DOWNWOLRDER»
If demons marauding across our world were the only creatures that had to be kept in check by Shadowhunters, our lives would be notably easier. Demons, except for the rare shape-shigting varieties, are usually obviously inhuman, and they are conveniently universally malevolent. In the relation between humans and demons there are no polities, no negotiation. There is just war. They attack; we defende.
But the whole of the world is not that simple. Once demons began to trespass into the lives of humans, the waters of good and evil became muddied, and the muddied waters of humanity became Downworlders. Some Downworlders - Warlocks and the Fey - predate the Nephilim by untold ywars. But the youngest Downworlders, Werewolves and Vampires, are a relatively recent phenomenon, the result of demon diseases previsouly unknown that have crept into the human race and, it seems, are with us for good.
|| VAMPIRES ||
Vampires are victims of a demonic infection, which turns them into drinkers of blood. They possess fangs that are deployed when their bloodlust is roused. These they sink into a surface vein of their victim, and then the vampire consume that victim's blood to his or her satisfaction. Experienced vampires can resist this rush and cease their drinking in order to leave their victims alive and able to recover, but new vampires may have trouble controlling their urge to drink their victims to the point of death. Worse, after the inital sting of a vampire bite, the poison contained within vampire saliva dulls the victim's pain and may make te experience pleasurable for the victim. The poison acts as a muscle relaxant and a euphoric.
Unlike werewolves, vampires are considered to be "undead", that is, their bodies are no longer alive in the sense that humans are. Their human sould reside in animated corpses, kept intact andanimate by the demon disease. They cannot bear children and can creat new vampire only by their infecting bite.
|| WEREWOLVES ||
The earlier of these demon diseases is Lycanthropy, which is believed to have first appeared in the forest of Central Europe sometime in the thirteenth century. Lycanthropy transforms a human into a werewolf, a demi-human whose demonic infection cause them to transform into a large and dangerous wolf under the light of the full moon. Werewolves in their lupine form are not merely wolves. They possess unnatural - demonic - stranght and speed, and their claws and fangs are able to slash through a chain-link fence or bit through a padlock.
Without help and training a werewolf can be very dagerous creature. When Lycanthropy is at its worst, a man lives what appears to bea normal mundane existence, only to become a vicious, uncontrolled, murdering beast roughly three nights each month, retaining no memory of his own evil acts.
|| WARLOCKS ||
Perhaps no other Downworlders have a more complex relationship with Shadowhunters than the Warlocks. The only things that can be said to be true of all warlocks are that :
- (1) they possess a so-called warlock mark on their body that identifies them as not merly human,
- (2) like most hybrid species they are sterile, and
- (3) they possess the ability to perform magic.
Is this last feature that makes them at once the most powerful of Downwolrders and the most closely tied to Shadowhunters.
Warlocks are rarely born from an affectionate relationship between a demon and a human. Instead they are created through one of the two worst depredations demons visit upon our world. Most obviously, there are warlocks born from demons violation human againt their will. This was the predominant means of Warlocks conception in the past time. Therefore today, mostWarlocks are the result of a different kind of violation the coupling of a human with an Eidolon demon, who is disguised as the human's loved one.
|| FAERIES||
The Fair Folk are not actually fair. They are big cheaters in fact. Strange they may be, alien tous, more unknown than demons themselves, but the fey, the faeries, are Downworlders. They are people - they have souls. They are the least understood of all magical people, the great ancient mystery of our world. They are found in countless varieties, sizes, and types, and in all environments.
Most properly these creatures are known as "faeries", after their homseland, the realm of Faeries. They are known in literature by many other names, partly because of their enormous variety and partly because of age-old superstitions about invoking them by name. Most commonly they are called the fey, but you will also hear them named the Fair Folk, or the Kind Ones, or the Little People, or any number of other euphemisms.
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