right
take two
Mazscyllic, Archoness of the Cascade
Demon of the Third Circle
Fetich Soul of the Sea that Marched Against the Flame
The jagged horizon darkens, crackling with electrical arcs, and serfs cower in fear. They scurry for secreted keepsakes or meager, scavenged, protections, pre-emptively pounding on the holdfasts of their lords and ladies or making for hidden boltholes bored in Malfeas's rocky tissue. Yet soon they shall be kneeling in the streets of Malfeas. Knees sunk in the gritty, black sand of the Demon City's sundered shores. Heads bowed; feeling the warm, briny rain play over their shoulders. Witnesses to the glory that is Mazscyllic, the heart of Mother Kimbery.
She travels wrapped in a maelstrom. Thunderous cataracts coursing down from the tainted heavens. Salt springs bursting from black basalt cliffs. Anywhere from three to threescore of the mighty rivers coil about her at all times, waxing and waning proportionate to her strength. Within the banks of gentle mist her armada sails. Mantled in perpetual rain. Guarded by rumbling clouds. So great is her magnanimity that she will allow her breath to grace the brows of Malfeas's slaves. Tenderly caressing the scuttling, heavy masses with the kiss of acid rain for she is storm and woman both. In the eye of her hurricane-self she holds court. Aboard a hundred-decked palace-ship towed by six reptilian leviathans drawn from the vastness of Kimbery's body and escorted by an armada to dwarf even the naval ambitions of the Realm.
Mazscyllic appears as a slight, willowy woman from the distant West (or so it is said). Her body is ever draped in bone-pale and deep-green silks. Gentle canopies of the softest fabrics, a peaked cap spreading a gauzy veil before her face. The front weighted with delicate bone chimes. Little can be seen of the body beneath. Only her nails tipped with claws of black jade; etched in green and banded with gold. Only her eyes, a quartet of searing suns that not even the demure screen may stifle or diffuse. But when she speaks she does so with clarity and grace. With kind words and gentle poise. Those who supplicate themselves before her feel uplifted by her mere proximity. Safeguarded by her strength. She is the wise, disciplined matriarch; firm in her resolve. The guiding, nurturing, mother; tender in her care. And she is the carefree, careless maiden; beautiful in her disdain.
And she is wretched. Callous. Cruel. Pathetic.
Once, when Creation was young, Kimbery was a boundless; joyous thing. She flowed as she willed and created as she desired. She played the divine games of the Primordials as it suited her but even in that act of conformity she paid her elders and her superiors little respect and less heed. See a noble girl in the Imperial City, how she flits from favorite to favorite; entertaining her passing fancies. See the village beauty in the town square, of your life and yet beyond it. So lovely that she burns to hold and breaks you when she is gone but there is a sweetness to your pain. Know her and you have known Kimbery as she was then. Know her and you have known Kimbery's heart.
Complaints were made, among her brethren and her betters. The divine mechanisms were threatened. The underpinnings nudged askew. Ill will bubbled beneath the surface. And Cytherea, Lost Cytherea, like numberless mothers since took her flighty daughter in hand and vented upon her a mother's shame and a matriarch's slow, smouldering rage. Upon her, Cytherea impressed five truths. Writing them in fire until they were learned. Until they were understood. Until they were consumed and integrated and regurgitated back to taste. Twisted and stitched into every fiber of the wayward Primordial's being. Other titans watched and said nothing. Others never noticed, entranced in their Games. Perhaps it was asked, in those dawntimes, by some curious second soul "why have the seas gone still?" but if it was nothing ever came from it. For the truth was few knew or cared to know. Satisfied only to be troubled no longer.
Beneath her veil Mazscyllic is scarred. A blotchy, ugly burn spreading from collarbone to temple and spilling across half her face. She is no longer the girl she once was. She has learned her lessons well and disdains the joy she once found in her youth for she knows the proper way of things: she is not worthy of love. She does not deserve affection. Existence holds no succor for such a miserable, mewling thing as her. She is hated and such is her due. A mother's doll, to be dressed up and discarded as a mother wills.
Mazscyllic's cruelty is the cruelty of a beaten dog, a whipped cur. Low and snapping and bitter. Every day she sits on her magnificent throne, her hands and feet soaking in glass basins of pure, clean water. Leeching the toxins from her skin. A half-hearted denial of her nature. And yet every other day she rises to ingrain her lessons on some petitioner or vexing prince, lashing out with a martial artist's skill. With her smoking left hand she strikes. With her billowing right she smites. With her Steaming right foot she kicks. With her smouldering left she stomps. And with her lips she graces you one small moment of merciless kindness and leaves you broken and wretched. Other times a black mood takes her and she rampages about her ship, twisting and maiming her handmaidens and handsome servants. Sending the fleet-footed ones running for cover. Yet other times she slouches on her throne and speaks cutting words. Drawing forth a supplicant's most tender fears and greatest shames, bringing them out to be mocked by her court. It heartens her to see other things suffer so. To know that even as low as she is she is not alone in this cruel, ugly world.
