There aren't exactly gruesome zombies that are currently feasible in The Realm of the Quiet Age. That isn't to say there aren't horrors though, from the rotting corpses and brains piloted by ancient souls in the mechanical bodies of Syrinxians to the strange affairs of the wounded gods known as the Balãr. But one of those stranger and dangerous, but not quite so entities in the Shattered expanse of Õndem are Starir

And they are technically undead!

Starir: Undead bundles of will

The afterlife is an indifferent place in the places beyond Õndem as discussed prior with the 1st construction in a previous lore doodle

Spirits at the end of the day are will, the will to exist, the will to do things, the will to refuse the pull of the universe itself. There is something admirable about it. But spirits aren't really intelligent, its the brain that gives the soul things to think about, The soul is simply the foundational will of a being to be, souls vary in that sense but at the ground level they are a universal, innate drive of life to will forth. Now normally when an animal that can practice will (and thus have a spirit) dies, the spirit simply dispells into the 1st construction. At the end of the day a spirit needs either a living body or mana to maintain their presence in the physical fold, to give them the strength to will their existence to continue there.

But in some cases, beings die near sources of mana in which the newly dead and freed spirit can feed off of naturally, thus maintaining their presence in the physical world.

Over time, some of these spirits will 'starve', but some will make it to the point where they can metaphysical drag other spirits into their orbit, adding to their strength. Sometimes its parasitic, sometimes its cooperative, but either way spirits can maintain eachothers presences by being present around eachother.

And eventually this forms a Sta

So lets touch on Starir

Sta singular, Starir plural, pretty phonetically straightforward. unlike a lot of éla words.

Starir are the end result of spirits that have survived long enough to bundle with other spirits to the point where they are more physically manifest than the typically more ethereal spirits of the supernatural side of Õndem. Often these bundling events happen near heavy sources of mana such as manavents, pools, voicelakes, or obelisks. They are almost always serpentine, squirming bundles of spirits secured by primordial clay rings that are built by those spirits to hold themselves together. Such that while they need more mana tha a typical spirit, they can go longer amounts of time before dispelling. They can vary wildly in size and specific form form there however. Aside from the raw basics they can vary massively in size and shape. Their size is usually proportional to how much mana and how many extra spirits they had consumed and bundled into themselves.

Likewise the larger a Sta, the more metaphysically powerful they become. The power of a sta is not strictly defined but they are resonant beings that are functionally constructs of the non mortal folds of reality and, as thus, have a much more powerful potential of resonance than most living beings. In the powerscaling of the setting they are usually pretty weak resonant users, though that said some of the larger ones can become more powerful than even powerful resonance users like the Mavõtur.

Though you will never find a Sta so powerful as to overpower a Bal, there are limits to what bundles of souls can do alone (Together?)

And there are some particularly dangerous Starir, such as the Altered Beast known to wander the Screaming Caldera in Suyu, which is an entity known to overpower Mavõtur in a fight.

But even the weakest Starir are still quite dangerous beings, more on that in a minute

So what do Starir do?..

They're usually docile entities. remember that they are just manifestations of will, they don't exhibit knowledge and its debateable how much of the world they can perceive aside from concentrations of mana. All starir strive to do is what any of the spirits bundled into them would do, which is to consume mana and/or more spirits to further their existance a moment longer.

As such you will find Starir often clustering around sources of mana, migrating to wherever they can absorb that latent biproduct of the resonance of gods. So if you were to walk up on one, chances are they wouldn't address you much. They can sense your spirit, the mana in your body, but otherwise they usually don't try and absorb anything from living creatures unless they are "starving" for mana.

On that note starir simply do not perceive things without mana. So if you're a human without mana in you, a Sta may simply attempt to walk through you!.. Though that sort of resonance exposure would cause a meltdown... Which may be bad if the Sta feeds on the mana that is reforming that persons physical form.

But usually starir are basically automatons that seek out mana, and as long as they aren't "starving", or as long as they aren't being attacked, they'll likely pay the living very little mind.

But that said, they can be dangerous, can defend themselves, and can be aggressive or even killed

As starir are embodiments of self preservation in a sense, they strive to protect themselves and They do have an ability to understand when the rings that hold them together are being taken apart. They can understand in most cases what is attacking them (provided it has mana and a õndemic spirit) and they can and will fight to protect themself.

