Ladies and gentlemen; the history of Creation in a nutshell.
No, Aleph. This is the history of Creation in a nutshell.
Diotortenetiro, the Nutshell Author
Progeny of the Martial Archivist
Demon of the First Circle
Within the libraries of many a sorcerer can be found a peculiar tree, with leaves of parchment and a silver trunk. These are the diotortenetiro, a mindless sessile demon kept for its strange and useful fruit - as well as the fact that their parchment leaves, when plucked, smell strongly of lemon. Sunlight burns these trees, so they must be kept inside. These demons have no minds and cannot move, and so rely on their summoner to leave books by their roots for them to digest and water them with wine.
Should a diotortenetiro be well-cared for, on the night of the full moon - or any time in the Demon City - it will bud bright yellow flowers, from which grow little nut-fruits. When dried and broken open, the nuts contain delicate fragile parchments which contain rigorously annotated and cross-referenced texts containing knowledge from any book that a diotortenetiro has been fed before. The nutshell authors have a somewhat prosaic and dull style and provide no insight of their own, but their breed has dwelt in the Demon City and in Creation for thousands of years, and thus many obscure texts now only exist within this demon species. Mnemon herself is said to have an entire orchard of them kept within a hidden vault guarded and maintained by a hereditary line of slave-gardeners, that she maintains in the hope that certain obscure texts referenced by a Shogunate sorcerer who had a diotortenetiro will some day be produced by the nut.
As a sessile demon, the nutshell authors cannot answer summonings in their own right. The surrender oaths are inexorable, though, and hence when one is called it is torn up from its ground, roots and all, and born across Cecelyne in a storm of the sorcerer's anima. The sorcerer must plant the nutshell author again before the sun rises, or it will surely die. Likewise, when one's term of summoning ends, it will be cast back to Malfeas and usually perishes quickly. However, as a sessile and non-sapient demon, most sorcerers do not bother to bind these demons because - bluntly - they have no volition and do nothing but sit there and vegetate.
Perhaps this is a mistake. All the diotortenetiro are cuttings of the original tree which dwells in the gardens of the Martial Archivist, and though they have no minds, they have ears and they have tiny eyes drawn on their parchment-leaves. The fruits of the diotortenetiro produce observations that any of them have seen, which is how they build up their catalogues. How many sorcerers have planted a diotortenetiro in their libraries to refer to, and have spoken unwise words in front of them? Too many.
Summoning (Obscurity 1/5): As demons, the nutshell authors are one of the few breeds rarely bound because there is very little point in doing so. Binding cannot increase the rate that they produce their nuts. Sorcerers summon them for the random texts they produce, and incidentally harvest their leaves for the delicious lemon scent. Their yellow flowers also make a fine dye if mixed with vitriol, which can be painted on brass to give it the semblance of gold. Very few have realised that the nutshell authors watch and listen to everything around them, because they mis-attribute things they hear to fictional books which have never existed. A diotortenetiro cannot escape Malfeas on its own, but sometimes when a seed sprouts from a rotting book in a decaying library, it will turn out to be a new nutshell author.
