Tears of Taija: Short List of Important Demons

[Jalinth]

A brief history of Darkon and the surrounding areas. Volume CXLVI, examining the great escape from Ghenna and the subsequent events and their impact on the... (A list continues that in increasingly small print.

By Lady Helene Disato
High Sage of the Obsidian Citadel, Sorceress Supreme (A list of titles continue but in increasingly small print)

[MDSnowman]

lol as fun as it would be to write the campaigns events in character I think I'd eventually run out of insults.

[Unknown Soldier]

lol as fun as it would be to write the campaigns events in character I think I'd eventually run out of insults.

You're a damn liar.

[MDSnowman]

Organizations: Part 6

Name: The Marshals

Nicknames: Lawmen, Bird Riders

Symbol: A Sword and Black Sand Pistol Crossed inside a star

Structure: Loose Confederation of individuals

Description: In the Eastern reaches law ends at the gates of the nearest city state. Few cities have the manpower to defend more than a day’s travel away from the city center. Seventy years ago a number of city states pooled their resources and formed the Marshals to combat this problem. The Marshals are contracted to act as law enforcement for the numerous towns and small cities that dot the Eastern Reaches but do not fall under the control of a city state. Each such settlement is assigned a Marshal to help enforce the local laws. Since there is very little in the way of a central structure no two Lawmen go about the job the same way, some are just as bad as the criminals they are supposed to protect their people from. Given the long distances between such settlements The Marshals quickly adopted the use of speedy riding birds to cover distances. With the recent advent of Black Sand weapons the Marshals have adopted their use as well. As a result, a small trading village called Plainsport on the border of Dennigrad has become the closest the group has to a central headquarters as it’s the easiest way for Marshals to obtain Black Sand equipment.

Name: The Order of Unbreakable Iron

Nicknames: The 12 Iron Knights, The Golem Troops

Symbol: A tall black Golem standing over a city on a dark gray field.

Structure: Military Hierarchy

Description: The City State of Sleeping Giant was built around the discovery of a humongous golem, standing nearly two hundred feet tall, was found sitting on a mountain slope in the North of the Eastern Reaches by a group of refugees. The refugees, seeing the golem as a sign of strength, and expecting it to scare the pants off of invaders the settlers built their city around it, and took it as their standard. The city met its first major challenge soon after when the Orcs who lived in the nearby mountains attacked. Many of the settlers hoped the Golem would come alive and attack, but it didn’t. What it did do was drop one of its neigh unbreakable armor plates. The city founders, taking it as a sign, forged twelve swords out of the armor plate and gave them to the city’s greatest warriors. They drove the Orcs back into the mountains and became heroes. Since that day those twelve swords have been passed down to the city’s greatest warriors and those warriors formed the core of The Order of Unbreakable Iron. An elite military unit charged with protecting the city state by any means. The current crop of The Golem Troops are young, and untested, but they are led by Edward the Undefeated, reputedly the single greatest swordsman on the whole of Darkon.

Name: Hero Killers

Nicknames: Mortal Hunters, Worm Snatchers

Symbol: A Human wizard impaled by three wicked spears

Structure: A collection of individual demons in competition.

Description: Mortal souls are used in lieu of currency all over the dimension the mortals call hell. These souls can be used by demons to increase their power, and fuel unimaginable magic spells. The more powerful the soul, the greater the value it possesses. To that end there’s a fat market for the souls of powerful mortal champions. The Hero Killers specialize in separating these talented mortals from their souls. Their methods vary wildly, as do the powers of their members but they have a few things in common. First every Mortal Hunter has a way from Darkon to Hell and back again. Second every Mortal Hunter is smart. They realize, better than most demons, how clever a mortal can be when backed into a corner. This, more than anything, separates them from other demons. No Hero Killer will beat his chest and dare a mortal to attack him head on. Instead they will take their time observing a target, discern their weaknesses, and attack that weakness in a way that makes the best use of the demon’s strengths. In a way Hero Killers also act as bounty hunters for powerful demon lords. When a mortal has meddled too much in a demon lord’s affairs, and survived, it immediately makes them a prime target for the Hero Killers. The demon lord wronged by the mortal is even likely to award the Hero Killer who takes the mortal’s soul above and beyond what the soul itself is worth.

Sample Member: The Huntsman

[MDSnowman]

Creating Life: It’s not as fun as it sounds

By Lady Helene Disato
High Sage of the Obsidian Citadel, Sorceress Supreme (A list of titles continue but in increasingly small print)

Once again my research is interrupted by the bumbling of my novices. Steward informs me that one such idiot recently discovered an essay written by one of the Ancients on the subject of creating golems and a week later a large portion of the East wing was demolished. So once again I am compelled to take quill to parchment to enlighten supposedly educated people. I swear, if I didn’t need people to keep this citadel clean I don’t think I’d even bother.

