Reworked Khvarenah himself a bit.
If, like, literally anyone cares.
It wasn't really as evocative as I wanted it to be and lacked a sorta clear...artistic design? Vision? Dunno that sounds pretty pretentious so it might be right.
The joke is that he's basically nuclear fallout/nuclear winter. Except instead of iodine isotopes collecting in your thyroid and giving you cancer the DARK RAIN OF THE EBON DRAGON collects in your THROAT CHAKRA and TURNS YOU INTO A FROGMONSTER!? And beyond that he has a whole Thing about poisoned roots bearing poisoned fruit which is how he approaches destroying systems (from the ground up), enemies (from the ground up), and rewarding or building up his followers (HERE HAVE A WEIRD SYMBIOTE AKUMA I GREW IN THE GROUND).
Seta, Magister of the Muthradic Expanse
Reflective Soul of Winter's Rain
Demon of the Second Circle
In Hell there is a place where the metropolis-mountains of the Demon City lay buried beneath mud and muck. The Tyrant's black basalt bones half-drowned beneath the mire. Frozen waves of cold clay rise, as huge as houses, and ring impact craters larger than any Yeddim. The shell itself is dented here and this vast expanse is in truth a pit. An endless slope canted towards an unseen core from which sprouts a monstrous, mutant tree. An abomination of flora, the boles and boughs of a vast forest twisted into a corrupt colossus. Once this was the site of a battle between Unquestionable, between Khvarenah and a conquering other. Such was the devastation rained upon the land, such was the infestation by Khvarenah's akuma, that the entire region was deserted in the aftermath. Claimed shortly thereafter by its current mistress.
That Seta is hideous there is no doubt. Even by the standards of an alien realm she is quite ugly. Her legs the crooked, muscular, pistons of an enormous frog. Her belly swollen by fine food and fine drink, shoulders mantled in mychordia life. The fungal blooms rooted in her slippery flesh, thick skin the color of loamy earth and fresh-churned mud. She has no eyes. Only an enormous mouth that yawns so very, very wide on slender, sinew hinges. The inside lined with row after row of jagged, very human, teeth. Her "lips" crooked like the edges of a steel-sprung trap. In her right hand she carries a long stave, its length etched with loving reliefs to the deeds of her greater self and adorned in bangles of obsidian and tumbaga. In her left she wields a small, filth-flecked, scythe. The edge glittering the keen black of an empty sky beneath the caul of muck.
Yet, for her fearsome mien, she is possessed of a kindness not commonly found in the Demon City. She has the patience of a gardener and the general demeanor of a veteran wet nurse, well used to the squalling and tantrums of children. She seeks not to dominate nor to enslave, but only to cultivate strong, disciplined minds.
Notes and Abilities: The Magister of the Muthradic Expanse oversees one of the largest schools of sorcery and thaumaturgy in the Demon City. Within her arboreal citadel of Salamandra are many winding halls and twisted passageways, opening up into great branch-framed auditoriums where classes on demonic physiology, geomancy, and relic-creation are held as well as courses on dance, song, and artistic endeavor. The curriculum here is robust and demanding, designed to produce useful, willful, graduates. Beneath the heaving mud-slopes outside lays a hidden forest, concentric rings of root-bound arcades sheltering the Blackroot Bazaar, a thriving marketplace for exotic materials and sorcerers product. All warded by the remnants of the hell-nation's former inhabitants and Seta's own, prodigious, occult might.
She is best understood as a careful cultivator of worth. Rarely does she utterly disperse with a student, even First Circles who make a sincere effort often leave bearing vellum scrolls of accreditation and hard-earned knowledge. In service of this she makes common use of the stave of her right hand: poking holes in the base of student's skulls as easily as one might bore into fertile earth. Packing the wound with treated clay and squirming shadows so that she might foster their grand, daring dreams. The graft fades swiftly and soon becomes indistinguishable from a mundane scar. At times, of course, it becomes necessary to trim errant thoughts and self-destructive behaviors; habits and atavisms that would serve a demon well on the streets but less so in the halls of academia. For this she uses her scythe, clearing away vestigial tendencies that would choke her precious, tenebrous, spores.