Likewise desperate starir who have not fed on mana in a long time can and will likely siphon the mana and spirit within a living being in an effort to sustain its own existence.

The latter is quite rare, but it does happen

and Starir, being resonant beings, are exceptionally dangerous as they can and do warp reality to attack the entities around them.

Which means they can attack in ways that often don't immediately make sense to those being attacked by them. Such as how in the image a drek is literally being converted into sand. They may also turn the soil into blades to skewer an opponent, or manipulate the pressure of the air to break bones, or change the temperature around someone to burn or freeze them. Amongst many other things, they warp reality and often can do very horrific things. Whatever a bundle of wills thinks without thought will kill the problem.

Likewise they can detach spirits from their bundle to invade a victims body metaphysically and attempt to subdue their spirit and integrate it into the bundle. Whether or not they are successful has a lot to do with the physical health of the victim and their willpower to resist that sort of pull.

Its common for Starir to consume the spirits of victims weakened by physical damage to the body that reduces the ability of the victim to resist

But also of course, Starir aren't invincible

In fact unlike other intelligent resonant users such as mavõtur, prejager, balãr, etc. They don't exactly do much to protect themselves and usually don't make an effort to block attacks or blows in any meaningful way aside from their movement. A Sta is not going to have the understanding to stop someone from stabbing it, they will fight back, but they won't defend themselves. Now of course if you attack the "body" of it, that black tube, the bundle of spirits, its ethereal and won't do anything. Rather the target of attack is the primordial clay rings as those are what binds a sta together. As you break those the bundle of spirits will "unspool" in a sense and scatter, losing any serious metaphysical power they may have had. This of course weakens the sta and will eventually make it a non threat.

But still, its best to not give a sta a reason to turn the water vapor around you into molten iron

Of course as seen in the comic, these sorts of strange entities are often the topic of local superstition and cultures

The Scorchers who know them as the Gate Guardians, as sorts of keepers of the trailblazers, their ancestors.

The Broncens see them as manifestations of the Dragon've Tone, the Perrineans as a manifestation of Domdol, one of the demons who buried god.

Amongst the Uákoí of Logáu, they are the servents of the great Cave Snail who are messengers of it. Whereas amongst the Dorer to the far west, they are spirits of basalt who curse those who disrespect the stones of the world.

Starir are strange, otherworldly entities and so it should be no shock that there is a massive wealth of cosmologies.

While not common, Starir are known to manifest all over Õndem. So its one of those sorts of entities that most éldimor will run into at least once in their life. In fact I would bet you will find any drek or orm that has their own opinions on them. Perhaps one of the most consistent opinions is amongst the remnant sivilão. To them the Starir are actually a somewhat new phenomena created by the weakened borders between the folds of reality in the aftermath of the apocalypse that created the Realm of the Quiet Age. So to the remnants of the cult of the wheel, they are damned scars of their own mistakes. So you should expect most remnant õfuthar to target them aggressively, even at their own peril.

Éldimor, be they of human or remnant origins, tend to have very complex and varied views of the starir that are hard to summarize. As the drekir of one region may have a different thought of them and how to treat them than another.

Some worship them as gods, others see them as things best ignored. Some actively hunt them, more opt to avoid them, some leave them offerings and others take manners to make sure they don't enter their camp.

And lastly for humans... Humans usually don't like them. Frankly Starir don't even perceive humans due to humans technically being interdimensional anomalies themselves. But that fact makes them quite disruptive to humans. As humans tend to õndemify quickly due to the resonance of starir. Something which PPE can't really resist.

Combine that with the runaway mana production causing that Sta to linger and feed on the mana... it sucks.

But also Humans are functionally invisible to Starir and have an incredibly easy time in dispatching them as Starir, while knowing they are being attacked, cannot figure out whom is attacking them

So usually humans just shoot them on sight

In any case

Starir! They are the strange undead of this reality, not really zombies, sort of ghosts. But they are the uncommon but otherworldly bundles of will that are known to inhabit the planar and celeste in this quiet age of Õndem