Umbra
The Umbra are an alien species appearing as smooth black spheres with swirling patterns that live in the void of space, often observed attracted to areas resonant of the warp such as starship hulls and warp engines or suspected entrances to the Eldar Webway. They can manipulate and control shadows to form terrifying limbs of hooks, blades, teeth and other nightmarish shapes.[1a]
Biology
The Umbra are not an organism in the standard sense, as no obvious means of motion, respiration, digestion nor excretion are evident. They are comprised of an outer shell made of an unknown glossy, brittle and untextured substance showing swirling pearlescent patterns. An inner cavity is below this and surrounds a liquid core of impossible to analyse white liquid that appears non-Newtonian, prone to random solidification and variation in density, and seems to be frictionless.[1a]
The Umbra can manipulate areas of shadow like oil to form shadow-limb weapons seen as hooks, blades, teeth and the like. The umbra are also capable of movement in space and are able to hover in place for an unknown ammount of time. The motion and swirling pattern of the Umbra shell become inert upon death.[1a]
The Umbra have been observed to show a direct aversion to light, a possible weakness in countering them.[1a]
It was the countenance of Calculus-Logi Byrr that the Umbra represent a miniscule portion of 'extra-dimensional creatures', decribing the experience of watching the Umbra to be like the experience of a hypothetical two-dimensional observer on the human form. This may simply be an understanding of their movements in and out of the Warp as they have a demonstrable warp presence and are seemingly drawn to areas of warp activity[1a].
Death Shriek
Upon death one sphere of Umbra was found to brighten after which the Imperial agents in it's presence felt intense cranial pain accompanied by a flicker of images: a humanoid figure splintering apart, a turbulent warpstorm, deep space, and finally the single word: "LINGER".[1a]
History
The writings of Kurdo Salvador, a self-confessed heretic supposedly speak to the history of the Umbra. Salvador writes of a visit by the thirster in the dark, her who dance-moans, her who keeps her secrets breasted who spoke of an era before her birth, a "War in Heaven and Hell" when "Star Devils" locked horns with "Old Gods killed-away". She spoke of one "Old God" who survived, hidden in the Warp, where he was "Up to his Old Ways, tweaking and dabbling, poking and prodding" until "She's born in the longears' brain, laughs out loud and chops him a million times, and kicks the shards out into the cold. To linger like always..."[1a] If this vision is true, it suggests that Umbra are shards of "Old God" forced after his death into Real Space from their home in the Warp.
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Trivia
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- Kurdo Salvador's story is possibly intended be references to identifiable history. The "War in Heaven and Hell" might be the War in Heaven (Necron) between the "Star Devil" C'tan and the "Old Gods, killed-away" which could either mean Old Ones or the psychic manifestations of their creations who fought on their behalf the Eldar Gods (a confusion intentionally continued later throughout the work such as an Exodite tablet showing the shared Aeldari, Slanni, Ork progenitors with arrows drawn from those progenitor figures to Cegorach and Khaine[1b]).
Either way, a powerful entity escaped into the warp to hide from the war, performed a task reminiscent of their "old ways", and later died by the hand of "She born in the longears' brain" (intended to be Slaanesh birthed by the minds of the longeared Eldar at the Fall of the Eldar) who then forced the Old God's body out of the warp into the cold of Real Space to become the Umbra.
Qah is described later in Xenology by a survivor of Hrud captivity as the disappeared god "he who lingers", who changed the Hrud into nocturnal scavengers to escape the Yaam-khoh before disappearing ca. 460,000 BC to "attend to great works", and might be the same figure.[1d]
