Rimeflayer Demon

"We thought it was just a bitter storm rolling in, the kind that sneaks up from the north and bites before you can bolt the shutters. But then the fire went out, all at once, as if it had been snuffed by a giant’s hand. And we heard it - ice splintering, slow and deliberate, like footsteps across a frozen lake. Then it came into view, tall and jagged, frost steaming from its claws. It looked at me, and I swear I felt my soul freeze before it even touched me."

— Eilin Drest, lone survivor

 

The Frost Sintered

  There is a peculiar cold that no hearthfire can banish, no cloak can shield against, and no mortal soul can endure. This cold bears a name, whispered in dread by travellers and hermits alike: Rimeflayers. They come in the deep stillness of frozen nights, their arrival heralded by a bone-cracking wind and the sound of brittle branches snapping in unseen hands.   A Rimeflayer is an imposing figure of frost and jagged ice, standing taller than a man but hunched like a predator. Their limbs are elongated, with fingers like icicles, brittle-looking but sharper than a butcher’s knife. Their faces are blank except for hollowed, frost-ringed eyes and a mouth that splits open to reveal a cavernous maw lined with teeth of black ice. They move in eerie silence, their joints grinding with the sound of creaking glaciers. They say Rimeflayers speak, but their words are not words at all: they are the crack of splitting ice, the howl of a frozen gale, and the death knell of warmth itself.   These creatures are drawn to warmth, not just of fire or flesh, but of hope and joy. A Rimeflayer's presence brings unnatural cold that extinguishes flames and stills the air, blanketing the land in an oppressive, frozen silence. It does not simply kill its prey; it freezes their very essence, shattering hope and courage like fragile glass before consuming what remains.  

Splitting Ice & Glacial Voids

  They seem to select their prey with chilling precision: the lone wanderer, the storyteller whose voice grew too warm, the village whose fires burned too bright against the night. Those they touch are not slain outright. Instead, their souls are encased in ice, their bodies left as frozen sculptures with expressions of fear forever etched on their faces.   Some say these souls are not lost, merely trapped, and that a Rimeflayer's hoard, an eldritch ice cavern somewhere beyond mortal reckoning, is filled with such frozen captives, their whispers forming an eerie, constant song. Others whisper that the flayers take no prisoners, and what is left behind is merely the echo of a life, frozen and shattered like fragile glass.   If you see one, pray. If you hear one, run. And if the air grows colder without warning, know that you are already too late. The Rimeflayer has found you.