So at some point in the post-game future, Haneyl and Vali got together and accidentally a neo-Primordial race. Dammit, kids.
To go into more detail; Haneyl and Vali are full siblings, and the way they express that siblinghood is by
constantly fighting. To Vali, Haneyl is the one who keeps him compressed and powerful, because she's always there to oppose, and that's why he loves his big sister. To Haneyl, Vali is the endless source of fuel and resources that grows back the more you take from it, and who stops her getting complacent in victory by always scaling up to oppose her, and that's why she loves her little brother. They
enjoy fighting each other, will even go as far as to manufacture squabbles so they can resolve them with challenges, and have a complete and utter lack of sexual tension that means that when they're older, their challenges and their duels will get them insisting that Dulmea should make an amphitheatre in the City so they can turn them into spectacles where they fight each other in hand-to-hand combat while mostly-naked and possibly oiled up in front of cheering crowds.
So, Haneyl and Vali have no sexual tension whatsoever - a distinct
lack of it, in fact. But they're still Third Circle demons. And when one of their fights goes on for long enough, and they spill enough blood, and enough of that blood mingles... sometimes a reaction will occur, and something will be born from it. These creatures are roughly split into four groups:
- A quarter of the time, the blood births a lifeless humanoid thing of intergrown wood and metal whose pose is one of a creature striving in desperate futility to take its first and only breath, yet failing for lack of life force. Such statues regenerate at an incredible rate when damaged, but have no animation or sentience or dynamic essence. They tend to go home with the winner of the bout to be made into automatons or rendered down into crafting components or whatever - which they are excellent for.
- A quarter of the time, keen-eyed onlookers (and Echo, who usually manages to be present) get a split-second look at a formless creature of fire and lightning that (according to Echo) lives out a full and passion-filled life in the space between heartbeats before dying in a deafening explosion; unable to sustain itself in the physical world without a body. Echo claims that physical space is meaningless to these beings, and the blinding vaguely-humanoid figure of fire and lightning doesn't even see the world around it, instead turning its hyper-accelerated perception inwards to a landscape of emotion and thought where it spends its microseconds probing the deepest chasms and fractal pathways of philosophy and feeling. She is probably bullshitting. Vali occasionally tries to capture such explosions in cunning devices of brass and iron to see how they break out, but has never been successful. Haneyl tends to just get clear when the blood starts glowing, and spectators have learnt to dive for cover.
- A quarter of the time, Haneyl's fire gets into Vali's metal and thaaaaat's never fun for anyone, because the resultant creature born from the blood pool is a maimed and sickly thing that partakes of the nature of Crippled Malfeas; solipsistic and blind to anything outside its own skin, mewling in pain at its deformities. This is because paradigmatically; Keris has turned her Malfean elements into healthy ones by splitting them in half, and when recombined they inherit the flaws and mutilation of their Primordial forebear in full. On the rare occasions when such things don't soon expire on their own, they tend to be mercy-killed.
- But finally, on one in four occasions when the fight goes on long enough for sufficient blood to be spilled and enough of it mingles to prompt a reaction, wood and lightning combine to form a healthy, self-aware, living child with enough form to exist and enough energy to live and a hun/po soul structure that renders them a neohuman being not unlike the ancient Lintha.
A stormdryad.
Thus are all of Haneyl and Vali's living children - the kin of wood and lightning.
Stormdryads
Stormdryads are a neo-Primordial race of naturally material beings who exist in the Enlightenment 0-6 range. They possess a human soul structure and are humanoid in appearance, with wood-like flesh and plant-like hair - sometimes akin to a large flower, sometimes a curtain of leafy vines. Their blood glows actinic blue, as do their eye veins, lips and other mucal membranes. They naturally generate sparks and static electricity in situations where a human would experience raised body temperature or heightened pulse - exercise, fever, fear, arousal, etcetera. Stormdryads can activate a Stage 1 anima by spending 1wp and succeeding on a Physique check at difficulty (6 - Breeding), or when their health track is filled with lethal damage down to a -2 penalty. This supercharges their lightning and sends their wood into hyper-growth; sparks and arcs crackle across their skin, their hair grows rapidly and their bodies and muscles swell. Such exertion leaves them exhausted and in dire need of nutrients to make up for the growth-debt once they've settled down again.
Born as infants, stormdryads grow to maturity at approximately the same rate as a human. They possess a paired hun and po, and cannot be born in places with no access to the Well of Souls. In theory it is possible for one to Exalt, but in practice an Exaltation would shun their Primordial biology as it would a Lintha. Stormdryad Enlightenment is capped by their Breeding, to a maximum of 5. Infants are born with Enlightenment 1 - or 0, if the lines have been so muddied with humans or other species outside their own sanctioned race as to be virtually unrecognisable - and can raise it as they grow. More powerful stormdryads live longer - those of low Breeding or who never increase their Enlightenment beyond its starting puissance are scarcely any longer-lived than a human, while purebloods at the height of their power can live two centuries or more.
There exist two branches, or forks, of stormdryad Charms. These are bought as themed Spirit Charms up to E(Breeding) - their "wood" charms are themed around plants, growth/regrowth, infection and fruit, while their "lightning" charms are themed around speed, destructive power, escape and defiance. Stormdryads who have mastered their lightning nature can escape Krisity entirely, never to return. Should they so choose; two Breeding 5 Enlightenment 5 stormdryads who have mastered both their natures can escape the confinement of humanity and grow beyond their limits and mortality, becoming an Enlightenment 6 Primordial-akuma dragontree couple. One roots themselves in the ground and becomes an enormous stormtree that attracts lightning strikes and bears large, heavy seed pods from its branches. The other becomes a wood-and-lightning stormdragon that wraps itself round the stormtree to rest and occasionally peels away to roam free, devour towns and bring food and treasure back to the tree to hoard.
The heavy seedpods from a dragontree couple are a fresh source of pureblood stormdryads if rooted in a place with access to the Well of Souls and kept fed at frequent intervals. This is the only way the species can breed among themselves - stormdryads who retain their human souls are sterile with one another, though with difficulty they can pollute their lines by breeding with humans or demons. Both parts of a dragontree retain the ability to speak, either from sparking fang-lined jaws or a gnarled wooden face among the bark, and will raise the first generation of their children with an approximation of tenderness. Thereafter, young children are left to their adult siblings, who are tolerated as long as they aid and obey their parents and are encouraged to go wandering if they will not.
Conceptually, - much as the Lintha are aloof sea-elves - stormdryads are expansionistic wood-dwarves. They are hungry wood animated by recalcitrant lightning; stubborn, contrary and as tough as nails, able to carve out territory in inhospitable terrain and prosper there. Despite a tendency towards bluntness they are capable of cultivating great beauty - albeit mostly in the form of bountiful harvests and precious flowers. Culturally, they are proud, greedy, often aggressive and prone to hoarding; driven to grow in the direction of most resistance, destroy what they find there, overgrow the ruins like kudzu and bear great harvests from the spoils. At other times they subjugate their neighbours and build a new capital around their parents, drawing in tribute and converting all the land around to crop fields, forests and gardens. Either way, a newly planted dragontree in an area is an ill omen for any nearby civilisations of men.
Sample Panoply Item:
Talons of the Orchid Dragon (Artifact 2 wrist scarification)
A mark of high status in stormdryad groves; these patterned scars run the length of each forearm, and are burnt into the skin with the green flame of the stormdryads' ultimate mother, fed by rare and expensive minerals and salts. Mechanically, they allow the bearer to cast Wood Dragon's Claw through the themes of their mother; producing gnarled and hungry talons of grey wood and orchid-petal cuffs.
