Tags

Small, Pack Hunter, Leaping, Blood-Drinker, Urban Vermin, Veil-Touched, Nocturnal, Nesting  

Instinct

To swarm and drain the warm.  

Moves

Leap from beams or cracks to latch onto exposed flesh

Drain blood rapidly, leaving victims dazed or unconscious

Swarm in confined, dark places—pipes, vents, culverts

Go torpid and vanish into walls or salt piles

Echo strange, wet suckling noises to disorient intruders

Retreat when fire, light, or salt is introduced—only to regroup

Special Qualities

Detect blood through concrete and steel

Torpor in meat salt; revive rapidly when prey nears

Resistant to pain, immune to disease

Cannot cross running water or salt lines (Veil-tied limitation)

Matriarch emits pheromonal control—slaying her stuns the nest

Description

They call them pensuckers—slick, hunched things no bigger than a terrier, with gray hides that always seem damp and a snout like a flayed rat’s trumpet. Their legs are made for latching, not running—strong spring-loaded haunches for leaping from rafters or drainage grates. You’ll hear the clicking first—their claws on rust or tile—then the squealing as they rally. One pensucker won’t kill you. Five will. Ten means you vanish into the chute screaming. Nesting deep in the old Union pens and slaughterhouse tunnels, they feed on alley kills, stray pets, and the runoff of old blood spilled decades ago. But they’re Veil-tainted now—something in the old brine cracked, and the things began to change. They act like ants. Or fungus. Or worse—like a choir without a mind, waiting for the matriarch to sing again. And when she does, every wall in Gate 19 breathes.