A Shadow-Host is the frame of what it was, drawn thin. Ribs stand out under skin gone grey and dry and cracked like old mud, and from the cracks seeps a darkness that drifts like smoke and swallows the light around it. The eyes are hollow pits. The mouth is the worst of it: too large for the face, the jaw hanging open past where a jaw should stop, as if the hunger inside had pushed the head wider to get out.

They walk hunched and quick, loping in bursts, and they never seem to rest. They do not speak. A Shadow-Host growls, a low churning sound felt more in the chest than heard, like the growl of the Star-Eater itself carried in a smaller belly. Near one, lamps gutter, breath comes cold, and the air smells of nothing, the way a cold hearth smells of nothing.

They would be found inside an Incursion of Nyx Vora and in the land around it, which they strip to feed the vortex. A Shadow-Host does not stay where it was taken; it goes where there is something left to eat, and so it would often be met far ahead of the darkness, in a granary, a forge, or a lit hall.

Relentless is the only temperament left to them. A Shadow-Host hunts without cunning but without stopping: it goes for heat, light, food, and living bodies, takes what it can carry, and returns to the dark. Several will strip a farmstead in a night, eating fires out of hearths and carrying away stores, beasts, and people alike. It does not flinch from blows or flames and does not flee when its fellows fall.

Its fearlessness is not courage. Nothing in it values its own existence, because there is nothing in it but appetite.

The hunger of Nyx Vora works through a host. Fire it touches goes out, warmth drains from the hands that grapple it, and a spell flung at it is weakened as its energy is eaten before it lands. The seeping darkness eats lamplight a stride around it. Where hosts gather thickly, the Hunger Field of their master may take hold, and the living near them start to turn on each other.

What chokes a host is abundance. A blaze too great to swallow, or a flood of life too rich to drink, overwhelms the hunger it carries.

Shadow-Hosts are made from the eaten; a Cult of the Final Feast would mostly become part of the meal rather than hosts. A host does not tire or age, but it burns itself out: those that have gathered long enough are drawn back into the vortex and eaten in their turn, and a slain host crumbles to grey flakes that leave no ash.

A Shadow-Host takes everything and leaves cold. Its passage would empty barns, chill wells, and kill livestock in their stalls; a village that met several in winter would lose its fires and its stores in one night. The living would defend against them with the very thing they eat, building great bonfires and spending more than the hosts can swallow.

Country people would take them for the starved dead of famine years, come back to eat what they were denied, and leave a bowl of food on the step to turn one away. A bowl would do nothing; a fire too great to eat can. Feeding a host until it bursts is nearer the truth. Hosts do not flee the dawn, though the darkness seeping from them shows thinner by day.