Sorcerers may summon her to make use of either or simply to learn at her feet. She is a patient tutor able to coax even a modest gain out of all but the most utterly unpromising student, a fact seized upon by no few desperate Dragonblooded. She may escape into Creation when a plague of frogs ceases, the bodies rotting in the fallow fields of desolate villages. From the lovely cool and dark she rises, tearing free of the muddy womb before starting the search for a proper student.
Mazatl, Eighteen Inflected Suns
Indulgent Soul of Winter's Rain
Demon of the Second Circle
The light hurts him. This is not entirely uncommon: many creatures of the Ebon Dragon cannot abide the solar radiance, many others are pained or otherwise disturbed by lesser illuminations. It is something of a truism, what flourishes in the night dies by daylight, but they have long since learned how to make do. Even those highest in the infernal hierarchy and closest to the essential nature of the Drinker at Night's Spring have found ways to manage. This affliction in and of itself indicative of little but a shared heritage and a common ailment. Yet it is passing strange for Mazatl is also the lightning that flashes and dances within the tempest-body of Khvarenah. The violent gleam and the uncanny glow that at times emanates from within the Unquestionable. Less informed scholars of hell use this as evidence of the Dragon's consistently contrary nature. How even his lesser parts twist and seek to defeat themselves. Those more acquainted with Mazatl's reputation have a simple and somewhat more lascivious answer.
Eighteen Inflected Suns is a tremendous masochist.
From pain he draws pleasure. In submission he finds strength. All the agonies his prison can inflict, all the humiliations that have been heaped upon him, they all mean nothing -less than nothing- if he can turn them to his own satisfaction. Each jagged scar that laces his back is a fond memory. Each slow-fading bruise a fleeting indulgence. Indeed in this regard he thinks himself exceptional. The torment of his greater self is so exquisite, so wondrously keen, that it deserves unabashed appreciation. And he is exactly the right sort of demon able to offer such insight in this regard.
Even slouching Mazatl towers over many demons. He is tall but lean, his body narrow and lithe. His scaled flesh black and green, teeth and talons whitened by an imported jade paste. His jagged, nearly serrated, features reminiscent of Creation's crocodiles. Three arms fork from each shoulder and four legs hold his body upright, the higher pair resting on the lower when he stands bipedal; scuted tail curved behind. He wears little save a relic-harness of the First Age, the fabric armored yet supple and glossy. Sleeves and stockings chiming with rings and buckles of tainted black and green jade.
Notes and Abilities: Eighteen Inflected Suns is an archer and antiquarian. His lightning bolts fly far and true and through exertion he may cast a lethal strike shells distant or scourge a nearer target with a radiant storm. He is additionally well versed in the lore of many historical eras (having been personally present for no few) and possesses a wealth of anthropological knowledge. When not summoned he leads his own expeditions into the older districts of Malfeas, probing these most ancient ruins for curios and cultural plunder; Salamandra underwrites a number of these and his sister's library is stocked with the fruits of his findings. His curiosity is a fearsome thing, driving him to unearth and record all manner of sordid and scandalous histories. For this reason he is not much beloved by hell's more genteel class of demon yet also never has issue raising funds for his ventures.
Within the maelstrom of Khvarenah's body there exist eight and ten eldritch spheres. A constellation of dim, every-dying things; some as small as a Yeddim calf, some as large as the great jadesteel dreadnoughts of the Realm. Their cores black as the Dusk of Scales himself. Their faint, flickering coronas are sickly and bruised and seep tainted light into the storm clouds. These are the fabled arsenal-vaults of Mazatl, containing within their corpus trash and treasure alike. Abandoned test subjects now kept as pets, the bones of fallen behemoths, glittering First Age refuse, and arcane weaponry may all be found within. Their owner commonly found without, lazing on the burning rim's as if they are solid ledges.
Sorcerers summon Mazatl to barter goods or (somewhat dubious) services for access to his vaults, for his exploratory skill, or simply for his aptitude in the arts of archery and stormcraft. When Eighteen Inflected Suns walks in Creation sweet becomes sour and the sour sweet, dockside prostitutes speak with the eloquence of fine ladies and regal women swear like veteran sailors. Storm gods take affront to his presence and lash him with bitter rain and biting hail, little aware that he appreciates their coarse attention. He may escape into Creation when the blood of a secret murder wets the first flowers of spring. When the rains come to wash away the stains he will as well, descending from the heavens on one of his false suns.
