Hispaire - Nasty Species

Hispaires are likely named after a play on words as it sounds like a mixture of hiss, despair, and nightmare. They most resemble a bush viper with many spikey thorn-like -or in some case leaves and thorns mixed- scales all over its body. Around its neck and often around its tail are orbs like a necklace of magical crystal balls. These give them the power to enter dreams and to contain nightmares and bad memories within them.

Hispaires primarily feed by biting down on someone's neck when they are either asleep or falling asleep, as they use their venom in to make the being slip deeper into a dreaming state, they dematerialize, entering the being's dreams and beginning to use their powers to cause everything to go wrong. The more their prey suffers the more they can feed, its not unheard of for a single bite from a powerful hispaire to leave a victim writhing from nightmares for their entire life. As they feed the dreams of the prey become less their own and more and more nightmares forced upon them by the hispaire, the more insecure and distressed the more the nasty feeds, the more it feeds, the stronger it gets, thus daily nightmares and bad dream cycles are one of its favorites to employ upon others.
There is alternative feeding methods, but those require physical contact as well, which given prey don't willingly do it, they rarely can feed without biting down and draining them for lengthy periods. 

They prefer to hunt solo, rarely ever sharing a single prey, they treat it as territory, a being they can feed off of until it is too weak upon which they will abandon it to whatever fate awaits it. A hispaire hates to feed if anyone is around the prey, others can awaken said prey before a proper meal has happened. Thus they target those who are on their own. There are cases when they feed just enough, then leave the prey alive, developing a terrible addiction to the prey itself and being unable to kill it, this usually ends with the prey dead or offspring of the prey being kept so a mass "sipping" session can be had.
When young, a hispaire is open to taking whatever it can get, which means it can develop odd feeding habits that divert from the norm, some even become companions to other species, looming in the distance, always watching out for them, and rarely letting harm happen, as they need the being to stay safe so they can carry on until adulthood. This is mainly the case with those who were abandoned by their parents or raised in captivity. It is normal for a symbiotic hispaire to be a one-person feeder but try to run off and sample other beings in a fit of fear should the original symbiotic feeder be starting to wane.

Their favorite prey are most anything insectile, it's rare for one to go after a human, they like other nasties like flicktits and silkeyes, silky sleepers are a delicacy and don't always make it to adulthood due to being most often targeted by this nasty. Anything bug like they take pleasure in feeding off of, positive things like flicktits seem to make them aggressive something fierce. They hate the little cuddle bugs for some unknown reason. Securiflies and hispaires have a yin/yang relationship, and fausaps are just a common snack.

At times mongers and hispaires team up, or another nasty species in place of the monger, they're not picky. As long as the other party makes conflict or evokes negative emotions, they will leave the party be, and might even develop a strange relationship with the party.
There are often hispaires lurking around funerals, blood baths, and murder scenes. They linger in the background, often in ghostly forms, and sip the emotions from the necks of those with their guard down in small doses, but if the  negative emotions felt by targets are valid enough, they can soak them up from a distance. Thus the more emotional the scene, the more they can feed without being in danger.

Signs of them attacking your nasty are the following symptoms for long term or short durations:
-Nightmares
-Night terrors
-Small lapses of sleep or sudden 'comas' which can become permanent
-Sudden or rapid confidence drops which can become permanent
-Lack of sleep
-Inability to sleep
-Extreme insomnia
-Increased sex drive(due to a certain chemical in their venom, erections are not unheard of during feedings)
-Decreases in fertility(Prolonged feeding doles this out)
-Weakened immune system/Sudden colds or fevers
-Immune system destruction
-Sudden or rapid aggressiveness
-Seemingly random snapping rage or volatile anger out of 'nowhere'.

They don't always have to bite to enter one's dreams, often the stronger they are the less they have to do to invade.
These guys can go in and out of being seen, capable of reverting to just bones or ghostly imagery. They vanish from sight quickly when startled. They possess a fair amount of healing powers, normally ranked by the colour of the orbs, and killing one requires ending its life entirely as they can regenerate from various injuries if they possess a good food source.

A hispaire is never full, if they tell you they are full, they are lying. They can never feel truly full, and will eat until their gullets are far far too engorged for a proper get away. A hispaires body can heal itself infinitely, so long as it can eat enough and is of pure bloodlines, hybrids have harder times healing. Their wounds can be repaired entirely.
However, in the case of being near that "full" area occurrences such as pupil changes and eye colour shifts are not unheard of, when around the food source they might see for brief flashes of milliseconds the hispaire in it's full "glory" often these flashes are seen as hallucinations and never realized for what they are unless the prey actually manages to see them for months on end, then the imagery is realized slowly, but often it's never seen as a whole.
All its wounds past and present appear, glowing and showing upon its body like neon scars. They match the hispaire's orbs most often. Fangs elongate, the creature tastes the air. Tempts fate, eats, and then they sleep. Digesting and resting.




Colourwise these guys like greens, oranges, greys, and yellows, with their orbs often being darker shades such as grey or black and having what looks like a "mist" held within them. Their eyes can be any colour as can their tongues, most favor towards having pale blue tongues.


Average Stats:
Attack: 25
Defense: 10
Speed: 38

Starter move:
Frenzied Bite (Latching on with jaws and biting wildly, this move will deal 5-10 damage and has 20% chance of leaving opponent too stunned to attack for two turns)

Abilities:
Unnerve (Nasty is so intimidating it halves the opponents attack for the rest of the battle)
Distraction (Nasty has some attention grabbing feature that gives it a 30% chance of dodging straight attacks)
Dash N' Dart (Nasty is moving so rapidly it becomes hard to hit. Moves have a 50% chance of missing regardless of being special or physical)



Mutations:
Multiple heads up to five
Multiple heads with webbing/skin between heads
Heavy spotting or striping
Piebald or having white patches on body and scales
Lack of proper fangs (nearly fatal)
Miniturism
Scaleless areas and partial scalessness -mostly around head and underbelly
Extra eyes
Extra eyes on more than one head(if they have multiple heads)



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Lines done by Wolfsea image is subject to colour tweaks as I have the time.