Elementals are common throughout most of the regions of the galaxy, varying predictably in form to suit the environments which they protect. In the coldest areas they most often appear as beings of ice or rock, quite often gigantic in proportion and a bit slovenly - potentially lying still for tens of thousands of years in symbiosis with the land. This is not true of the Febritin, tree spirits who pry themselves first as small twigs from saplings and grow slowly and painfully alongside the parent plant, which manages only barely to survive in such a glacial setting. For that reason person sized members of the species are surprisingly old, having weathered hundreds of seasonal blizzards to reach a sufficient mental plain that they can tolerate being distant from their host tree. As a rule long-lived species are very introspective and are famous for the communion that they have with the natural world, but ironically despite having ample years to spend in this pursuit the Febritin are not so. They are contemptuous of meditation and are highly spiteful toward its practitioners, unbelieving that somebody who isn't forced to would ever willingly waste a life away that they could spend otherwise. As a species they do have ancient philosophical traditions, but these are mired mostly in nihilism. They hate the place that they were created to protect and are extremely jealous of other species, who are simultaneously belittled in their view for not having had to ensure such hardship. At the first opportunity they escape out into the stars, but even then are required to periodically return so that they can renew the bond they share with their parent tree. Those who don’t will die after years of mounting insanity, every moment away becoming more and more unhinged. While this process doesn’t set in for a long time, Febritin encountered away from their home are afflicted constantly by dull mental pain and get slowly more unpredictable as time wears on.
Understandably they view their condition as deeply unfair, and for that reason take a perverse pleasure in inflicting pain on others. Capable of projecting an altruistic front, they hide behind the positive associations that come from being made from wood to prey on the unsuspecting. Slow moving because of their gnarled limbs, and unsuited for subterfuge as a result of the creaking sounds that they produce, they find employment instead as torturers. They love their jobs and delight in picking out fine new instruments to inflict pain, going about the process of torturing very methodically. Uniquely they employ the thinnest and sharpest of their branches to poke at their victims, substituting these out for tapering needles of such brittleness that they often break and leave themselves embedded under the skin. The process that they prefer is very lengthy, and there are moments of prolonged terror as the Febritin rummages around in the dark to find the weapon that they are looking for, never in too much of a rush.
Interestingly for forest spirits they like to wear clothes, although these are often ripped partially to shreds by their grotesque frames who, even when turning only slightly to the side can tear holes into a shirt or jacket. They don’t even bother wearing pants, not least because the process of putting them on would take twenty minutes. Goggles made from orange plastic are a popular style right now because the self conscious Febritin think the colour matches very nicely with the mottled greys and green of their smooth ‘skin’. Most individuals have no bark because it is shorn off naturally by the weather they are accustomed to, taking even in more moderate conditions to peeling it off in long strips. None of them have revealed whether this is painful, but it is commonly thought to imply a masochistic streak evidenced also by a strange habit of standing completely still out in the snow for days at a time, behaviour which is damaging even to them.