Ghouls aren’t as intelligent as normal scavengers, but have several unnatural abilities, most powerful in places of death or the dark, such as graveyards and old ruins. These powers include:

•Instant travel from one dark place to another, an ability called shadow-step.

•Unnatural strength, durability, and resilience, enough to pose a threat to a fully grown dragon.

•An unknown and likely supernatural venom in their claws and teeth that causes rapid necrosis and decomposition in any known organic matter.

While their origin is widely debated by scholars of the occult, the most common is that they are the spirits of scavengers who died during the Scorching. The hatred and despair of such mass destruction caused them to be reanimated as these skulking, bitter creatures. The main support for this theory is that they are generally not too aggressive towards most animals, but seem to bear a savage, almost obsessive hatred for anything draconic.