Irradiated creature

Irradiated creatures are living things heavily warped or entirely reconstituted by Ederstone's magical radiation.
People who are irradiated beyond recognizable species are known as Starspawn.
"Irradiated creature" is an enormous category of flora and fauna. There is an entire section for Ederstone-Touched Species in this very wiki that only gets into a small handful of the kinds of things shaped by Ederstone. The magic constantly blasted out by those stones makes new kinds of irradiated creatures every day, perhaps every hour. These range from vicious monsters to whimsical spirits to eccentric animals or plants.
An irradiated creature could be a deadly hydra that feeds on the lingering memories of tragedy in old ruins. It could be a teleporting semi-ethereal weasel with the face of a dragon that both troubles and protects a local village. It could be a rock that rolls itself on the ground eating particulates. It could be a big six-legged deer with blue fur. It could be semi-living water that carbonates its surrounding water and digests anything that dies in it. It could be a stingray that lives in the clouds and eats small birds. It could a dandelion that is spicy like a hot pepper.
The most substantial difference in irradiated creatures is between those that can reproduce and form a new species, and those that are unique individuals that cannot. As a general rule, the more magical and powerful a creature is the less likely it is to reproduce naturally. These sorts of things can sometimes have similar creatures born that it might even form social bonds with, but usually these types of creatures can't actually produce offspring. Those creature that can reproduce are able to grow rapidly outside of the heavily-irradiated zones (also called chaos wastes ) and often colonize the low-radiation outskirts.
The more a creature depends on Ederstone magic to ambiently live, the less it is able to survive outside of Stildane. Most high-magic creatures require active exposure to even trace amounts of radiation to live. These creatures might survive for small durations outside of the wastelands, but the more magic they use the faster they begin to deteriorate. There are exceptions to this rule: creatures originally made from magical components, such as those made from a magical material, magic item, or magic user from outside Stildane, may be stronger in Stildane but can often survive without radiation exposure. The Tarrasque and the Spirit of Ustav were both made from extremely powerful magic-users, so while their power rises the more radiation they are exposed to, they can walk above most mortal warriors even when deprived of all radiation.
While the vast majority of irradiated creatures exist purely by accident and natural processes of Ederstone, some are artificial. The forbidden art of Fleshcrafting is the artificial application of Ederstone and radiation bursts to living subjects to create specific results. Theoretically, if someone fully uncovered exactly how Ederstone worked, Fleshcrafting could be used in a more ethical way to intentionally mutate non-living objects or at least non-sentient ones. In its current state, Fleshcrafting as it currently exists works best with people - ideally people that you have mentally shaped in specific ways using magic, manipulation, and torture. While formal Fleshcrafting is universally considered immoral and evil, many people and cultures have influenced how mutations have formed, but usually in either rare circumstances or in very gradual ways.
"Irradiated creature" is such a broad category that virtually no one in Stildane would use it. To the people of Stildane, irradiated creatures are so common and so integrated into the landscape that most natives cannot tell what is and isn't irradiated. Besides, who cares if something was either touched by magic or descended from something touched by magic? Rather, most people categorize irradiated creatures according to the role they play in daily life. A mostly-ordinary plant is still usually seen as just a plant. A magical being that follows specific rules and has specific behaviors might be seen as a spirit. A dangerous creature is a monster. One person's spirit can be another person's monster can be another person's animal.

Genetic Descendants

• Revenant

Geographic Distribution

• Stildane
• The Cursed Rurateg Mountains
• The Northern Wastelands
• The Southern Wastelands

Related Technologies

• Fleshwarping

Related Materials

• Ederstone