bet you thought i forgot about this
but no, there is no escape for or from the stupid
Ur-Hadda, the Swarm that Boils the Sky
Wisdom Soul of the Fastness of Shattered Suns
Demon of the Second Circle
Filth draws flies as surely as dusk follow day. Black, stinging blots that prick the ear and pierce the skin. Bees honeycomb corpses with their hives, staining carrion with sweetness; wasps pad dusty eaves with paper dens, secreting larvae among the neglect. The humming whine of their wings draws the ear and the eye, forcing even mere passersby to note the dead, the decrepit, the dirtiness of their surroundings. The unseemliness of their lives. Lords and ladies may blind themselves with silken veils, princelings and duchesses may drown their noses in perfume and pack their cheeks with dainty morsels. Peasants may break their animal souls upon the yoke and lash their hands plow, young soldiers swathing their hearts in brightly stitched banners. But you can never quite neuter the beast within. The creature that thrashes and twitches, bound to wages. To decorum. To hierarchy. Forced to deny the truths before it. Forced to deny the world as it is.
In the end all Ur-Hadda desires is to wake people up. To sting them, shock them free of their apathy and indolence. To grind their faces against Creation-as-it-is in all its ugliness and grotesquerie and snarl "
look".
The Swarm that Boils the Sky appears as a frightening blend of man and monstrous insect. Armored, arthorpodal limbs bristle from his shoulders and hips, twitching alongside more conventional legs and arms while exposed muscle twists, orange as southern fruit, beneath and between green-black carapace. An oily cloak trails from his shoulders. Snapping into churning, transparent wings that blur the air. His head is an insectile helm, all slick, flowing sides and organic spurs, fused to a naked, very human, jaw. From the base of his spine curves a plump, saber-tipped stinger. Hollow spires form ridges down his spine and it is here that his swarm-self dwells. A storm of bloated wasps fit to blacken the very skies. Their poisons strip all illusion from the mind and spur humans to violent action. An irresistible irritation to
rebel. To rip down the established order,
all order, and be
free.
In ages past he was a revolutionary. An insurgent who toppled decadent kingdoms and set cities ablaze. Who rallied the poor to rip the rich from their towers and eat them in the streets. In ages past he shattered Pyrian champions and gnawed through the threads of Heaven. Fighters in the jungle kept his shrines beneath the fetid earth and hinterland raiders sacrificed stallions to house honeybees.
He's fallen on hard times since then. Part of it is the difficulties inherent to the nature of his work, mobs of angry anarchists tend to be swiftly crushed by the government or consume themselves in turn. But part of it is a simple loss of resolve. Once the most vigorous and vital of Utprerak's Souls he has let himself soften and his belly swell. Cycling between gorging his fill on the best banquets hell can offer and disdaining all but water and vitriol. But really, who can blame him? What point is there in inciting insurrection in Malfeas, in proclaiming the truth of their conditions (save, perhaps, irritating some of his peers)? Everyone knows the reality of their lives. The handful of possible futures that await. It has been years since he made even the most half-hearted of efforts to depose a king and his involvement in the mercenary legions of the Fastness is almost purely a passing diversion.
Notes and Abilities: Binding Ur-Hadda is an excellent way to earn his ire, tainting his treasured visits to Creation with the reminder of his collar. However, if summoned simply to wreak havoc amongst an enemy's ranks he will take to the task gladly. Such is the love he has for the sweet, tantalizing reminder of relevance that his jaunts to Creation grant him that he will do almost anything to extend a particular trip. Though his body has gone somewhat to seed he remains a capable trainer of assassins and guerillas and has a broad number of (albeit at times badly dated) stratagems and tactics for opposing a superior force. By virtue of his physiology he is a master of poisons and vulnerable to only a few.
He may escape Malfeas when rebels are slaughtered in a lonely place and the bees come to make a hollow of their corpses. Carpeting the carrion in yellow and orange, gathering them together in a warm, rotting hive. The Bureau of Destiny does its best to disrupt such occurrences, stupefying the infected insects with holy smoke and incinerating the bodies. But Creation is vast and there are ever enemies of the state to be slain.
