HolloNut

Stalfos Portraits

Added 2024-08-07 00:11:28 +0000 UTC

Dun dun dunnn.
"You can't be serious! There's a SKELETON in your hero-saves-princess game? How is that even gonna work! And don't even think about invoking the word 'boner'..."

Well yeah, these bony guys are an enemy in the game too. They're a staple of the genre, I can't NOT have them! I modelled them vaguely off of Stallord, but of course I took several creative liberties with it... Honestly, I kinda dig this guy! I like the mix of bones and fuzz...

Since you know me as the lore guy, let me explain this one...
Stalfos appear to most as long-dead creatures brought back to life thanks to dark magic. They come in all shapes and sizes, but this variant is derived from a species of once-powerful dragon warriors that were fought to extinction long ago. Their bones were especially prized by summoners, due to their high resistance and sharp appendages.

Of course, the creature the skeleton belonged to is long gone - the bones are used as a vessel for the Stalfos, which is a magic, ghost-like entity. They're not always agile at keeping the bone structure together, which is why they have a strange rattling, shivering demeanour... But that doesn't make them any less deadly. When the structure it's attached to is rendered to pieces, the entity becomes too unstable and gets squeezed out, which is how they "die".

Stalfos spend energy as they move, but they regain it by draining the life force of living things. When they become potent enough, they can be seen with the naked eye - they immaterial form becomes so dense that it seems to drip from the bones they're bound to.

Surprisingly enough, these creatures have been reported to copulate with each other... It's not sure whether they're mimicking living things, or if the goal is to reproduce, but the entities involved would produce a lot of ectoplasmic fluid during this exchange. It's uncertain what the fluid correlates to exactly, but it does taste somewhere inbetween a watermelon and a sock...

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