i can't write countries but i can make trash
Vansh, the Storm-Stripped Riders
Progeny of A Trinity of Tattered Banners
Demon of the First Circle
They were made as a gift. For a quiet, demure woman who caught Kiraaye's eye as he labored beneath the Golden Lords. In the Era of the Deliberative the common lot was much improved; no longer did men and women die of wasting sickness nor did rough, unnatural predators stalk the population. Man grew fat on the grace of the Sun. Cattle kept by sleek-coated wolves, to be grazed and slain as it suited their hungry Golden Lords. The story is not a complicated one: there once was a town more brilliant than Gem to the South, richer than Nexus to the East. A Princess bade it die for its design now displeased her and its population had perhaps grown errant and so, in the course of a single night, the town fathers killed their kin and snuffed out their own lives. Leaving none behind save one. This one was nothing of grandeur or legend: she was a porcelain faced maiden with limbs of living earth and a heart of liquid flame. A form shared by a thousand other maidens. Each made to serve,created to please paying masters. Amused at her arrogance the Princess dispatched a demon lord to break the little doll. To shatter her all to fragments and strew her self across the Direction. The Trinity of Tattered Banners was tasked to see this end.
He found her clutching a fruit knife in a trembling hand. Scarcely had he materialized than she was upon him, clumsily striking. Slashing with a knife barely as long as his finger. Fighting, struggling to the last for her meager, meaningless life. With one hand the Prince lifted her aloft. Curious he asked: why did something as simple and as sweet as she fight so desperately? Fiercely she responded: her life belonged to her, why must she give it away?
She wished to live, was that not enough?
Kiraaye loosed his grip and wove a cloak from his own steaming breath, his own searing blood. Upon her shoulders he placed the fitful, mewling thing and bade her run. Run to the wasteland. Run to the Demon City. Run as fast as she could for he would follow and if he caught her he would dash her to pieces.
This is the tale the Vansh tell of their creation. That it was they who bore her aloft on burning wings and lent speed to her steps. It was they who cared her beyond the reach of their father, to the chaos and clash of Malfeas. Is it true? Who can say. But the vansh that cling to Utprerak's hull in the unnumbered thousands preach it even so. In the secret places of the Unquestionable they build shrines of bone and clay and leave offerings of small, glittering things.
Summoning and Use (Obscurity 2/3): The Storm-Stripped Riders blend the features of birds and reptilian beasts, flayed down to the raw muscle and sinew. A thicket of tendrils coils loosely upon their narrow backs, hidden between their folding, fan-like wings, and hardened vents lace their hindquarters. They are symbiotic in makeup and long for hosts, crafting crude dolls out of clay and muck if they are unable to find a bearer. When worn their emaciated bodies shift. Slender claws clasping their bearer's bodies close as the tendrils burrow into their chest, secreting analgesics to numb any pain. Within the host's body they stimulate adrenaline and refine the reflexes, granting their companion an uncanny, unnatural speed. Their narrow jaws part, spreading a slick resin that hardens into an opaque face-shield. Framed on either side by the vansh's watchful eyes. Their manuevering tails anchored to the wearer's spine.
The Storm-Stripped Riders cannot fly when burdened by a bearer, but they can glide easily and bear their wearer aloft temporarily on their wings or slow their falls. By venting Essence through their calcified "ports" they may propel even an Erymanthoi to acrobatic leaps and bounds.
However sorcerers should be cautious, vansh are desperately needy, anxious, and not particularly bright. Long term use damages the body's ability to rest and recover and scars the organs. Yet a vansh will not willingly relinquish its hold, confident in its ability to sustain the bearer. The key is in soporifics and burning herbs, certain tinctures and narcotics native to Malfeas (most prominently Skysear Ivy) daze the creature and send it to a restful slumber. The Immaculate Order carefully tracks the cultivation of such flora to uncover Yozi cults affiliated with the Antarch Stampede.
Topen, the Scorch Kissed Shepherds
Progeny of Our Mistress of Sparks
Demon of the First Circle
From her fastness form Utprerak rains down a thousand forms of death. Primordial fire and shearing gravitational forces, meteor impacts and raw beams of essence. From beneath her span armies descend, caged in ablative chrysalis, on the backs of demon-beasts, or in the holds of strange, insectile craft. Some, such as the topen, flit to the battlefield on their own wings. Great, gauzy things that churn the air in a blur. Setting their ponderous, chitinous bulk down with deceptive grace. At a stark contrast to the brutality of their bodies.
They appear as monstrous beetle-things, as if a man of giant's size was bent and broken into the form of a verminous insect. Their carapace is segmented and glossy-black and their clustered eyes burn like broken, dying suns. Strips of softness in a chitin-helmed head. On six limbs they crawl, crushing stone underfoot with their strength and bulk. Communicating across the vast expanse of the battlefield with the humming, keening, of their gossamer wings. From hardened cysts on their back are born a multitude of lesser symbiote spawn. Gelatinous grub-things, soft-bellied and luminous orange, their heads crowned in gripping mandibles. With powerful flicks of muscle and sinew they are hurled hundreds of meters. With their viselike maws they clamp onto men, material, fortified walls and critical infrastructure. Holding tightly as arcane reactions in their bellies trigger and they detonate in orbs of infernal fire and greasy smoke.
