Overview
Umbral stalkers are skeletal, wolf-like darkness creatures that often attack in packs. They attack during darkness outbreaks around villages, city gates, and routes through the Land of Darkness, where they move ahead of or alongside ebon wraiths and stronger entities such as harbingers.
Form and Behavior
Umbral stalkers have angular, skeletal bodies, crimson eyes, gnarled claws, and skeletal teeth. In large swarms they advance like black wolves stripped of flesh. Smaller groups flow out of haze and shadow to test travelers crossing corrupted land.
They hunt by leaping, biting, clawing, and overwhelming weaker defenders. Near Jorhan, two stalkers emerge at his command, become passive, and tolerate him patting one like a loyal dog; another approaches Eira gently after the curse has taken its mind.
Encounters
Thalion destroys umbral stalkers and ebon wraiths with golden lightning during an attack on village farmlands. Kaelion disintegrates stalkers with sun magic near Velundra's southern gates, and Jin Leiyun cuts through a pack when they tear out of the shadows along Stormhaven's southern edge as darkness advances over Bjarnholt.
Aurion fights umbral stalkers during the defense of Dravemir and later at a threatened village, where they move first in a horde with ebon wraiths behind them and a harbinger at the center. Eira destroys a pack near the temple in the Land of Darkness when her darkness magic first erupts.
Origin
The Land of Darkness corrupts exposed life, drains essence, and erodes minds before the curse transforms victims into magic-wielding darkness creatures. Umbral stalkers are among the transformed creatures under Jorhan's control.