Agroth
"I have a proposal for you. You don't have to die today - I can prevent that from happening. All I want in return is to be allowed to hitch a ride with your body."
Agroth are opportunistic parasitic beings with no physical form, depending on a host for sustenance. Being possessed by one is considered one of the worst fates a person can go through. Luckily the chances of being possessed by one are slim since there are just a couple of Agroth in the world at any time.
Not From This World
Agroth are not originally from this plane of existence, hailing from their own plane. Nothing is known about which plane this is or how the Agroth live in their native plane, and since the only source of information is what the Agroth themselves tell their hosts and let their hosts share with others, the chance of getting more information about this place is highly unlikely at best.
The Agroth arrive through a one-way portal called the Agrothdoor.
After crossing over through the Agrothdoor into this world, the Agroth moves slowly in search of a host. An Agroth can survive without having a host, but an insatiable hunger for emotions will soon grow strong enough to be impossible to ignore, prompting the Agroth to move in search of a host.
No Physical Form
The Agroth don't have bodies. They're more like a strange pattern of invisible energy.
Not having a physical form prevents them from sensing the world around them in a way humanoids and other sensing creatures can comprehend. Agroth can sense some things, though. They can sense negative emotions in a radius of up to one kilometer, depending on the strength of the emotion. If an Agroth envelops the head of someone it can hear that person's thoughts.
Diet
The Agroth live on negative emotions - the stronger the better. Their favorite emotions are despair, rage, and fear, but any negative emotion will do. The only way an Agroth can feed on these emotions is to possess a host.
If the Agroth is without a host, it can live on the magical energy present in the world. This won't satiate its hunger, yet it will keep it alive.
Agroth and Their Hosts
An Agroth's host must be humanoid and must agree to the possession. This creates a unique challenge for the Agroth since it would need to convince its host to let it possess them. Luckily, the Agroth can lie as much as it wants about what the host will get in return, but it's easier to convince someone with the truth. The preferred tactic is to search for a person in need by using their emotion sense to find a potential host, then finding out what the potential host needs the most at this exact moment by reading their thoughts and using that specific need as leverage to make the person accept the deal.
Once accepted into a host, an Agroth won't leave until the host is dead. There are rumors of ways to banish or even kill an Agroth inside a host, but there has been no proof of this ever happening.
When in a host, the Agroth can read its host's thoughts and feelings. It can choose to latch onto its host's senses, perceiving what the host can sense about the world - or choose not to, which is useful when something is overloading the senses. The Agroth can take control of the host's body as well, moving around, speaking, interacting with the world as it was the host themselves doing it. Taking control is somewhat energy consuming for the Agroth, and after having control for an extended period of time it will need to feed on emotions for a while to successfully take control again. Agroth tend to try to end their control period with their host feeling horrible in some way, getting lots of emotions to feed on.
The Agroth can control their host in more subtle ways as well. If there is a chance that one emotion might trigger other and stronger bad emotions, an Agroth might push on this emotion to become even stronger, hopefully triggering other negative emotions the Agroth can feed on afterward. The emotion it pushes cannot be fed upon, so an Agroth would only do this if the chance of other emotions becoming stronger is rather high.
A well-fed Agroth might sometimes push on emotions because it's bored, especially if its host is prone to emotional outbursts.
Solitary Beings
Agroth are solitary beings, not spending a lot of time in the same area as another. Yet, on this side of the Agrothdoor the time between two Agroth being in the same area might reach several decades to more than a century, and whenever two Agroth meet they will at least have a conversation about what they've done. Usually, this conversation will be more of boasting about the havoc they've managed to wreak since the last time they met.
It seems like the Agroth have a way to sense Agroth hosts when they're close. The way this is done is unknown as there are no visible marks that have been seen on the hosts. Maybe the Agroth possess yet another sense, much like the way they sense emotions at a distance, with a shorter range that can sense other Agroth.
Related Articles
The Agroth arrive into this world through the Agrothdoor, a one-way portal from their native plane.
There are currently two known Agroth in the world.
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