirra's Blight drinker has only in recent times been considered something beyond disgusting vermin. As a creature that smells as bad as it is hard to look at, they were for the longest time considered something to be avoided; and in the case of being seen near a populated area, exterminated. After all, the odor hardly makes them easy to be around. It was only in recent times, when rumors of these little monsters being used to beat gangrene and other near deadly wound infections, that they became viewed as something better than parasites.

Their origins, while not well known, do in fact lie with Lisirra, though their purpose and reality are actually quite different. The Intention for them had been as a means to further spread Lisirra's influence by feeding on things infected with diseases and acting as carriers to spread the diseases further. However in that aspect the creatures were failures; the Plague Lord neglected to place a natural aggression to attack healthy tissue into these organisms.

They consumed unhealthy disease ridden flesh as expected, but did not attack healthy and uncorrupted organisms, making them only good for the consumption of disease, and in reality an enemy of Lisirra's goals. As such, she attempted to have the species eradicated. But like most vermin, they proved near impossible to eradicate and by the time she'd nearly succeeded, her efforts were noted, and enough of these leaches had been discovered by alchemists and doctors alike, who preserved the species.

Biology: While very similar to the slug or leech their are some particular differences that set the Blight drinker apart from their cousins. One, unlike leeches, the blight drinker does not directly attach themselves to a victim they instead have a small circular mouth ringed with tentacles that secrete mild digestive fluids, these fluids are thought to be both acidic and antibiotic in nature considering the ability of the tentacles to dissolve and scoop rotten materials into the creatures small maw.

Alchemy: Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the leech is it's alchemical properties. Their ability to withhold and store toxins translates into one of the most powerful if unknown inhibiting agents on Idalos. The digestive fluids of the leech being able to put external elements into a near infinite stasis until a catalyst is introduced, making them able to be used for some of the most creative poisons and subtle medicines for those with the knowledge of how to use them.