Zsályiasztók, the Mind's-Garden Attendants
Demon of the First Circle
Orphaned Progeny of the deceased Curator of Ten Thousand Horrors
Few in Hell spoke of fallen Demesprudensi while it yet lived.
The Curator of Ten Thousand Horrors was a scrabbling, twisted creature, the shameful successor to a far grander Second Circle Demon struck down during the Balorian Crusade. A profoundly inept schemer, a teeth-grindingly indecisive ruler of lesser spirits, a painfully haphazard scholar; in all ways, it was a loathsome wretch better suited to the role one of Hell's countless, nameless scavengers than that of an Unquestionable's envoy – a role it never once carried out for its greater self, rather appropriately, even unto its own destruction. Instead, the Curator of Ten Thousand Horrors wandered the blighted heaths of Oramus' domain, sculpting vagabond droves of lesser demons from its own Essence and sending them forth on haphazard "missions" to steal (or bestow) certain objects, destroy (or raise) certain monuments, and purge (or inflict) specific forms of mental derangement from specific gatherings of demons. These excursions seldom ended to its satisfaction, nor that of the various other Citizens whose territory its servants intruded upon.
Without the wisdom to manipulate its peers, the caution to avoid provoking them, the social acumen to take part in the games of information and favor played among Hell's denizens, the intelligence to effectively manage its subordinates, or the strength to stand alone, Demesprudensi's downfall was certain. In the span of a century, it managed to unite a full dozen fiefs in mutual loathing of it through sheer tactless gall, and was struck down a full dozen times before its greater self, aggrieved at Demesprudensi's incompetence, intervened to re-educate its wayward Expressive Soul. In a final act of insanity, the Curator of Ten Thousand Horrors condescended to its own Unquestionable progenitor, and met an appropriately ignominious end: being sold to (and then rendered by) Khereon Ul as material for their workings.
Its manifold spawn swiftly scattered in the wake of their maker's destruction, and most of the demonic breeds Demesprudensi crafted have long since died to the last. A few individual specimens of these lost genii survive as servants, trophies, pets, or beasts of burden to various Citizens, but the zsályiasztók alone have become fully established in the more inhospitable regions of the Demon City. Where Metagoyan bayous flood the air with vicious linguistic parasites; where the echoes of the Entelechial Chorister breed madness in demons' dreams, where bitter streams of narrative poison entire Ellogean ecosystems with psychotic delusion or nihilistic despair – such noxious wastelands attract the Mind's-Garden Attendants like flies to honey, rich as they are in opportunities to utilize their unique talents.
For the zsályiasztók are chirurgeons of the spirit, natural savants in the art of correcting disorder in the mind and soul. Their countless white-bone instruments peel back each patient's flesh painlessly, delicately, to untwist coils of synesthesia from the nerves, or extract teratomic deposits of imbalanced Essence from their entrails. Similarly, they pick through their patients' minds as a mortal chirurgeon might pick through the organs of hers, tracing the source of mental contagion through their memories – and, if offered sufficient compensation, providing bolstering injections of their own Essence to strengthen weak wills, ferreting out a past life's recollections from mortals, or discerning esoteric knowledge hidden between the turnings of a demon's chakras.
Their own forms are workings of spartan efficiency; a zsályiasztás' flesh consists of countless grey-blue tendons networked around their many, many bones, which naturally grow to form the various implements of their chosen profession. Most hold themselves in a roughly humanoid form, shifting what tools are needed at the moment to the ends of their "arms" through intricate tensing and twisting of their tendons, hiding any excess behind the clothlike sheets of skin which sprout from the junctures of their nerves; the resultant image of a man-shaped menagerie of pristine white surgical tools held together by thin cords, emerging from within voluminous cream-colored garments that conceal everything from "neck" to "wrists" to "ankles", is reminiscent of a Shogunate madman's depiction of his own caretakers. Of course, their abundance of skin serves a purpose as well; Mind's-Garden Attendants expertly shear excess lengths of it at the conclusion of each operation, using their own skin to bundle and contain extracted neuroses for sale.
Such commerce is one of the cornerstones of the zsályiasztók's success in Hell – few other breeds of demon can materialize insanities and mental distortions and preserve them with such a sublime ease (and profit margin), and there are many demonic thaumaturges who can find use for a vial of powdered megalomania, a crystallized sphere of Sanceline's transcendental whispers, or lengths of delusional parasitosis pickled in the thin, watery byproduct of Metagoyan spores' sprouting in the brain of a neomah. So do the Mind's-Garden Attendants earn their sobriquet: by using their client base as a crop from which riches may be reaped.
This is not to say the zsályiasztók are heartless – they merely consider the sale of a patient's maladies a necessary means for the latter to compensate them. How else could they provide their services to even the lowliest paupers of Hell without beggaring themselves? And furthermore, monetization of the disease in no ways diminishes the cure. They provide full services for full payment, and for their graciousness in procuring the latter they consider themselves paragons of ethics.
That sense of moral self-assuredness allows many a zsályiasztás to rest easy as he treats dissidents to a Citizen's rule sent into exile at gulags on the edge of the Trackless Quag, where they are made to harvest vile-but-valuable herbs and medicinal fungi, or tacitly encourages his patients to remain in close proximity to a twisted Malfean sepulchre stained with the Ebon Dragon's tears, keeping their minds and souls clean of the contrarian sicknesses the unnaturally umbral liquid inflicts, even if their patients must then beggar themselves to pay the price of conventional treatment for its purely physical side-effects.
Summoning: (Obscurity 1/2) Mortal thaumaturges frequently call upon the Mind's-Garden Attendants for their peculiar form of surgery; while not as versatile as a sesselja, few Demons of the First Circle outmatch them in the treatment of mental or spiritual contagion. More learned diabolists seek the reagents they procure in the process of treatment, which the zsályiasztók eagerly supply if provided access to suitable patients and appropriate recompense.
