The Beast Fears Fire - The Strangers

The Strangers [Disaster 3]
Impulse - To Keep Secrets and Take Territory

They have lots of names - djur, tailors, foragers, the others; they are more tolerant of this world than most denizens of the Other, and interaction with them is less likely to attract the other. They are travelers. They come to our world, to abandoned places, places out of the way, and take up residence. Then they farm and make their shadowy garments. They are the most sociable of the Other's known denizens, but that doesn't really mean a lot compared to most of the Other's others.

The strangers make outposts on our world. We know that. There's no indication of why or the existence of a comprehensible why. This is just what they do. Set up a place, make a bridge to the Other and then go about their business. If they were spies, they are remarkably shut-in for spies. If they are taking something from this world to theirs, there's no indication what. Mostly they just plant gardens. There's some rumors that they have more regular relations with the Underworldly denizens, but most of those rumors come from goblins, and goblins like to bend peoples' ears all about the other for the same reason a child with a lens likes pointing it at ants on a sunny day. Apparently, the Underworld does not suffer from ill effects of contact with the Other.

The strangers are intensely private and hate coming into contact with humans, or really any creature native to our world that speaks. If discovered, or they feel they are in danger of being discovered, they will usually try to misdirect folk and turn them back. Failing that, they are more than willing to fight.

The Strangers are a little smaller and lighter than adult humans, their features are sharp, ears long and pointed, hair swept back. They are humanoid in body plan, though their feet are digitigrade. Some of them sport a pair of small, twisty horns on their foreheads. The vast majority of stranger corpses appear to be intersex, and no strangers have been observed that have identifiable secondary sex characteristics. When naked, the bodies of the strangers are a rich red or orange, but, while alive, they have never been seen not wearing their light absorbing garments. While wearing those, they are stranger-shaped blotches of darkness with a strong aura by which their features are visible that they can turn on or off (auras are usually red, blue, teal and green). The garments are loose, flowing, and in many layers. In that sense, they are actually a lot like Crickish clothing.

The places they frequent are shadowy and dim, mostly, and in anything less than bright sunlight, their garments make them incredibly hard to spot, if not invisible.

Harm 2/Peril [Poisoned] The strangers love poisons. They love poisons a lot, and they are quite liberal with their applications and cunning in choosing where someone is likely to contact the poison. If they have to fight directly, they usually do so with farm implements that have been treated with all sorts of interesting poisons. They also sometimes fight with reinforced gauntlets that have three short blades projecting from them that are, you guessed it, also poisoned.

A Little Drop
When you are exploring a place claimed by the strangers, or a place inhabited by the strangers, face Disaster.
On a Hit, you manage to avoid the poisons and the stabbings, you are aware that strangers are present, if they are, and you can respond to them however you choose.
On a Hard Hit, you know exactly where any present strangers are, which upsets them a great deal and usually puts them to rout. You can dictate one thing you do as they retreat which is not a Move.
On a Miss, you've been struck, stuck, or touched something that sucks. Take harm as stated.

The sky is a poisonous garden tonight
Stranger poisons are the very model of interesting poisons. Recorded poisons have turned the insides of people into the flesh and seeds of a watermelon, while still, somehow maintaining life. Another caused its victim to be able to eat ashes and nothing but ashes, requiring at least a kilogram of ash a day lest they burn from inside out. A third poison made its victim shift intermittently to the Other and back (until they did not come back). Interesting.

Stranger garments retain their properties - absorbing all light that shines on them and the person wearing them (even exposed skin and other garments) and making their aura sometimes visible. Humans can't control when their aura is visible or invisible, but they still make for excellent gear when being stealthy or scaring someone. Shadow Witches can do something similar, but they pay well for a chance to study these garments.

Strangers always have a space in their territory where it is possible to cross between our world and the Other. If a native from this world enters that place, the strangers decamp entirely from the area. Tracking them turns up, at best, the location of where the trail of a stranger in question leaves this world for the Other. We assume. No one has actually seen a stranger in the other that we know of. Records may have degraded or turned into codices, or the strangers might be just as reclusive in the Other as they are here (and who can blame them with the golden fox demons and lobstermen about). It is also possible that their form is different in the Other than it is in this world.