The Syphoners
'They do not study the Weave. They do not pray for it, bargain for it, or bleed for it in trial. They simply take it from the throat of a dving wizard, from the last gasp of a priest's prayer, from the marrow of anvone fool enough to cast a spell in their presence. The arcanomancy kingdoms call them Heretics, because magic that is stolen rather thar earned is, to them, an insult to the very idea of the Weave. The Syphoners do not care. They were hungry before your kingdoms had names, and they will be hungry after.
Syphoners are aberrant predators that feed on arcane energy and the life force bound to it. Unlike liches, warlocks, or wild mages, a Syphoner has no source, patron, or bloodline... it manufactures its
power entirely from what it steals. This is what marks them as anathema in every arcanomancy kingdom: they are proof that magic can be taken by force from anyone who wields it, with no ritual, no covenant, and no permission asked
They are vanishingly rare, most scholars believe fewer than a hundred exist across the world but a single Syphoner that reaches maturity can hollow
out a kingdom's magical institutions in a generation. They grow stronger with every spellcaster they drain, advancing through discrete stages much like the undead nobility they are sometimes mistaken for.
Syphoner Wisp
The first stage. A Wisp is newly born, usually from residual arcane energy left behind after a spellcaster's violent death and little more than an instinct-driven hunger given shape
Syphoner Reaver
By the time a Wisp survives long enough to drain a dozen spellcasters, it condenses into a Reaver Reavers hunt deliberatelv, stalkina adventuring parties for the wizards and clerics among them and picking off the "boring" fighters last, if at all
Syphoner Matriarch/ Patriarch
A Matriarch/Patriarch has drained enough powerful casters: archmages, high priests, sometimes entire covens...that its bodv no longer resembles anvthind mortal. Trailing ribbons of stolen light hang off a towering, crests, spikes and horns, and its presence
alone causes active spells to gutter and flare unpredictably. Matriarchs are the ones
arcanomancy kingdoms write laws about, and hunt with everything they have, they know if those are the ones who are left unattended, apocalypse and fall of magic is approaching
Syphoner Progenitor, "The First Heretic"
Only one is known to exist for certain, and most arcanomancy kingdoms pray it stays that way. The Progenitor is the source rumor traces everv Syphoner back to... a colossal, half-crystalline
silhouette wreathed in the
of ten thousand
ghosts stolen spells, each one still murmuring the last words of the caster it was torn from. Where it walks, wards fail, enchantments unravel, and the dead stav dead a little less reliably
