Skin Stealer

Skin Stealers are evil beings, the offspring of an unholy union of men and dream walkers, that can steal a humanoid's looks and memories.¹

Birth

A skin stealer is born to a humanoid woman who has visited the fey realm in her dreams. It grows quickly and is born after only three weeks, looking like an underdeveloped, skinless humanoid foetus. Most folk mistake the unconscious creature for a miscarriage and bury it in the earth. In its first few weeks under the soil it keeps growing, until it reaches the height of an adult human.¹

True form

In its true form a skin stealer is a slick, shapeless, skinless humanoid without any emotion. Its pupilless eyes shine like gossamer sky, and its mouth hides three thin, poisonous stingers that reach five feet in length. It is all but impossible to see one in this form, for it shows it only after its birth and in the few minutes it takes to change its skin.¹

Hunting

Skin stealers prey on humanoids through stealth and deception. They try to isolate their prey and sting it away from prying eyes, paralysing it. Once the victim lies unconscious and paralysed, the deskinning begins: with its three needle-like stingers the skin stealer cuts beneath the skin and pumps its gaseous venom under it, lifting the skin away from the muscle, and then removes it with a single, extremely thin cut.¹

What is left is a corpse that cannot be identified, even by magic. Only the mightiest magic can raise or revive such a victim, and every magical attempt to speak with the dead victim fails. These are the effects of the skin stealer's magical poison.¹

Wearing a skin

When a skin stealer puts on the skin it has stolen, its size and body adapt to the new shell, its bones shrinking or growing to fit the shape. Within ten days it begins to take on its victim's memories, which lets it copy the victim's manner perfectly, and within a month it holds all of them.¹ A skin stealer that has worn the same skin for more than a month has also gained all of its victim's skills.²

In its own form it understands Common and Sylvan but cannot speak any language; while wearing a skin it knows and speaks every language its victim spoke. Magic cannot put it to sleep.²

Magic

Like their fathers, skin stealers are cursed by Zeolet, the goddess of magic, and can work only the magic of enchantment. A skin stealer that takes the shape of a wizard can use its own innate magic to cast the enchantments that wizard knew.¹