Shadow hounds

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Shadow hounds

General informations and warnings
Not everything that bears the form of a shadow hound is a shadow hound: it's advisable not to touch all the canine-shaped creatures that appear to be made of smoke, as they could be expressions of poorly managed spells, partial ghosts or even grim dogs (also known as black dogs) which at particular times of the year take on different forms. It's also important to recall that shadow hounds are often messengers of the Dark Ministry and obstructing their work is prohibited by a number of laws. That said, shadow hounds in themselves don't pose a danger to a human being, or to any other living creature, but it's good to make sure, first of all, that what you've met is a true shadow hound.

Origins
Shadow Hounds are the earliest harnessed ghosts in the history of dark magic: they consist of the spirit of a dog that is promptly pulled out of the body shortly before or shortly after its actual death and fixed in such a way that it maintains a physical form, although they cannot exist for too long outside the spiritual world, and therefore are evoked sporadically and for no more than a few hours, otherwise risking disintegration. The shadow hound extraction method was most likely invented by the well-known sorcerer Paulus Grimorius in an attempt to create quick messengers impossible to be killed by traditional methods.

A small shadow hound

Appearance and behavior  

In appearance, shadow hounds are, just like the domestic dogs from which they derive, extremely varied: large or small, stout or thin, tall or low on their legs and with all shapes of heads and ears. They always appear without colors, but in grayscale: from pure white (a very rare coat, usually indicative of the work of an exceptional sorcerer) up to completely black. In the spiritual world, behind the veil, the shadow hounds present themselves with a compact body, sometimes slightly translucent, and very clear bright eyes, while their manifestation in the physical world seems to be made of smoke or steam, with frayed and floating outlines, and white pupilless eyes. Often the physical manifestation of shadow hounds is smaller in size than how they would be in the spirit world. The spiritual form of the shadow hounds doesn't match that of the dog from which they were extracted and even the spirit of a chihuahua may be as large as a small horse, but upon returning to the material world the shadow hound will regain its original size. Shadow hounds behave identically to the dog from which they were extracted; they may be restless, playful, shy, or aggressive, but in any case they will obey any order of the wizard who created them.

Trivia:

• For years the magical community has been undecided between the classification of shadow hounds as artifacts or as creatures. In the end it was stated verbatim that "nothing so adorable and full of love can be an artifact, they are therefore magical little animals".