The Petting Zoo

by Paul Devisser <[p--vi--e] at [twilight.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca]>

>>>>>[Hoi there all youz… A chummer of mine has got some red-hot data that may cast some light on the shadow… Right. Here it is.]<<<<<

A couple of buds n’ me took this run to Detroit. What we found was mind blowing.

There was the thing, called itself a Lonesti. Fraggin’ weird. Had no astral sig whatsoever. It was humanoid, but it drained Jackie of her magic in less than 30 secs. Thumper, muscle along for the ride, toasted it with a couple of bursts from a MP-5TX. There were two more, and we geeked ‘em both. They didn’t even blink when I tossed a killer mana bolt at them. Wasted a perfectly good fire elemental, and it just kept coming. The only thing that even touched these things were several hundred rounds from my partner’s gun. Blew my mind.

Note: After Relli told this to me, I checked around. It took some digging, but this was lifted from the library at MITT. Cost me a hot deck as well, so it better be worth it. Word to the adventurous, the file was protected by some drek that I never scanned before. If ya can get some info about it, leave mail at LTG# 1934(4776-98567). Address to either Null Cipher, Epilogue, or Maelstrom. Oh yeah. I rewrote the file a little, getting rid of all the drek that was written in a language that none of us speak, and put it in the same format as the Paranatural Guide.

Lonesti

[Taken from Salan Ultha’s _Unmasking the Demons_, 1468 AD]

A creature of ancient and mysterious origins, the result of a magical experiment gone horribly wrong. The energies that were part of the spell created a void of energy on the astral plane, while creating a life on the material plane. These creatures must feed on the magic force of others in order to survive. Although such a creature would typically feed on life-force, as a vampire, the energies involved mutated the creature, changing its requirements from life-force, to magic. The first meal the newly created creature consumed were the magicians that created it.

Lonesti have no essence. In order to survive, the magic they steal from others is slowly leaked from the prime plane, where it is stored in their physical form, to the astral plane. This allows creatures that are capable of astral perception to easily recognize Lonesti by merely perceiving them on the astral plane.

The manner by which these creatures feed is unknown. What is known is that the creatures are basically humanoid. Also, observations have shown that when the creatures have consumed the double the magic to be found in one human they ‘give birth’. This process is similar to the reproduction process of bacteria.

Lonesti transfer memories genetically, so the memories possessed by the first, are possessed by all who currently exist. This may account for the incredibly intelligent nature of these creatures, who IQ would easily reach the genius level. All can speak an ancient and dead language, giving rise to the speculation that this is the original tongue of the magicians that originally created the Lonesti.

All are extreme megalomaniacs, to the point that they will gladly perform genocide on mundaners. They regard magicians as food, and all other races as tools to obtain that food. They are without any sense of morality or humanity whatsoever.

Their greatest strength, other than the ability to drain magic, is their immunity to mana based spells, and all combat spells. This is due to the utter lack of an astral form. All creatures have an astral form, even mundaners. The absence of one in the case of the Lonesti disallows the use of mana based spells which must have an astral form to complete the link to the physical plane.

Powers:

  • Immunity to age
  • Immunity to magic*
  • Magic drain.

Weaknesses:

  • Magic loss.

* Only combat spells and mana spells. Physical spells and damaging manipulations are exempt from this.

>>>>>[So there you go… This Salan dude isn’t found in any of the bases, and there was no info in any public library. Its all I could get, hope it helps…]<<<<<
—Null Cipher (17:53:22/05-30-50)

>>>>>[GM NOTE: In 2011 there were only 3 of them that awoke out of 21 that had hidden in order to prevent the annihilation of the entire race. By 2050 there are 11. If either the Elves or the greater Dragons discover that some still live, they will spend every available resource to hunt the Lonesti down and kill them all.]<<<<<