The Common Middenrunner is a small feathered scavenger found across most inhabited regions of Veyrath. Adults are usually 70 to 100 centimetres long and weigh only a few kilograms, with long hindlegs, a stiff balancing tail, short clawed forelimbs, and coarse brown, grey, or reddish plumage. They eat almost anything available, including insects, carrion, eggs, fruit, grain, fish scraps, and refuse.

Middenrunners thrive wherever people disturb the landscape. Markets, docks, farms, railway yards, mines, military camps, slaughterhouses, and city refuse grounds commonly support large populations. They are usually harmless and often useful for controlling insects and consuming waste, but become troublesome around food stores, poultry yards, and hatcheries. Railways and steamships have spread them so extensively that even naturalists disagree over where the species originally evolved.