Editing Awnshegh (section)

==[[Banshee|The Banshegh]]==
No, I didn't misspell it. The Banshegh is the first of the more interesting and complex of the awnshegh on this list.  By day, Justina Heulough is a just, fair, wise elven noble ruler over her largely human domain in the Mountains of the Silent Watch, and not to put too fine a point on it, an absolutely gorgeous, fuckable woman with a lovely personality, who's done a great job of running the place since her human husband died thirty years ago.  By night, the Banshegh rises from her sleeping body and terrorizes her domain and her neighbors, looking like a spectral, translucent blue version of her and appearing in the dreams of her prey, terrifying to death or aging rapidly those it hunts.  Unfortunately, while outside her domain the fact that the two are somehow bound together or even the same being is well-documented through the use of spells like ''locate person'' that return two simultaneous results, Justine is in denial about the link, putting bounties on the Banshegh and having herself locked into her bedroom from the outside as publicity stunts.  And even her own people are torn: Justine would just about be an ideal ruler, if not for the fact that she's got some kind of undead spirit problem she doesn't want to admit even to herself.

How this happened is a subject of much debate. Some scholars theorize that Justina simply has a really off-kilter bloodform manifestation (the Banshegh started showing up shortly after her husband died, suggesting an awakening of sorts), others that the Banshegh is a kind of spiritual parasite, a divine fragment that somehow survived 1,500 years before latching onto a hostess it leaves at night to feed.  One source, twenty years old, states that she was cursed by a priest of the dead god Azrai and had her essence bound up with a being from the Shadow World.  This is important because the one sure-fire way of getting rid of the Banshegh is killing Justina, which no one really wants to do, and no one's certain what destroying the Banshegh separately would do to her, or even whether it might just destroy their connection and unleash a deadly awnshegh from the one thing restraining it from being even worse.  

It's a bit academic, though, as both have the Invulnerability power with no listed method of destruction (though it's also clarified that they do ''not'' have the same blood powers, so presumably these methods aren't even necessarily the same as one another).  Justina has some powers related to being good at ruling (mostly mind-reading immunity and persuasion), while the Banshegh not only has its dream-entering-age-to-death-through-fear attack, but a standard wail, a withering touch, and a bunch of defensive powers.  Definitely a creative monster with an inherent mystery and moral dilemma.