The smogridrome /smɒɡɹɪdrəʊm/ is a stranger whose body seems to be made of fog or vapor. In color, it ranges from mid-grey to pitch coal. Though it does not ambulate, the smoke of its body drifts in perpetual bulges in dips. Overcast days cause the smogridrome's otherwise gentle swirls to churn with a turbulent discontent, its limbs even raising and falling with these seethes.

The stranger resists a majority of physical interaction, and, when swept or prodded, breaks apart and reforms with neither effect nor affect. Even in hurricane winds, its position does not drift. Despite this, the smogridrome is not impervious to harm. Deep, booming sound waves dissipate it fully, as do very bright lights (such as those from a high-powered searchlight, or the scalding sun in the desert sky.)

Each smogridrome speaks with a disinterested and dwindling crowd's worth of muffled voices.

The smogridrome generates on the streets of urban financial districts. In the early mornings of overcast days, the stranger settles into place beneath the rise of the obscured sun, its body growing more voluminous with each slow churn of its wisps, its bounds apparent within the half hour.

It accumulates most readily where the sidewalk meets the road, and never against a wall. The stranger also tends to cluster itself just above the roof and windshields of parked cars, whose front windshields reflect only the wooly clouds of the sky above. Not uncommonly (0.8% of instances), the smogridrome will even generate in a manner that seems to intersect the vehicle itself (with its body looming upwards through the roof or back window), though the chamber inside the car remains empty.^ᶎ

The smogridrome expresses a joyless nature and settled expression, ambient in its response to the world and all stimuli therein. Any movement or change in position seems incidental, and is limited to a flowing of the limbs or a scowling of the brows.

Unable to express social inclinations through action, groups of smogridrome restrict themselves to passive, but frequent conversation. It takes little time for the area within a smogridrome settlement to become saturated with their wordless rush, the sound of which echoes as though enclosed by tiled walls, though the chatter is inaudible from outside of the group's immediate vicinity.

The smogridrome's proximity causes sensitives to experience a brief, yet all-encompassing loss of self-control.

This disruption of autonomy, which lasts no longer than 2.43 seconds, is accompanied by no severance of consciousness. Sensitives are aware that this is happening, but unable to stop it. The smogridrome's presence causes these intrusive bursts^𐊬 every thirty seconds to two minutes, regardless of whether it is alone or within a group.

A healthy smogridrome absorbs a small percentage (2.43%) of any loose change that falls or is thrown into it, these coins disappearing within the opaque fog. These "currentized" individuals, however, display no other change, nor do these coins reappear.

The smogridrome reaches the end of its lifespan within seventy hours, and usually, far less. As it ages, the veil of its clouds drift apart, its conversations conclude, and its slow turbulence subdues forever.

In the case of currentized individuals, however is a 2.43% chance that they will die not calmly, but instead, fall with the collapse of hundreds of coins upon the pavement or the car beneath them.