Bleak Phoenix

Bleak Phoenix

Appearance: 
The bleak phoenix is quite large for a non-flightless bird, measuring an average of four feet long from beak to the base of their tail, with a proportionately impressive wingspan. They possess a raptoral appearance, with forward-facing eyes, sharp hooked beak, and even sharper talons. Lending to their name, their plumage is almost completely colorless, typically being stark white, though various shades of grey have been seen, and black birds have been reported. Their eyes are typically a pastel shade of yellow.


Abilities: 
The bleak phoenix is capable of generating a magical black fire, either shrouding themselves in it, or breathing a gout of it. This fire causes no burns, but drains the very life energy from those it touches, sustaining the phoenix. In addition, those who die in the presence of a bleak phoenix find that rather than moving on to the next life, their soul is actually transferred into a new body, the young of a species appropriate to the environment. This process is poorly-understood, but it is believed that this forced reincarnation also somehow sustains the creature. Those reincarnated in this process lose most of their memories, but retain a few hazy fragments, along with much of their prior personality.

Finally, as with most phoenixes, the bleak phoenix is notoriously difficult to truly kill. If its body is killed, it erupts in a dangerous conflagration of black fire. Within a day, the phoenix returns in an immaterial, spectral form, sooner if its death throes managed to drain life from others. In this spectral form, it is impervious to nonmagical harm, and even if killed again, will return again within a day. If it can gather the life energy equivalent to three adult humans, it returns to its physical form. While this spectral form is technically more powerful, it seems to bring the phoenix discomfort, so they rarely linger in it longer than necessary.

Behavior: 
The bleak phoenix is a rare but hardy creature, and can be found in nearly any non-enclosed environment. They live solitary lives, and while intelligent and capable of speech, they rarely interact with others save to feed off of their life energy.

Surprisingly, the bleak phoenix is not truly immortal. While their lifespan extends over five centuries, they eventually face final death. All bleak phoenixes reproduce asexually, laying a small clutch of one to three eggs when the end of their lives nears.They then seek out an equal number of individuals whose souls they deem exceptional, with the goal of reincarnating them as their own young.

Other: 
The origins of the bleak phoenix are still not perfectly understood, but their first recorded appearance occurred shortly after an incident in which much of a town was destroyed in a failed necromantic experiment.