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Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy, Deathlord

The mountains of the South-Southeast are desolate places, and even in the First Age, they were considered beyond the pale of much exploration and settlement. This desolation has not always been a detriment, though -- these deep mountains have always served as refuge to those who would hide from the world, or be hidden from it. Such is the fate of the Deathlord Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy, whose rage against Creation and Heaven both is boundless but who has been chained in the heart of an ageless mountain since the ending of the First Age. His name is nearly vanished from history, but those who know it hope he stays chained for ages more.

History

Before there was Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy, there was Khavos Silver-Shadow, a mighty Eclipse who strode with merry footsteps across Creation in the First Age. Khavos had been born in the South, but while his brothers in arms took to rulership over their beautiful gold-and-adamant cities, he chose instead to wander, living the happy life of a nomadic entertainer and dilettante prince. He spent perhaps two centuries on his leisure until he finally settled down to practice as a savant and a performer in Sperimin. There he met and wooed Juthware the White-Gold, a Waxing Moon famed for her beauty throughout the South, and soon he received a great honor -- to be one of Sperimin's ambassadors to Yu-Shan itself, and there to make treaties with the gods.

Yet for all of his beauty, power, and high station, Khavos was tainted as all of the God-Kings were. His taint was a deep and abiding arrogance about his own talent and beauty; he believed wholeheartedly that he was the incarnation of grace in Creation, that his charm outshone all but the Unconquered Sun himself, and that no woman should be able to resist his charms. For a great while, his vanity was vindicated, time and again -- until he met the goddess Structure of Infinity.

Structure of Infinity was a goddess of the forge; she was a hard-faced woman, and even with the trappings of divinity could not be called attractive, but something in her attitude made Khavos lust after her desperately. He made overtures, and she rebuffed them all in turn, yet the more she made it clear that she had a consort and held no interest in Khavos, the more desperate his lust became. He examined himself thoroughly and concluded that the fault could not lie in him -- and not in Structure of Infinity herself, for that would imply that his choice was somehow lacking. No, after all his thought, he concluded that the fault must lie in Structure of Infinity's consort, another forge-god named Mover of the Eternal. And so it was that the great and terrible resolve of Khavos Silver-Shadow settled on a solution.

Khavos spent fifty years on a whispering campaign within Yu-Shan, planting untruths and constructing from the resulting fears and misgivings a case sufficient to frame even a Celestine -- and then he presented it to the censors and petitioned for Mover of the Eternal's destruction. Faced with the Eclipse's overwhelming eloquence, the god's fate was sealed almost immediately, and Structure of Infinity was helpless as Mover of the Eternal plummeted to Creation as a boulder of starmetal.

The only part of Khavos's plan that failed was his assumption, in his hubris, that now Structure of Infinity would be pliable to his charms with her consort transfigured. Instead, her dislike of Khavos hardened into steely hate. Although she gave no sign of it to him, she began her counter-plan immediately by recovering her consort's starmetal husk under the auspices of smithing it into new and better wonders. She did so, sending bits of Mover of the Eternal across Heaven as fine weapons and tools, but she saved an ingot of the starmetal for her own purposes. Finally, one day she sent a message to Khavos, asking that he meet her in an abandoned underground Demesne at the heart of one of the great mountains separating South from East, for he had great things to share with him.

When Khavos arrived at the Demesne, he was stunned at Structure of Infinity's renovations; she and her team of laborers had crafted the cavern into a truly glorious Manse, one of echoing chambers and shimmering rock crystal. Structure of Infinity merely smiled and led him through each cavern in turn, finally presenting to him the Manse's grand central receiving chamber, with its wide crystalline processional and crowning rock-crystal throne. Khavos strode up the processional, face wide with his glee at his new possession, and took his seat at his throne before Structure of Infinity could even ask him to. Structure of Infinity bowed and approached the resplendent Prince of the Earth with all proper humility... and then bade the mechanisms within the throne to lash out, catching Khavos at the wrists and ankles in delicate-looking chains and manacles of woven starmetal. Khavos snorted, but when he tried to pull his arms away, he was met with powerful resistance. Structure of Infinity looked into his eyes and laughed to see his joy so quickly transmuted into rage and then into terror. "And here you shall stay, oh great Khavos Silver-Shadow -- and here you shall rot, held together by my beloved, until such a day as he is reuninted and returned to me." With that, Structure of Infinity laughed again and departed.