The created is a blanket term for all manner of life created by mages. I say mages because in the twenty four hundred years I’ve been alive there have been only a handful of adepts whose natural skills lent themselves to research with the created.

Let’s get one thing straight. Whatever you hope to create, and for whatever reason there is one thing that you can be sure of, the Ancients already thought of it and made it better than you did. The entire Ancient society was built on the mass production and specialization of the created. If you want an example of what they were capable of I suggest you visit the City State of the Sleeping Giant in the Eastern Reaches. The battered golem that the city was built around was just one of dozens of that particular make and design that the ancients had at their disposal. They had so many in fact when they couldn’t transport one of them they just left it there to be discovered by settlers a millennium later. As such anyone hoping to build any manner of created had best start their research with the ancients, as my soon to be ex-novice proved even a little bit of their theory on the creation of the created can go a long ways.

Now we’re going to move on to the types created that exist in the world today. In general there are only three types of created with a fourth being an off shoot of the research into two particular fields of the creation of life.

The first type of created are the golems. Golems are best known for being made of hardy materials and possessing little intellect and even less free will. Their size and actual building material varies widely but they are generally accepted to be the safest form of Created to design and spend time with. I say “generally accepted” because the process of animating one is very similar to creating a magical item only there is a much greater chance that an echo of the creator’s personality takes hold. Over time this echo can become a full fledged personality and the golem could become impossible to control. The longer a golem as left without orders the more likely this is to happen. Once a golem wakes up with a full blown personality there’s no closing that door. Either you learn to be nice to your golem or you destroy it. I’m told I have certain personality problems that keep me from being nice to golems which is why we don’t do much research into the topic here at the Citadel.

The next type of created are referred to as the Awakened. The awakened have an artificial body, much as a golem does, but instead of being created specifically to avoid free will a spirit is infused into the Awakened as part of its creation. As a result the Awakened are much more intelligent that even the most sophisticated golem, so much so they are capable of learning (which is more than I can say for most mortal races). However, with that heightened intellect comes a price. The Awakened are almost impossible to control in the long term. Sure, when things start The Awakened will behave like a child adoring a parent, but eventually it’ll reach that awkward teenage rebellious phase. When that happens, watch out, because few teenagers are made of metal, clockwork, or stone.

The first two categories of the created are usually made of inorganic materials; the third is invariably made of living material. Chimeras are the crossing of multiple types of living breathing creatures together to create a new life with traits from all the composite creatures. By and large Chimeras are all made of up of different animals making them akin to dangerous wild beasts with unpredictable abilities. Only rarely do mages make chimeras with one of the creatures being intelligent. The process is largely lost in this day and age and doing it incorrectly tends to lead to severe mental and physical distress in the creature so created. With that being said Chimeras are among the most stable of the created provided you don’t screw up their creation too badly.

An off-shoot of Chimera, and in some ways Awakened research is the creation of full fledged humanoid races. What sets it apart from even intelligent Chimera creation is that the beings made this way are actually able to reproduce amongst themselves. This requires a spiritual spark that is most often seen in Awakened research. Trying to describe what is required would take far too much time and I consider it moronic to impart the secret of creating a whole new species to a group of idiots that have already proven capable of destroying my home with a few pages scrawled in ancient. The last time this kind of research was done on any large scale was in the imperial era when their magisters created the Kryn race. I’m not privy to the exact method, but it goes to show how the creation of an entirely new race can have far reaching implications beyond anything the creators can imagine.

I also think the existence, and story, of the Kryn should underscore just how serious this field of research is. Creating life is not like casting a spell or a magical item, it’s a commitment. One should not do it lightly. I’d enclose a picture of what’s left of my East wing, but after I’m done punishing the would-be creator he’ll be able to tell everyone just how serious a matter The Created are.

[Psistrike]

Hope that we don't meet up with Lady Helene Disato anytime soon. She seems like she considers anyone with less than a 20+ Intelligence is an idiot.

Going to stat her up anytime soon, I would love to see the stats for some of the major NPCs of the setting.

[MDSnowman]

Hope that we don't meet up with Lady Helene Disato anytime soon. She seems like she considers anyone with less than a 20+ Intelligence is an idiot.

Going to stat her up anytime soon, I would love to see the stats for some of the major NPCs of the setting.

