would love any crumbs about the fext if youre willing! im normal about vampires and vampire adjacent creatures and am fixating on the idea of them a bit <33
So the Fext are probably the most "benign" of the Tainted in that a large part of their population are people who are cursed to need to drink blood for sustenance, but they're otherwise not typically inherently violent (though of course this varies, and some definitely are). Shades, being the offspring of Endarkened and Mages, have to destroy things because their powers are fueled by destruction, violence, etc.--just like Endarkened themselves--so people fear them a lot more due to the unavoidable chaos of their natures; similarly, Ghasts are driven to feed and cannibalize, and Balor (Ket-Endarkened mix) have a biological imperative towards violence, conquering, and war. The demonic heritage manifests in all kinds of malevolent ways, which is what generally makes Tainted so dangerous, and it often causes the inherited traits from the Child of Light parentage to warp or mutate or rebound in odd ways. Like, those traits are often present, but they're just... twisted, corrupted, like a bad painting smeared into a tawdry mockery of the real thing. Endarkened love doing stuff like that.
However, while Fext have to drink blood to survive (as a consequence of their demonic ancestry), their minds are largely more rational, so they're much better at hiding their true natures from society and going incognito. Of course, this doesn't make them that much less feared: a normal (albeit beautiful-looking immortal) person that's actually secretly a blood-drinker isn't exactly a comforting thought. However, a lot of people tend to forget about their existence or not think of them as much: certainly not as much as outright, straightforward threats like Banshees or Nightgaunts, which are liable to swoop in and snatch travelers right off of the road!
The defining characteristics of Fext are that they're as beautiful and long-lived as Elves; they need to drink blood to survive; their senses are often overwhelmed by sunlight (but they don't burn or anything in it, it's more that their eyes are so sensitive that it causes them headaches); and they're in possession of some "small magics" in the same way that the Elves are. They can live on animal blood, but while it's sustaining, it's never satisfying. They also start appearing notably aged when they've gone a long time without access to human blood, which sometimes they use to their advantage to pass themselves off as different people (your 80-year-old neighbor is my elderly aunt who passed away and left me this house, that kind of thing). Notably, they're solitary when it comes to each other (Fext don't like to operate in the same 'territory' as each other because of the competition and the increased risk of exposure) and almost never associate with each other. It's about half and half, the ones who chose to live out in the wilderness, preying occasionally on sleeping travelers or farmers or 'van guards, versus the ones who live in cities and try to pass through the streets undetected.
Some of their small magics include use of the mesmer, a kind of enthralling, hypnotic power they have to lure, confuse, bewitch, or subdue victims. It typically only works on one person at a time, though, so it's not something they really use in battle. They also, of course, possess superhuman strength, speed, and agility when running at max capacity! They typically look like Elves, maybe with oddly-colored eyes or particularly sharp features, but there are no obvious tells like having really pale skin or being really cold or anything like that. They're very good at hunting, tracking, and stalking their prey, just like their sylvan cousins...
The one big downfall for the Fext that they inherited from the Endarkened (other than the whole blood-drinking thing) is their propensity for obsessiveness. They typically try to stay on the DL, but there are occasions when a kind of madness or fixation arises in them and they become utterly obsessed with a particular victim. Typically when they drink blood, they prefer not to kill, because it's not sustainable and draws a lot of attention; they prefer to feed from a target multiple times if they can, so killing is a moot point unless they're a particularly sadistic individual. But sometimes a kind of mania descends on them, an orgiastic compulsion and desire to consume (which takes hold of Endarkened in Hael at their worst), and they get so fixated that they accidentally end up over-indulging and killing their victim. It's kind of like the uncontrollable fits of lycanthropy, they lose all rational thinking and become quite monstrous. This is typically what leads to them getting caught and destroyed themselves!
Last crumb: in the novels, Croelle had a kind of Fext servant/familiar/lieutenant/companion who become fixated on him in this way, but couldn't drink his blood (Tainted can't drink the blood of other Tainted, it doesn't do anything for them), so he just... followed him around and did whatever Croelle told him to do, lol.
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