Notes and Abilities: In the First Age Mazscyllic was summoned as a terraforming tool for expanding and shaping bodies of salt water. Altering the currents within and etching the coastlines with her churning, coiling storm-self. She at once resented and welcomed such menial drudgery. An Archoness was above such things. The broken, crawling heart of Kimbery was not. Such tension gave her pleasure. Mazscyllic may escape Hell when a mother of noble birth strikes her daughter with witnesses and yet the crowd turns away without a word. She will appear as a towering monster swathed in silk, her true form hidden beneath the wraps. With her hands she will burn the mother and take from her her beauty, her confidence, and her station and leave her to a lingering death by poison. Daughters so confronted must always bow and be polite and never look the beast in the unshrouded face lest they be seized as well.
Mazscyllic and the All-Thing: The Archoness of the Cascade did not join the Yozi's great conspiracy to aid her brethren, in truth it gratifies her to see all the ones who once neglected Mother Kimbery brought so low. Humiliated so thoroughly. No, her interest was in the potential for Solar servants. The notion of the once god-kings brought low, faces ground in the muck of their failures pleases her and she yearns to teach them their true worth. As a patron she is powerful and commands many legions; her graciousness is not always feigned and she is often willing to reward those who strike blows against her hated brother and competitor for Kimbery's conscience.
Yet she is also fickle and often faithless. Any Infernal servants must know to carefully monitor her moods and indulge her outbursts, to bear her scathing humiliations and endure her mean-spirited "games", lest they be cast to the leviathans or otherwise fall from her favor.
Kairibus, the Enfant Pearl
Demon of the Second Circle
Expressive Soul of the Archoness of the Cascade
In the depths of Mazscyllic's floating palace lays her own heart. Her child, conceived of spite and born of hate, nurtured out of broken, twisted love it is, nonetheless, a beautiful thing. An infant the size of a yeddim calf with a skin of living pearl and sinews of mollusk-meat. An enormous emerald sits in his brow, glinting and glowing, even as his four eyes are often scrunched shut in plaintive sobs. He demands attention from his deafened, stooped caretakers and swats them with sledgehammer fists when they do not respond or respond incorrectly to his arcane demands. He demands constant feeding, care, and companionship. He is swaddled in silks and shits on sheets that would bankrupt a mortal kingdom and yet he ever demands more.
It is not the result of an innate intellectual deficiency; the Enfant Pearl is as aware as any Citizen of Hell (and likely smarter than a few). Rather it is the result of carefully learned helplessness. He has never walked farther than the few paces required to cross his play-room and nursery. Anything he has ever wanted he has only had to squall loud enough and it will be brought in short order, no matter the expense or difficulty involved. He administers lands and commands armies as any proper Citizen should (for Mazscyllic's son
will be a great warlord, to rival even Octavian) and yet it is in name only. His mother handles all the messy details and difficult problems. His pearl hands remain unblemished and unmarred. The birthright of those who do not toil and do not fight.
Indolent, arrogant, and wrathful Kairibus is not to be underestimated. He is as spiteful as his mother and as fickle as Mother Kimbery and he has never known a world outside the arms of either. This has left him dangerously unhinged and almost solipsistic in his opinion of himself. Outside his doting, ever-loving mother, and the world-sea from which he is descended, nothing else is quite
real to him. Through his servants he plays his games across Malfeas. Fouling plans and sowing strife for no other reason than he can and they likely deserved it for shaming his Mother. If they succeed he is delighted. If they fail he cares little for the Fetich of a Yozi shields him from all retribution or consequence.
Notes and Abilities: Kairibus has never been summoned into Creation and his mother, the Archoness of the Cascade, has gone to
tremendous lengths to ensure that no writs for summoning or binding exist. Scribes have been assassinated, sorcerers drowned, all for the explicit goal of preserving her most precious of treasures. In truth, despite Mazscyllic's protests to the contrary, there are few direct reasons any sorcerer would care to summon Kairibus. His innate talents have been long neglected and his magical abilities (the creation of sea-winds and weather storms) keys entirely off his mother's presence and guidance. Rather, his value lies in his position and in that sense his worth is incalculable. Mazscyllic would do anything to see him returned safely. Wage war against ostensible allies, hurl herself against Heaven, or drag entire nations beneath the roaring sea. But such an arrangement is inherently unstable and the Archoness is not to be trifled with.
Kairibus cries with a voice like the boom of waves crashing against a shore. Loud enough to rattle teeth and shiver stone. He gains Limit for every minute his cries go unanswered.
