The physical manifestation of the pain of the Chessboard Desert, the Shardbeasts are great hulking forms made up of broken planes of ice and globs of tar stuck all together into a giant shapeless blob that carries a great hunger for imagination. A Shardbeast is capable of absorbing a sentient person’s body, killing them and then manifesting itself as dreams from their mind made real.
The planes of ice of which the Shardbeasts are in part composed are capable of reflecting any image and the tar can shape those planes into any form, animating the lost dreams and bringing them to life. Mindless these dreams are projected in endless repetition, fueled by the remnants of the consumed being’s imagination, until the imagination is finally exhausted and the dreams finally fade away and the beast’s hunger returns and it begins to hunt for a new source of imagination on which to feed.
During the reign of Redd, the Heart Crystal was located at Mount Isolation deep in the Chessboard Desert, and the endless squares of tar and ice became accustomed to basking in the glow, but when the Crystal was returned to Wondertropolis, the chessboard desert began to feel the pain of the loss once more, creating a boom in Shardbeast populations.