Specters

Specters are the main antagonists of The Divine Stone

Overview
Specters are creatures that spawn in Tristan from the possession of objects in an environment. After they latch onto a host whether it be living or not, they become ravenous beasts, with one goal to survive and grow more powerful. They feed on the life force of living things as well as their own kind to live. The more they ate, the bigger and stronger they got, soon there were territories popping up with the biggest Specter leading the "pack", those are now known as Boss Specters. Specters all have a mysterious shard somewhere on their bodies mimicking the Divine Shards, when a Specter dies, this shard breaks and the Specter disintegrates. The level of difficulty a specter can be in combat depends on where they're from since most Specters closer to The Pavilion when they possessed objects tend to be incredibly strong. Specters can have some trace of intelligence to them, with some being able to speak. They act in packs like wild animals so some depend on groups to take down targets if they're too weak by themselves to overwhelm opponents. Their behavior is quite hostile, only ever attacking if they're disturbed, though don't count on getting too close to one without getting eaten.Once a Specter has latched onto something they cannot leave that "body" by any means and possess anything else. They're pretty common in certain areas though they tend to enjoy more concealed places to sneak up on prey. Specters default personality and instincts tend to be ravenous, wild and unruly though, if a very weak Specter soul latches onto something really small it has a chance to not be completely hostile. Though the chances of this are low

History
Specters first appeared after the event that shattered the Divine Stone in Tristan. They came out from the explosion almost instantly and began to spread around the country as quickly as people were dying and hiding away from the things happening around them. They began to latch onto objects like little parasites and possessed them, they're like animals so their only goal is to survive. They'd feed off of humans, any living animals, insects, and in desperate times their own species. As of today there are still unknown things about them but from those who survived and managed to observe their behavior before dying for the new generations to come there are current facts and studies on them so know one is clueless.

Appearance(s)
Specters can look incredibly different from one another depending on which sector of the country they're from, and what they possess. Specters that latch onto the environmental equivalent to where they are generally have similar appearances despite some tweaks in how they look. With them usually having rough skin, thin and elongated bodies with giant claws and feet, sharp teeth, a skeleton like nose, and a shard in the middle of their chest which spawns naturally with every possession (not known why yet). Specters that possess animals or other things in their area can look totally different. Boss Specters are huge, usually have eaten the most out of all the pack and is claimed the leader. They look nothing like a naturally occurring specter and are difficult to take down. Specters start off as little balls of mist that are harmless until they possess something, they come in random colors though they tend to be very dark. Some people collect these in viles and jars to study them before they deteriorate on themselves. Basically, the life span of a Specter soul doesn't last more than a week or two so many specimens have to be collected. Specters have stages in which they go through that defines their life span.

Stage 1: Soul
The soul stage is the base stage of a Specter when it first spawns. They're small balls of mist and are harmless to living beings and don't have the power to possess something like that yet

Stage 2: Possessed
This is the most common stage seen upon Specters and is the stage refereed by when a Specter has successfully latched onto an object

Stage 3: Boss Specter
This is the rarer stage that only a handful of Specters go through, it is dubbed the Boss Specter stage due to their title in a pack of Specters as well as the significance to the story. Their gigantic and hard to take down