The Beast Fears Fire - Ghouls, Introduction

If you're interested in asking, there are tow main opinions about what ghouls are about and where they come from.  The majority opinion is that ghouls are manifestations of the Underworld, like goblins, but less squirrelly and more squicky.  That's one notion, and the evidence for it is present, if not always fully persuasive.  There are a lot of them in the Underworld, including lasting ghoul-inhabited structures, they enter and exit our world through the various Underworldly portals, grimgoblins look a lot like them and have slightly more ghoulish personalities than goblins usually have and other goblins usually defer to ghouls.  That's one possibility.

A lot of the evidence doesn't hold up well to closer examination, not that anyone has been up to examining for a while, but there's still records that other people wrote down before war and vampire epidemics took them.  You see, ghouls do spend a lot of time in the Underworld, but unlike denizens of this world and the Underworld, they aren't bound to enter and leave the same way.  With the exception of certain Underworldly portals that spit travelers out whereever, most portals have two stable sides.  You go in through the front door, you are in the front room.  You go out through the front door, you are on the front porch.  Ghouls can go in the front door and end up in the kitchen and then out the basement door and be on the front porch.  Goblins who know enough to answer questions are pretty consistent that ghouls are not natives of the Underworld, but goblin information is ... well, yeah.

The competing hypothesis is more fanciful and has less observed evidence, and it goes like this: Ghouls are what happens to humans when they die.  They live in the Shadow, sort of anti-lives for the souls of the living.  Each time a human dies, a ghoul comes into being as the amount of soul energy on the border of life and death reaches critical mass.  Each time a human is born, a ghoul dies and that energy is mixed through the border again.  Life and death are a sort of fluid reaction, and the boundary between the two keeps things homeostatic for reasons.

Ghouls questioned on this matter don't usually have much to say, only that they have no recollection of being human.  Do you remember when you were a ghoul?

Ghouls are gangly creatures, with gray skin accented by colors that do not look at all healthy.  They are hairless, their ears are pointed and their eyes have gray irises and black corneas (their vague resemblance to ruhks has led some people to think they are somehow related to that species specifically, but there's even less evidence to back that up).  Ghouls are intersex and lack any apparent secondary sex characteristics.  When not involved in a purpose that forces them to be sociable, they tend to wear only loincloths; when interacting with people, they put on long coats, heavy boots, masks or hats and scarves.  Ghouls have long arms and can run on all fours.  They have excellent night vision, hearing and sense of smell (they are colorblind, though).  Ghouls eat decaying animal and fungal matter.  They don't require much, but if deprived, they get very cranky.  They are also not opposed to eating something that hasn't been dead for very long, if they have to.  Despite stories to the contrary, they do not find human flesh more tasty than any other, but they will never, ever turn down a meal, no matter who it was.

Ghouls have purposes.  These purposes are matters of great secrecy among the ghouls, and it is extremely difficult to get a ghoul to divulge their particular mission unless telling you about it was part of that mission.  In fact, it's usually impossible, and most ghouls will claim that they do no know what they are supposed to do until they finish with the thing they are currently doing.  Ghouls will sometimes set up odd little stalls in goblin markets, though the goblins don't like hosting them.  These shops aren't really any weirder than any of the others, but they do tend to be very eclectic or very specific.