Avatar

One of the most powerful unnatural races, avatars were the inspiration for several myths including djinn (jointly with tricksters) and dryads.

An avatar is what happens when the collective mind/soul of an ecosystem (usually a forest) incarnates to take on a mortal form in order to defend their home. They are powerful, but completely alien. They have no self-image or sense of identity, as they are effectively the mouthpiece of an intangible committee. However, if an avatar remains incarnate for long enough and studies human behaviour, they may start to take on human traits. The only known case of this is Leslie's mother, who was able to fall in love with a mundane, and abandoned her responsibilities to the forest in order to live as a human.

Abilities

• Avatars can sense the flow of life energy around them. This means that they can:
  • Look at someone and know if that person is going to die soon (and even know the time with reasonable accuracy) if the impending death is due to natural causes ("simply running out of life")
  • Sense the presence of any living creature around them
  • Recognise all unnaturals and immediately know someone's type
  • Interact with ghosts
• Avatars can also protect themselves by sharing any injury they suffer with the ecosystem that created them. In the case of the forest, this means that an injury can be passed on to a tree, allowing the avatar to survive and recover from any injury that one of the trees in their environment could survive.
  • They often have a 'heart tree' which takes the brunt of the damage, but this can then be passed on to other trees. If the heart tree is a giant oak with a trunk six feet thick, the avatar could walk away from being shot or hit by a truck, and inside an hour the damage would be distributed between a hundred trees.
  • Ways to injure an avatar are:
    • Destroy the forest and/or the heart tree before fighting them
    • Set fire to the heart tree, which prevents it passing injury on to other trees as long as the fire burns
      • Note that this can be done by setting the avatar on fire; if they pass the fire on to their heart tree, it means that any further injuries they sustain can only be shared between two bodies. Most avatars would instinctively allow themselves to burn rather than hurting the tree.
    • Hit them with a single injury sufficient to kill the heart tree. Depending on the tree, this may be incredibly difficult. It's possible that a lightning strike could be sufficient, or a collapsing building.
      • It is not possible to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring. Don't even try.
    • Poison might work, if you can find a poison that works on trees.

Leslie Hunter

Leslie is a special case; a half-avatar and effectively the only survivor of her race. She has all of the abilities listed above, but these may be temperamental or not entirely under her control.