Khavos Silver-Shadow's torment was long. He had the power to stave off his body's urges, so starvation did not claim him, yet he lingered long in a state of near-death and found yet no power to release him from his starmetal shackles. (That he might have used his power to destroy himself never occurred to him -- that he would escape, the better to return to fine Sperimin and beautiful Juthware, and plot his revenge more carefully, seemed to him never to be in doubt.) Yet he remained, incandescent in suffering but convinced of his eventual triumph, for decades, until finally his great Manse was raided by several agents of the Purge who struck him down where he sat. His torment was long, but in the end his death was quick.

Yet for all of its quickness, Khavos's death was tormented, and his spirit surged down to the Underworld with a rage that could have seared worlds. The Malfeans found all of their normal bargains superfluous; upon the merest suggestion that their power would return him to the world, there to take the revenge he craved, Khavos's shade assented rapidly. Even the name the Malfeans gave him -- "Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy," that he should never forget what led to his doom -- deterred him not, and the new-forged Deathlord raged back to the world, set upon his revenge...

... and found himself still fettered to his mockery of a throne, held tight somehow by the same starmetal shackles from which his corpse had blessedly been hacked and carted away. Rusted Shackles of Blasphemy raged, applying all the power of life and newfound puissance of death, and still he was not able to free himself. The curse of Structure of Infinity was a powerful one, he surmised, somehow woven into his soul even after his death and unholy resurrection.

It was not long -- well, not long by a ghost's standards -- after his stunted return to Creation that Rusted Shackles of Blasphemy's eternal silence was shattered by another arrival at his prison. Exiled from Sperimin in the Purge, Juthware the White-Gold had taken refuge in the Manse, stricken with terror from her husband's disappearance and the slow dissolution of her own power and stability. When Juthware came face-to-face with her husband's chained and tormented shade, she clung to his side, embracing her madness in some vain chance to return to the world she had lost -- and thus Rusted Shackles of Blasphemy acquired a lieutenant and a hand in Creation again.

Since then, all of Rusted Shackles of Blasphemy's efforts have been devoted to breaking the curse. His rage against Creation has only grown; he has long since lost any distinction of love and hate, and now he counts every creature who still dares to take breath and to love as his enemy. Slowly his powers and his plans have grown, and he now lies as close to his release and his horrible retribution as he ever has.

Holdings and Forces

Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy controls no Shadowlands, no ghostly armies, and scant few Abyssal Exalted. Trapped in his cavernous Manse, he has found few allies in his desperate rage for freedom. Nonetheless, those who would discount him entirely are badly mistaken.

Though it is not a Shadowland, the Manse to which Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy has become bound is an astounding work, a craft reflecting the divine pinnacle of First Age geomancy. It honeycombs through the structure of the great mountain that shelters it, making a system of warrens that could easily hide an army, and the Essence it concentrates could power world-shaking acts of sorcery or necromancy. Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy has named it the Prison of Heart's Vanity, and though he loathes the Prison with all his power, he knows that it may be the key to his plans.

Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy himself, of course, rules over the Prison from his throne and manacles. He appears much as he did in life: a fine-featured, beautiful young man of Near South extraction, slim yet clearly powerful, dressed in black robes that glitter with golden embroidery. The only things that sully his perfect form and features are his near-constant expression of agonized rage and the shadowy impression of his skeleton, all too firm-seeming underneath its ghostly flesh, woven through with fine wires and braids of the starmetal affixed to his soul. Despite his names, the starmetal shackles that hold him are still as glinting and perfect as the day they first clasped around his wrists.

The Prison also houses Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy's soldiers -- and, in some ways, his bastard stepchildren. Juthware the White-Gold succumbed quickly to her dissolving madness, and in her near-mindness, chimerical devotion she has ventured from the mountains and conceived a small but growing tribe of beastmem, a tribe that grows even now in the chambers of the Prison of Heart's Vanity. The beastmen are chimerae, much like their mother; all of them incorporate elements of the dove, Juthware's original totem, into their bodies, but otherwise they are a strange conglomoration of creatures of the East and South. While they are not yet an entirely formidable force, Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy continues to guide them into a powerful raiding army. Juthware herself hovers in a state of near-chimera, nearly entirely insane but still possessing all of the prowess of a First Age Lunar; were her power tamed, for good or for ill, she would be a true force to be reckoned with.

