Belker
Pathfinder |
A vicious but quite intelligent people, belkers are amongst the most deadly natives of the plane of Smoke, finding the flesh of mortals delicious and the screams of pain delightful.
Culture
Belkers are a solitary people, gathering only to mate or for the rare hunting pack, neither of which tends to last for long. Belker parents have no involvement in the upbringing of the young; instead the young must quickly learn to fend for themselves to survive. They most commonly make their homes in tunnels dug within the large cinders found throughout the plane.
Despite their solitary lifestyle, belkers are quite eager to converse with visitors, drawing great joy out of lulling outsiders into a false sense of security while exulting their own supposedly-peaceful nature. They will often go so far as to present themselves as a benevolent force despite all evidence to the contrary, tending towards lying at almost a pathological level. Even on matters unrelated to hunting, it is rare for a belker to speak the truth on any matter to any not native to their home plane.
Ecology
Belkers are carnivorous beings, with vapor rats and smoke mephits being their most common prey. They get great pleasure out of the act of eating, and especially in inflicting pain upon their intended victims prior to eating; as such, whenever possible belkers feed on intelligent beings rather than animal life.
Appearance
Belkers are most commonly encountered in their near-solid state. In this form, in still conditions they have a near-spherical body around 7 feet across (though the exact shape shifts and varies with wind), covered in fur that resembles the whorls of a cloud of smoke, ranging from light- to dark-grey. Given their largely gaseous makeup, they are a very light creature, the heaviest barely over 8 pounds despite their size. Two wide leathery fiend-like wings stretch from their backs, with a wingspan of around 15 feet. Belkers have no legs, dwelling as they do in a mostly landless realm, but they do possess two arms with clawed hands, useful in both slaughtering their prey and digging tunnels through cinders. At the top of their bodies are two small eyes, most often either white or red, with a fanged-mouth just below, hidden beneath their fur while closed
References
- Planescape Monstrous Compendium III, pp.22-23
