Fearlings are lesser demons in service of a greater sort of demon of fear. They take the form of the viewer's fear.
Involvement
The Fearlings are encountered in The Fade during the Here Lies the Abyss.
The Inquisitor and Blackwall perceive the Fearlings as oversized spiders. (Because the Inquisitor sees them as spiders, so does the player.) Hawke sees them as either templars or mages, depending on who Hawke sided with—templars if Hawke sided with the mages, mages if the opposite. Cassandra sees them as maggots. Sera describes them as physically impossible embodiments of nothingness.
Trivia
- When targeted, fearlings have names for whatever fear they represent. That is, fear, drowning, blood, loneliness, etc. One is named, amusingly, "Ironically, Spiders".