At heart each topen is a, perhaps unappreciated, artist. In accordance with their mother's design they compete to spread beautiful char across Creation; each one husbanding sparks and scorch as a mortal might a flock of sheep. In the thick of battle they draft beautiful patterns with their bombardment. Etching aesthetic beauty out of the ruins of towns and cities. A fact often lost on those receiving the full brunt of their might.
Summoning and Use (Obscurity 3/4): In Creation they are utilized as living siege engines and artillery trains. Their popularity and spread hobbled by their upkeep (which is prodigious as befitting a beast the size of an adolescent yeddim), their oft indiscriminate fire, and the general blatancy of their being. More humanoid demons may be politely obscured beneath veils and dress, they may be befriended or thought "tamed". More inhuman beasts may be smaller or kept out of sight of the common man. But topen are colossal beasts who exist purely in the service of open conflict and largely lack any other reason to be called to Creation. Thus their use, once endemic in the brutal internecine wars of the Shogunate, has been heavily curtailed by the Immaculate Order and their summoning generally circumscribed. As knowledge of their use passed out of academic memory so too were they supplanted by more manageable strains of demon-kind.
However, recovered writings of Shogunate-era war-sorcerers may yet provide keen insight into the physiology of the Scorch Kissed Spherds. Each topen is hermaphroditic, able to produce offspring lacking any other partner. In the charred, glassy center of their great works they were known to nest. Burrowing beneath the ash and soot to lay a small clutch of young bound within luminous, translucent eggs. These fragile spawn would have many alchemical uses or, at the very least, provide more destroyer beetles.
Vikreta, the Menacing Mustelids
Progeny of the Vizier of Clotted Coin
Demon of the First Circle
The average demon is passionate, unstable, and myopically obsessed to the point of seeming insanity. The average drunken demon is passionate, unstable, myopically obsessed to the point of seeming insanity and foolish enough to
act on any, or all, of its undisciplined thoughts and secret yearnings. Much the same could be said of a demon rising from a narcotic haze or in deep at a gamblers table. Vice is endemic in the Demon City, the high walls and silver sands, the lack of hope, the empty future, ensure that serfs and citizens alike seek escape wherever it might be found. Yet the lowered inhibitions and fierce tempers of the inhabitants make for a volatile combination. To be sure beating and ejecting offenders is always an option -and certainly has its place- but such is ultimately a reactive measure and can incite a general melee all on its own. Better to prevent such things from ever happening. Better to ensure that the money flows in and the customers leave largely intact with interruptions between the two as rare as possible.
Such is the reason for the vikreta. Paanee Ka Saamp maintains many dens of iniquity and so, naturally, requires many loyal and trusted lieutenants to oversee such operations. Demons who will disperse product while maintaining order and keeping clean ledgers. Demons who may be relied upon to only be mildly, acceptably, corrupt instead of dangerously parasitic. Thus they were born and thus, over the centuries, they have spread until the Menacing Mustelids appear throughout the shells of Malfeas. Acting as bartenders and pitbosses. Brothel proprietors and narcotic vendors. Their more mundane lusts have been channeled by their creator, articulated into an enduring obsession for success and sale by any means or any measure. The flickering sparks of good fortune and abstract wealth flowing through their body. It is said that one may note the importance of any vikreta by noting their teeth. Lesser creatures who maintain a simple wagon of spices may have a few teeth of copper and flashy, worthless crystal, while those great movers and shakers of infernal sin have fanged maws full of every shade of tainted jade or fired Antarch clay etched with reliefs praising Utprerak herself.
In appearance and disposition they are enormous, serpentine weasels. The accoutrements of their profession clutched tight in several of their eight, pawed hands and their heads crowned in slicked back spikes of chitinous glass. They are vicious, cowardly fighters when pressed but that comes rarely. Most often disputes managed or reduced through a keen ear and a silver tongue, both married to a forceful, demanding personality. Vikreta live in vast clans, networks of dealers and distributors, buyers and clients, with some of the more prominent even staking claims to not-inconsiderable portions of Malfeas's shells. The Princes and Princesses of the Unquestionable view such developments with a wary eye. Better to barter than battle to be sure, yet such displays of force by mere First Circles is unsettling.
Summoning and Use (Obscurity 1/3): Vikreta are well known amongst the sorcerers of Creation and oft employed as accountants or tallymen. Middle managers to steward over a magician's large estate and ride herd upon the other demons in their train. Significantly more reliable than any mortal helper, so the thinking goes, and far more closely bound to their "employers" best interest. Bureaucrats might bristle at the comparison but the Immaculate Order has little interest in prosecuting such summoners. Their resources are finite and while such utilization may be theologically unsound and morally suspect it is far from the most grievous offense a magician may commit.
Those who carefully cultivate a relationship with their demonic servant may, in time, find their due diligence rewarded as the vikreta introduces the sorcerer to ever further contacts within their vast, sprawling family. Opening up heretofore unknown avenues of purchase and sale. Easing the exchange of goods, slaves, and services between Creation and Malfeas.
