Astral Fangs

Small, cat-like beings living in the Scorched Plains, in particular the Pale Crescent.

Appearance

Ever large Astral Fangs don't reach heights of more than 30cm with a length of 50-70cm. At first glance, they look much like housecats with usually white to yellow-brown fur in different patterns. But when looking more cloesly, they also have some fox-like features reminiscent of Fenneks. In particular, their tails are very long and bushy, and their heads have shapes more like a fox's than a cat, with very long and wide ears. Only their eyes and whiskers are what distinguishes their heads from those of a Fennek.

These cat eyes are also a very unique feature, as they are always slightly glowing from magical energy contained inside them. This glow gets stronger as they age, but once they reach a certain age it slowly starts fading and once it has fully gone out, their lives will end.

Behavior

During the days, Astral fangs usually stay inside the Pale Crescent, one of the few places in the desert with average temperatures and access to water. There, they spend most of their time not doing much and laying around, sometimes playing and running around.

Once the night begins, they start to get more active and go out into the now cooled off desert in oder to hunt. Here they catch any small mammals or reptiles they can find to eat. At that time they also eat some amount of sand from the desert. This helps them catch small insects and other creatures buried in the sand but also serves a more important purpose.

As the sand in the Scorched Plains contains large amounts of Moon Stone particles, consuming the sand helps them gather magical energy and absorb it. This energy builds up inside them, causing the glow of their eyes, which then indicates how energy one specific Fang has collected during their life. Over the course of their life, Atral Fangs keep increasing the concentration of mana in their bodies, increasing the glow of their eyes and in some cases even emitting a small glow from their entire body. Once they reach old age the mana starts leaking out of their bodies, slowly overtaking the speed they take in mana from the desert sand. At the point they can no longer combat their mana loss by eating more sand, their eyes start losing their glow, and once they fully go out the Fang will die.

The mana within them is not only used to sustain their life, however. In rare situations, for example when the life of their cubs are threatened, they can gather all the mana they have consumed within their life and release it all within a single extremely strong spell. As Atral Fangs do not have strong magical affinity, the effekts of this spell are very unpredictable, but usualy they are very destructive, as they contain potentially huge amounts of mana. Once this mana has been released, there is only a very short amount of time where the Astral Fang can still alive, having released all the mana within their body. It is possible to somehow feed them some mana before they die and potentially leave them alive, but this is very rare and often does not work. If they do survive, however, the reset of their mana might slightly increase their lifetimes, as they will start rebuilding their mana reservers.