Rangeen Mijaaj, Grand Knight-Marshall of Immaculate Dress
Indulgent Soul of the Fastness of Shattered Suns
Demon of the Second Circle
How beautiful the soldiers! Their buttons shining like little suns, their collars perfectly starched, their uniforms unmarred by dust or dirt or blood. Watch them march all in their razor-straight rows. Their boots crashing like rolling thunder. Tempo set by the corporal's chant. The strong arm of the ruler, the nation, struck in a pose and flexing. Their newest weapons come rolling behind, drawn by oxen teams on painted carts. Brass cannons inscribed with spiraling eyes. Black swords that hum and quiver in the sheath, so large they must be borne over the shoulder. Behold their new
men leading the front, their bodies strung with beating helltech, armor fused with a demonic engine. Faces hidden behind tusked masks. And over it all stands their master, all but glowing with pride.
The Grand Knight-Marshall of Immaculate Dress is a terrifying absurdity. A bloated centipede the size of a Yeddim calf wrapped in the silk and lacquer of a Shogunate General (or Admiral, or Air Marshall), belly burning with sunset hues, little legs trundling their immense bulk along. From around their armored throat a curving halo extends. Sweeping back and burning with black stars. Atop their sloping, slick head, away from their dripping dagger-mandibles, sits an elegantly drawn topknot bound by black ribbons. Rangeen Mijaaj is a tremendous dandy, ever on the lookout for new and exciting accessories and fashionable trinkets. Cloth cords and golden chains creak and groan across their gut. Aesthetic pleasure is more important than mere function and any suggestion that they should adopt something more practical is met by blank incomprehension from the Knight-Marshall's constellation of eyes.
To assume that the demon prince is in practical reality a soldier or even a strategist is to gravely mistake their nature. Rangeen Mijaaj, the Sublime Shogun of Martial Might, exists to train. To teach. To order and develop and instruct. More partial to the marshal's baton than the tremendous sword they carry in their stubby, jointed limbs. Blade black and orange and shrouded in burning smoke. If pressed they are more inclined to use it as a club, wildly flailing before fleeing for the nearest escape route.
There is a curious cycle to knowledge of the Knight-Marshall. Firstly one assumes that they are a great warlord of hell, decorated for their many and varied victories against their kin. Then one discovers that they are two thirds hot air to one third fashion sense and the respect diminishes. Then one discovers that Rangeen Mijaaj once held the great jade-inlaid ramparts of Mu. Commanding the Primordial defense from the sky-scraping citadels as the Exalted Host encroached on the Blessed Isle.
Rangeen Mijaaj does not speak of this time and, if pressed, will see the offender broken beneath the wheels of their great war-engines.
Summoning and Abilities: The Grand Knight-Marshall of Sublime Dress adores the pageantry of the military, the pomp and circumstance of the great martial balls and the grandeur of the parades. If tasked to whip a motley crew of demons into shape within a week they will have the agatae all in matching harnesses and the Blood Apes (somehow) crammed into polished uniforms. The unstable, the abnormal, and the simply psychotic all standing at attention and answering orders as pleasant as you'd like. Similar miracles may be worked on mortal armies although Sorcerers are cautioned to keep a close watch on their captive laborer lest they twist their soldiers into profane forms of metal and monstrous flesh. Still, such a boon has seen them released from Malfeas on many an occasion and their resume is vast. Yet summers should be aware: for all their airy good nature Rangeen Mijaaj is known for to fly into rages at the oddest provocation and has an extensive list of (quite expensive) demands. What food may be served in their presence. What sounds may be played about them. What fragrances may be present in their quarters. Chief among these is a stipulation that has proved most problematic for their would-be masters: the Shogun Sublime must never be present on the field of battle.
When not aboard their greater self the Grand Knight-Marshall maintains a fortress-resort near Kimbery's more tropical shores. They may crawl into Creation when a hero's fine clothes burst thrice from their bodies in the heat of combat. Mere cloth unable to confine their physical virtue. Then they will appear, grandly offering outfits of a more fashionable style and many odd, augmentive trinkets beside. Sure to give any militant wanderer the affect and edge they need.