In addition to their function as Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy's hands and eyes, Juthware and her brood have also helped to hunt down renegade Abyssals and those close to death, the better to bring them to the Prison of Heart's Vanity and slay them so Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy can invest their Exalted Essences into other hosts. (These new hosts have thus far entirely been beastmen of Juthware's brood, as the Essences accept these hosts easily and their loyalty is far less questionable than that of captured mortals.) Thus far, the brood has managed to capture four Abyssals this way; three were slain and their Essences harvested, but one bargained for her life and traded her loyalty to Rusted Shackles of Blasphemy without being forced to undergo death and reincarnation. The four Abyssal Exalted currently under his control are:

Fallen Charcoal Feathers, Rusted Shackles of Blasphemy's senior Abyssal agent and one of the most self-consistent of Juthware's beastman horde. A chimera of dove and owl, Exaltation has shaped her into a poisonously enchanting figure and a powerful member of the Daybreak Caste, though her half-Lunar natures makes the growth of her Abyssal Essence slow. Her attitude is surprisingly matter-of-fact and down-to-earth; she knows what her liege expects her to do, and she uses her formidable powers of sorcery and necromancy in his service. She bears the Hearthstone of the Prison of Heart's Vanity: the Dolorous Earth-Pulse Gem, a spherical jewel the colored of congealed blood with powers over the flow of geomantic energy.

Laughing Abomination is Day-caste; a hideous conglomeration of species laid in his blood beforehand, and the power of his Abyssal Exaltation withered and necrotized his features further, until is became the sort of walking blasphemy that makes even strong men pause. He is proud if it, though, and of the strength and power his Exaltation has given him; he leads the beastman raiding parties with fervor and joy, and he is just at home with solitary scouting as he is at the head of a horde. He wields a great soulsteel grimcleaver and wears an ornate reinforced breastplate of soulsteel, both liberated from his last incarnation.

Relic of the Mire's Excesses is a Dusk-Caste beastman, her features combining newt and lizard in equal and unsettling proportion, combined with a light coating of feathers and an eruption of great dove's wings on her back. The Relic is beautiful somehow despite herself, her feathers grown silver and black with Abyssal power, and is fierce in battle. Yet she is taciturn and strangely timid outside of it; she knows too much of her past incarnation, one of the Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils's several Shoats of the Mire, one hounded away from the Dowager's lands for some offense and found near-death by the beastmen. The Relic cannot embrance her destiny, and even with the soulsteel reaver daiklave last possessed by the Shoat of the Mire by her side, she is afraid.

Pyre-Flame's Frozen Daughter is the only human deathknight in the entourage of Rusted Shackles of Blasphemy. She was originally a servant of Eye and Seven Despairs, but her extreme distaste at the Cold House's inhabitants drove her to flee south, where she was captured by Fallen Charcoal Feathers and her escort. When she was brought to the Prison, she pleaded the case for her survival, and Rusty Shackles of Oblivion was moved by her deathlike eloquence and her Southern beauty, with the mahogany skin and red hair he had been so proud to possess long ago. He granted the Moonshadow service in his entourage, and thus far she has served without complaint; she is a stubborn, chill woman with a strange sense of honor, and to serve rage and madness is still better than the sybaritic tendencies of Eye and Seven Despairs.

Plans

Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy has one plan, and one plan only: reap his path of revenge across Creation, paying it back tenfold for every perceived slight, and throw open the gates of Heaven itself. His rage against Yu-Shan, and specifically against Structure of Infinity, knows no bounds, and his wrath will be deathless.

All such plans of bloody revenge are first dependent on his release from the starmetal shackles that hold his soul in the Prison of Heart's Vanity, of course. His sorcerous and necromantic divinations, with the assistance of Fallen Charcoal Feathers, have revealed what he believes to be the solution to this: he must reunite all of the starmetal mined and processed from the husk of the Mover of the Eternal, combining it with his shackles such that the scattered shards of the Mover's spirit are somehow merged together, and then see that the Mover is reborn from the starmetal and returns to Yu-Shan such that Structure of Infinity's geas is broken. Rusted Shackles of Blasphemy continues to create the necessary rituals for the raising of the Mover of the Eternal -- but before then, there is the simple matter of reuniting the proper shards of starmetal. Any weapon or tool could be key to the final reunion, and thus the beastman hordes and the Abyssals are under command to retrieve any starmetal they find -- regardless of who must be killed to scavenge it.

Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy's powers are great, but perhaps his primary advantage he holds now is his stealth. He has little desire to control shadowlands or raise armies of ghosts -- no, if he is released, his storm of revenge will do all the service to Oblivion that his Malfean masters might require. For now, he is content to remain imprisoned and mostly unknown to the world at large, in hopes that his final vindication will be all the sweeter for it.

OOC Commentary

Please don't all yell at me at once.

I understand that this Deathlord is very, very strange; that's sort of his point, actually. As it stands, I see the Exalted setting already having met its capacity for "traditional" Deathlords, those with dread Shadowland kingdoms and aspirations of conquest. Adding another one to the mix presented, even given the "blank slots" implicit in the setting, would require entirely reconfiguring the Deathlord dynamics throughout the setting in a way that seems disruptive and more work than another "traditional" Deathlord is worth. Thus, something a little stranger seemed appropriate.

Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy is admittedly not wholly an original idea; the Exalted wiki has several Deathlords configured around a similar idea, and DeathLords contains several excellent ideas for patching the "Deathlord hole" in the South. I'm not claiming he's shockingly original, but he's my variation on the theme. (I realize the starmetal shackles are a bit over-the-top, but they give him an obvious plot hook, and honestly, shouldn't the epic revenge of gods and heroes in the First Age naturally tend towards the over-the-top?)

As for the Lunar-metaplot elements... well, they grew rather naturally out of Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy's isolation, and I've always found the Lunar exile and dissolution fairly interesting, especially the "lost castes." The only real treatment of them in E:L is Lilith, whom I have always found to be tremendously unsatisfying. (If Juthware the White-Gold seems like Lilith bent about 135 degrees and stripped on her Protagonist Field, well, it's not unintentional.) I also rather like the idea of a Deathlord who maintains unorthodox troops; while beastmen may seem less functional than ghosts and nemissaries, they're also less predictable. Who's going to suspect the Malfeans' hands in beastman raiding parties? The beastman Abyssals were another natural outgrowth, also inspired by the discussion of "off-caste" Half-Caste Exalted (and a beastman Solar) at Thus_Spake_Zaranephilpal/HalfCaste and the implications thereof. Beastman Abyssals have many difficulties, of course, but the one thing they and their Deathlord have is time.

Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy can be approached from a number of directions, plot-wise. The most obvious is through a Sidereal PC Circle or NPC contact, since his troops are so focused on recovery of starmetal artifacts. (Incidentally, Structure of Infinity is still an active and powerful member of the Celestial Hierarchy, which offers more hooks for a group active in Yu-Shan.) Rumors of beastman hordes fixated on the theft of starmetal should draw out Sidereals of all stripes and might well draw the Wyld Hunt or Solars with Gold Faction mentors -- not to mention the endless potential if any Sidereal PCs bought the Artifact background.

In an Abyssal campaign, the obvious place to start would be with Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy's "scavenging" of Abyssal Essences. While those Abyssals killed and reincarnated by Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy's forces were generally ronin or otherwise renegade, agents of their Deathlords may still be concerned and investigate, especially if they actually observe the strange spectacle of chimeric beastmen using Abyssal Charms, soulsteel artifacts, and necromancy.

The beastman tribe offers hooks for a Lunar pack as well. The Silver Pact is likely to be concerned about them on a number of levels if it finds out about them -- anything from "these creatures do not obey territory rights!" to the intimations of an elder's presence there. While the beastmen and Juthware are loyal to Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy and will not easily be turned from his service, they are not fully corrupted and might yet be redeemed. Juthware in particular has not yet fallen fully into chimera, and if her Essence was properly fixed and her faculties recovered, she could be a powerful addition to the Silver Pact.

The giant plot hook for Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy, of course, is "keep him from escaping." Nobody but the most mindlessly Oblivion-focused servants of the Malfeans could possibly want him loosed on the world, and he's far too powerful and mad to be focused as a weapon against any given faction. (Woe to the Exalts who might try.) Preventing his escape, or controlling it if he manages to release himself from his prison, is campaign-level epic adventure.

If anyone out there actually uses Rusty Shackles of Blasphemy or any of his material in their campaigns, I'd be fascinated to see how it ran.

-- AntiVehicleRocket

Comments?

Pretty damn cool, and I like. Only nitpick is that I believe that DLs may be trapped in the Underworld / Shadowlands ( I forget.) Whether they are or not, though, the above rocks. - Miedvied