Yeah with Helene either you have a 20+ Intelligence or you're a mouth breathing meat head. Though in everyone's defense she's less likely to call you that to your face if you don't do or say anything that makes her angry (which is an interesting task in and of itself).

I've toyed with stating up some major personages, like the Elder Priest in charge of the Limberry Holy Knights, but haven't settled on anything I like.

[Unknown Soldier]

Puppet dimension, here I come!

[MDSnowman]

So Psistrike's prodding gets me working once again...

Braddock Lightmane

[Unknown Soldier]

She's good for the prodding.

[Beleriphon]

Name of the setting?

Darkon: The Mists of Time
Empires of Fallen Time
Darkon: Empires of the Fallen

Do you have a general theme MDS, because if you have some kind of thematic links for the setting then it makes it easier to give the whole shabang a name.

[MDSnowman]

A Brief History of the Trolls

By Lady Helene Disato
High Sage of the Obsidian Citadel, Sorceress Supreme (A list of titles continue but in increasingly small print)

So as I mentioned earlier I knew what bug crawled up the collective backsides of the Trolls to make them such vicious buggers. This off-handed comment apparently sparked a lot of debate amongst the novices. What I had not realized was that in this day and age the origins of the trolls aren’t widely known, and in some circles they’re believed extinct. Steward tells me that I’m supposed to be educating you lot while you stay here and keep my home clean, so I’m going to once again take time out of my schedule to share information with you. Just don’t blame me if your unborn grand children are eaten by some extra dimensional super being.

The big secret of the Troll race is that they’re a magically created race, like the Kryn. Of course since the Ancients were the ones doing the creating their creation wasn’t as crude as crossing a person with a cat. Sorry Kryn, as far as magically creating races goes you’re the equivalent of finger painting compared to the trolls. The ancients took an indigenous race with a great deal magical aptitude, and an innate connection to nature. The ancients severed that connection in their creations and replaced it with a greatly increased intellect.

Now I bet a bunch of you are wondering why the ancients would go to the effort of creating a whole new race. The scientifically minded of you are likely saying “Because they could”, while forgetting the amount of time, effort, and resources put into creating enough trolls to sustain a population. If you’re doing something for scientific curiosity you only make one new Troll and pat yourself on the back afterwards. The practical readers are likely thinking “Free labor”. These people forget that golems could do any kind of manual labor much more cheaply. At best the Trolls, as designed, were only good for lab assistants, most of which would need to learn magic from scratch.

I like to think that the ancients created the Trolls in order to fill a deep personal need. Ancients, by the time they created the Trolls, had birth rates that couldn’t really sustain their society. I think the Trolls were created because ancients wanted the feeling of having and raising children of their own. All of this parental ambition didn’t make the ancients good parents though.

I think the ancients couldn’t really be happy with any race they created just by virtue of the fact that they couldn’t be ancients. Another potential problem would be the severed connection to nature. You don’t replace a deep spiritual connection to a force like that with intelligence. Doing that would leave an emptiness in a creature’s spirit one that they could never fill. Combine aloof, disappointed creators and a gnawing emptiness of the spirit and you have a recipe for drama. Add a pinch of ancient magical training and you have a recipe for genocide.

Now I won’t lie, the Trolls weren’t as good with magic as the ancients were, but they had two important assets. The first were numbers, like I mentioned there weren’t a lot of ancients. I’d hazard a guess that there were fifty to seventy five trolls for every ancient. The trolls’ other big asset was the fact that they gravitated to fields of magic that the ancients usually never pursued, namely high evocation and necromancy. The ancients were great at creating things, but less skilled at blowing them up, the trolls lived to unmake things. The trolls also liked to augment their numbers by summoning huge armies of skeletons to act as canon fodder. Sure the ancients had lots of golems at their disposal, and it made it a fight for a while, but not long enough to keep the trolls from overrunning the ancients and killing every last one of them. What can I say, trolls take genocide very seriously.

After the war the trolls picked up the pieces and lived in the remains of the ancients’ empire like they built it themselves. We all know the rest of the story, they started oppressing other races, because patricide doesn’t fill the kind of hole they have. Finally they pushed too hard and everyone fought back. By that time the trolls had lost their edge, and they nearly suffered the same fate as their creators. The trolls were wily though, some of them got away and hid in the most god forsaken places they could find confident that no one would think to look for them there.

In those forsaken places the trolls started to do something that no other race had ever done before. They began experimenting on themselves. Given there couldn’t have been many of them left that took a lot of stones. The trolls pretty much created an entire school of magic all by themselves, the word their language has for it translates into Fleshcrafting in common.

