The monsters in this world are separated into mythical creatures, lesser demons, curses, and nightmares.

Mythical creatures

Beings existing from the dawn of men, such as the Pegasus, satyrs, fairies, unicorns, and so on. Since the great war between humans and sorcerers, they have taken residence in the magic world, where an organization of magicians has taken care of the preservation of their species by establishing laws to protect them from being hunted or mistreated.

Lesser demons

The most common example

 of a lesser demon is none other than the vampire. The first of their kind were a small settlement of Dacians, who overwhelmed by famine made a deal with a powerful demon, sacrificing their firstborn in his name. In exchange, they each drank from the demon’s blood and became the first vampires. In the beginning, they were able to consume ordinary food, but as the vampiric virus spread, the further one was from the original line, the more they became dependent on the consumption of blood to ensure their existence.

Another example you’ve likely heard of is werewolves. However, scholars still debate whether they are actually curses. Their origin remains unclear, with some theories suggesting the first case of lycanthropy was of a man who consumed the flesh of a demon, others say the first werewolf was the ex-lover of a witch who cursed him to live with the dogs. Similar to vampires, they must feed on humans in order to not only keep their sanity, but also their human appearance.

Curses

Monsters whose origin could be traced back to a witch’s curse, most commonly known as urban legends or phenomena. Examples include the Mavka, Leshy, Poluddnica, creatures from the South American folklore, such as the Chupacabra, La Llorona, from the Japanese folklore, the Yokai, Kuchisake Onna, Hanako, and others.

Nightmares

There is very little information on nightmares in the hunter’s guide, mostly because there are so few hunters to survive an encounter with one. They inhabit the mind of a person and feast on it in their sleep for months until there is nothing left. In some cases, they can take hold of entire villages at a time, infecting them with the so-called sleeping sickness. One can only interact with a nightmare outside of one’s own dream through a medium known as a dream-walker.