Chirping Children

The Chirping Children are one of many biggest secrets yet to be uncovered by the inhabitants of the Land of Veins. They are vaguely mentioned in old legends preserved by the elusive bards that populate the alluvial plains around the crumbling town of Sivana but, as a matter of fact, they are still considered mere stuff of myths.
Their tales often overlaps with those of more famous, more ancient entites that are supposed to roam the Land. There's a popular fable from the region of Astuvia which many consider to be the first to ever mentioning similar creatures; we're going to present to the reader a brief version of this tale down below:

The Tale of the Voiceless Muse

There was once a fair young lady whom was gifted at her birth with a beautiful, harmonius voice.
As she grew up, she learned to sing the most articulated songs without hesitation nor mistakes.
Soon, all of her fellow-countrymen visited daily her house to listen to her tunes. They all showered her with gifts and praises.
The lady grew used to this form of veneration and, as her talent gradually increased so did her need for appreciation and reverence.
Her soul was now filled with a prideful presence that fed on everyone's emotions, draining them into subservient shells of their former selves.
Every man, child an woman in her village would have given their lives away, if that was necessary to keep hearing that alluring voice of her.
It didn't matter if her song were actually about something anymore, they only craved the inebriating sounds pouring out of her lips.
One day a mysterious disease reached the village from uncharted shores. It slowly builded inside a person's throat, drying out their vocal chords until they were all but dust. The lady, much to her dismay, was among those who contracted it.
She was left voiceless and anguished. The spell produced from her voice no loger seemed to work on the people around her. They were finally able to see her true nature and shunned her with glares of despise.
With no one left to fuel her all-consuming pride, she eventually wandered into the nearby woods and sliced her own throat with a sharp dagger.
As the light started to fade form her eyes, a flock of songbirds roosted on the trees' branches saw it all and took pity on her.
They started to collect twigs and blade of grass from the ground built a circular nest around the lady's wounded neck. Once finished, she displayed an intricated neck ruff made of woods and thorns, adorned with small red flowers.
The songbirds then all started to breath air from their beaks into the gash that the lady opened on her throat, bringing her back to life.
It took some days for her to fully realise what happened and her first instinct was to check if even ever voice was back again.
And so she started to sing. Soon the air was filled with a smoldering rhapsody of marvelous sounds. The vastness of her singing was so large that it drawn the attention of a couple of woodcutters passing nearby.
They started to praise the beauty of that melody and questioned about the true nature of its owner. Hearing this, the lady shown herself to the men and started singing again. The two men were completly absorbed in that melody but they didn't seem to notice the lady at all.
She was praised but not acknowledge at all.
Eventually they left soon after the lady stopped to sing. She understood that her reanimated body was now invisible to the eyes of mortals but her voice wasn't.
Grief-stricken, she walked back into the woods to live an eternity of silence.
The songbirds that brought her back followed her, slowly mutating in beakless, deformed beigns due to the aura of grudge that now enveloped the Voiceless Muse.

Basic Information

Anatomy

The physical appearence of this entitites was never pintpointed to a specific form, but we could get a better sense of their look by reading this short description extracted from the diary of a supposed witness:

I've seen them erupting from the gnarled roots of a tree, this morning, while I was collecting wood. They were pale and wrinkled, no taller than my ankle. Their mouths stretched open in a silent wail. They were like a bunch of starved nestlings desperately waiting for nourishment from a mother that surely ran away long time ago, disgusted by their hideous form. And then it happened: they started to sing. Oh gracious lords, their song was the most soul wrenching melody that I've ever heard. It reminded me of my birth town in the astuvian countryside. Of carefree days of spring spent running after gilded dragonflies soaring above fields of red lavender. I could clearly felt the smell of those flowers and the joyful voices of the mondine collecting sprouts of fluvial barley in the nearby river banks. All those memories faded into thin air as the song inside my mind abruptly ended. Those chirping children were no longer there...

Ecology and Habitats

They are supposed to inhabit the deepest areas of the forests, hidden underground or between a tree's roots.

Dietary Needs and Habits

The tales never mention if the Chirping Children need nourishment at all. Sometimes they are depicted as malevolus beign that feed on a creature's spritual energy, causing them painful headaches if they decide to leave the area where a Chirping Child's den is located or if the ever stop sinning. Thanks to their thoughts-twisting abilities, they are belived to keep their preys constantly oblivious of what is really happening in their surrondings, until their victims are too weak to run away from them. In other tales, however, the presence of Chirping Children is regarded as highly beneficianl for the territories they inhabith. In these tales their voices are considered capable to help plants and trees grow stronger, tame wild animals or even bring the deads back to live.

Biological Cycle

The life cycle of a Chirping Child is never mentioned in the various legends regarding them.

Additional Information

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

If the witness' account is to be belived, the "chirping children" possess the unearthly ability to vanish from people's sight as they begin to sing their so-called melodies. As long as they sing, other sources explain, their voices penetrate into a person's mind, carving small gaps in their attention and filling them with remote memories to keep them distracted. This way, they are supposedly ignored by the people around them and, unless they stop to sing, they can freely slithering around, feeding on people's food or playing cruel pranks on them.