Through centuries of trial and error the trolls remade their entire race. They became caste based, each caste having a different specialty for which they had been ritually altered to excel in. Each troll is tattooed on the forehead with the symbol of their caste at birth. Regardless of the caste the trolls usually possess blue-black skin, and large pointed ears.

The bottom caste can charitably be described as drones. They are created for brute force to perform manual labor and act as foot soldiers in conflict. To that end their intellect has been severely blunted and replaced with physical prowess, bone-like exoskeleton over vital organs, and large claws and fangs. Some drones are chosen to undergo further enhancement and are turned into eight foot tall monstrous berserkers, shock troops for conflicts.

The next caste is the warriors. They are descended from the ancient trolls, but have had many of their magical talents removed and their flesh made more receptive to fleshcrafting. These trolls undergo fleshcrafting that make them better at whatever military specialty they choose, whether it’s aerial scouting, infiltration, aquatic warfare or night fighting. Since the drone class is essentially a whole other race the warrior caste makes up the majority of the troll race with the occasional warrior being turned into a drone as punishment.

The next step up the ladder is the magus caste. These are essentially trolls that have been mostly unaltered over the centuries. They have undergone some changes, but they are virtually identical to the trolls that the ancients first created. All fleshcrafting is done by members of this caste as they are the most powerful magic users in the entire troll society. They act as the commanders of troll military forces as well. The magus caste are the nobles of troll society, they dictate the tempo for the entire race.

The pinnacle of troll society is the royal caste. Each troll settlement has one family of magus that are on top of the heap. Their position affords them the best fleshcrafters, magical knowledge, and the greatest ambitions. They often represent the height of troll magic and fleshcrafting having alterations that defy the imagination.

Now most people are reading this taking in information, but the smart ones are wondering what the trolls hope to achieve with this particular social structure. It’s very simple, they want revenge. For the past twelve hundred years the trolls have been trying to fill that hole inside of themselves with hatred for the world that shattered their empire. I can’t tell you what they’re waiting for, but like I said earlier… trolls take genocide very seriously.

And with that pleasant thought, sleep tight kids.

[Psistrike]

A major force for death and destruction with that kind of attitude and part of their soul ripped out by arrogant beings. I hope we won't have to face any of them anytime soon.

[Pandaman]

Trolls... you need to stat out a couple of trolls now.

[MDSnowman]

The Squire's Revenge

As told by Esteban the Tale Weaver

Years ago Bishop DeNuiture stepped foot in the black tower and converted an army of foreign heretics to the will of Taija, they demonstrated their loyalty by binding and burying their queen. Those dark legions stood silently as they did it, except for one squire. He openly wept and his fellows knew that his conversion was not true.

The Riders acted quickly and took the boy from public eyes, they dragged him deep into the swamp and beat him, viciously, when they were done they nailed his unconscious form to an old twisted tree. The Riders rode back to the tower content that the squire would die there, his wounds killing him, or the swamp’s scavengers doing it. When they returned in a week the squire was gone, and only a bloody mess around the tree.

The Riders assumed he was dead, couldn’t imagine that he had survived. He did survive though… the squire languished on the tree for one day and night before he tore himself off of the tree. With giant gapping wounds, he dragged himself through the swamp where he was discovered by a hedge wizard. The aged woman cared for his wounds, and the entire time he said nothing.

The squire had thought about Bishop DeNuiture, and the conversion of the Black Riders. He realized that it was all a perversion of the Riders’ beliefs, and that he was the only true Black Rider left. As soon as he could walk again the Squire limped back into the swamp. He knew what he needed to do; he needed to kill the Bishop as well as the War Marshal of the Black Riders.

Over the next several years the squire trained, forging himself into the fiercest warrior that he could. He poured all his hate, all of his feelings of betrayal into his heart until he was as hard as any mortal could be. When he finally believed he was ready he stole into Rooksgate in the middle of the night and stalked the halls of the great chapel and slaughtered any priests he came across until he found the bishop. The Bishop tried to defend himself but the squire’s massive sword cleaved his arm from the rest of his body. The Squire raised his sword for the killing blow when suddenly the War Marshal appeared. He deflected the squire’s attack and squared off against him. The Bishop dragged himself away as the two men faced one another.

The battle was without equal, the War Marshal was a veteran of a dozen wars, and it showed with every swing of his blade, the squire made up for it with the energy of youth and the single minded determination his thirst for bloody vengeance gave him. But in the end experience and the blessing of Taija proved too much for the Squire to defeat. He was struck with a deadly blow and could only drag himself to the sewers to die while the War Marshal tended to the Bishop’s wounds.

And let that be a lesson to all of you children. Regardless of what you do you’re doomed to failure without Taija in your heart.