Glimmes

Family: Ethereal
Habitat: Leylines, ether streams
Height: 6-10 inches
Lifespan: Unknown
Intelligence: Sentient
Diet: Mana
Abilities: Flight, limited possession, mana manipulation

Physical description

In their truest form, they resemble balls of glowing gas that remain clustered together.

General description

Glimmes are energy beings in their truest form. They are capable of unlimited flight, never needing to set down on the ground, and normally inhabit areas of high mana concentration. However, their lack of a physical body makes it difficult for them to interact with with the material world. As such, they will need bodies. Despite this, they are able to use mana to vibrate the air to mimic speech.

Glimmes have a very weak ability of possession, but cannot take control of living, thinking body, and the majority are unable to possess a corpse. Instead, they must rely on bodies that have been constructed for them. They can either use golem bodies that have been built with a chamber to hold them or conjured bodies made by magic users. It's not uncommon for glimmes to enter the service of someone who provides them with a physical body. However, in rare cases, there are glimmes who are powerful enough to create bodies and recruit other glimmes to work under them.

Because of their ethereal nature, the glimmes have a strong connection to mana and have a high percentage of magic ability, making them adapt magic users. However, they have low mana pools in their true state and the bulk of their mana is stored in their physical bodies. As such, should their bodies be destroyed and they take new ones, it will take some time before they could replenish their previous capacity.

While their physical bodies can be destroyed or damaged beyond use, the glimmes themselves are quite durable. They can't be killed by mundane means and only rare and specialized magics are required to truly kill one. However, without a body, they are vulnerable to capture by sealing them away in a vessel.

The origins of the glimmes are unknown. It is believed that they were originally flesh and blood lifeforms who had cast away their bodies to ascend to a higher plane of existence. However, the glimmes themselves can no longer remember and can't confirm it, while the eldest of them rarely descend to the mortal plane.

The reproduce asexuality, albeit rarely, through fission, and thus do not have a biological sex. After they started interacting with people on the physical plane they started to adopt genders.

Like with the physical races, roughly 1% of glimmes are born with some unique power. Often, they require a physical body in order to properly use this ability. However, some are able to make use of their abilities in their ethereal form, depending on what it is. Although, because of their low birth rate, there simply aren't as many glimmes as most other races, and thus not as many power users. Additionally, some glimmes aren't adapt at spell craft, forcing them to rely on the abilities encoded or built into their bodies.