The orodromi /.ɔɹəˈdɹoʊmi/ is a pallid stranger with rough-edged stripes, a bulky physical frame, and permanent frown of fatigue and dismay. Its stale, mildewed breath wheezes from a throat that leads inward to its filling of infected lung tissues that resist no scalpel. Bulky but weak, even the smallest of the orodromi's injuries heal only minimally.

The strain speaks in the frail and miserable voice of a very sick person, with age, pitch, and all else varying at random. It possesses no language of its own, but, when it is not coughing or clearing its throat, repeats one to three word phrases spoken within its territory.

The orodromi generates exclusively in the attics and maintenance rooms of offices with beige walls and chalky drop-ceilings. The stranger shows up as a sooty "ghost" which clutches onto whatever is nearby as it expands, and within seventeen minutes, takes solid form. The mature orodromi then stands up, staggers forward, and attempts to "thrive."

The ailing and despondent orodromi displays its "personality" through only minor idiosyncrasies – a slap upon a ventilation duct to hear the echo, a finger-stroke over a layer of dust, a vague disgust after particularly sputeous clearing of the throat. It is, for the most part, docile, too sickly to devote its attentions to much else besides its disease-wracked body.

Though the orodromi always appears in groups, social interactions are limited to the occasional hand-clasp or head-nuzzle of solace. These gestures seem to bring no particular assuagement of its symtoms – instead, the orodromi alleviates itself through a periodic exhalation of black smoke, which fills the air around it, but seems to allow the stranger a few minutes of feeble relief. As time goes on, the air grows thick and dark with this wet miasma and all its small black specks.

The orodromi shies away from touch, and avoids contact with sensitives, though it will not leave its territory or engage in prolonged avoidance. Pushing against its companions for comfort, it shows no defensive response when its flesh is pulled apart by hooks, carved into with a knife, raked by fingernails, stabbed with a syringe, beaten with a baseball bat, or any other manner of physical encroachment.

The orodromi grows more daring only around the most physically vulnerable sensitives, over whom it stands, nose pointing downward, its black vapor filling their lungs as it coughs onto and into them. After it has finished this display, it stifles its rasping sob with the sensitive's body, holding them close like a child would a doll.

As the orodromi reaches the end of its life, it at last falls victim to the illnesses that fill its lungs. Its coughing grows violent and desperate, and what it once exhaled as smoke instead drips out from its snout as a thick black sputum. The stranger's skin turns grey and mottled, its stripes bleed into one another, and it dies with a heaving, anticlimactic gasp.