Fetch

Lacking any form of codified culture to call their own, the fetch are something of an outlier amongst the kith. The exact date of their first appeance in society is debated, but what is known for fact is that they first emerged out of Veilderan, back when it was a duchy known as Starochia. Fetch are not a unique people with their own history and stories of how they came to be, rather they are other kith marked by sinister forces. Fetch are in large parts demonic, with curling horns, sharp teeth, slitted pupils, long nails, and spaded tails. Some even possessed goat legs and rectangular pupils, others have shin layers of fur, and an exceedingly rare few have full animal heads. Fetch are not only demonic in appearance, but also crystalline. Believed to be influenced by the chaotic realms of daemons, they incorporate both elemental and demonic features. The aforementioned traits most commonly appear, but so too do they have crystalline growths upon their horns, full crystal horns, swathes of skin replaced by crystals, scar tissue that becomes crystalline instead of flesh, or rocky protrustions of crystals along their skin. These crystals denote what element they are attuned to: Earth, water, fire, or air. Because of these traits, and the theories of scholars that believe them to originate where demonic magic touches the land in sufficient quantity, the fetch are seldom welcome sights by the populace of Irulia. As far as any scholar or historian is aware, the fetch have only ever appeared in Irulia. No mentions of them in Temenere or in the New World exist. If they do, they have yet to reach Irulian shores.

Anything that can be considered 'fetch culture' codifies within the slums and destitute places of the nations of Irulia. And what little there is changes from slum to slum, with little crossing of the streams. Many fetch, due to their difficulty finding jobs in a land that shuns them, are forced to resort to petty crime to get by. As if this was not enough, the crystal growths of the fetch are valued by arcanists and alchemists alike. Due to this, some unsavory individuals practice a profession of poaching the fetch and their crystals. Very few fetch survive the process of having their crystals removed, for many times they are embedded as deep as the bone. Even fewer live afterwards due to infection, being put down either out of cruelty or mercy by the poacher, or being too weak to provide for themselves while they recover and passing away due to other factors. Those very rare few who do survive however, are changed. Not only mentally and physically, but spiritually. These so called 'void fetch' are fetch whose element has shifted from their element of birth to negative energy, nothingness brought into the world. These fetch are considered arcane anomalies and highly dangerous by many nations, and their subsequent persecution, more vehement persecution than is normal for fetch, makes the presence of void fetch even rarer. The Kheravazan Empire especially has harsh rules around the void fetch, considering all of them to be kill on sight targets. Bounty hunters net high paychecks for bringing in a void fetch, making even mercenary work and criminal work highly dangerous for those unfortunate few.