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The Beshilu are the Rat Hosts, creatures that instinctively gnaw through the Gauntlet.

Overview[]

Like all Hosts, the Beshilu are spirit-shards of a fallen Pangaean spirit-entity: the Plague King. When faced with the wrath of Father Wolf, the Plague King found its powers of disease could not save it. Terrified, it summoned a swarm of rats to itself, and they consumed mouthfuls of its Essence along with its flesh. The First Pack could not destroy all these rats, and thus the Beshilu were loosed upon the world.[1][2]

The Beshilu are consumed by the fear of the Plague King in his final moments, mixed with a religious mania; they are more aware of their own spirit nature than most other Hosts.[3] Their nests are often lead by Ministers, potent hybrids who squabble with one another over doctrine; they are constantly riven with schisms and heresies. None of this ultimately deters them from their instinctive goal, which is to tear down the Gauntlet and resurrect the Plague King before the Uratha wipe them out entirely.[4] The two goals are intrinsically linked in the Beshilu mind: only when the Gauntlet is down can the Plague King truly be reborn, and they believe this with an unreasoning zeal.[5]

Beshilu are commonly found wherever humans gather. In urban areas, they nest in dilapidated and neglected buildings, spreading disease and madness among the population. The holes they gnaw in the Gauntlet also allow many spirits across, where they can find Anchors and create chaos.[4] These holes frequently turn into Wounds.[6] While individual Beshilu are rarely a challenge for a pack of werewolves, there's also rarely just one; they congregate in broods, and favor ambush tactics against Uratha if they're forced to fight.[7] Like all shartha, Beshilu can discorporate into a swarm of rats and flee to escape from attackers.[8]

The life cycle of the Beshilu usually begins when a single rat, called a Crawler or nihiluth, gnaws its way into a living human body and consumes the victim's heart. This allows the Host to take possession of the body and puppet it for its own purposes, though without the knowlege and memories of the body, they have some difficulty passing for human.[9] Eventually, more rats enter or breed within the body, which takes on an obviously corpse-like appearance, bulging and pulsating with the movements of its passengers. Ultimately, the rats fuse with the remains of their human mask and become a hybrid abomination, an anthropomorphic rat the size of a human, covered with lesions and other signs of disease.[10][4] While most Beshilu regard humans as little more than a resource to be consumed, occasionally they form cults of human minions who come to share their religious obsessions.[11]

Known Beshilu infestations[]

  • While the Rat Hosts do not cause pandemics like the Black Death, they take delighted advantage of them.[9]
  • The Mary Marie, a fishing boat that serves as a mobile nest. The captain of the ship is full of rats, and everywhere it docks, a few shartha slip off while a few more come aboard.[6]
  • The trenches of World War I were rife with rats, and Beshilu often took the bodies of dead or dying soldiers as their own.[12]

Gallery[]

References[]

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