Latest revision as of 01:15, 6 April 2010

Deathlords

I came up with the Chaste Maiden when I was off in New Zealand and spending too much time thinking about Exalted on tour buses.

• back to AlecAustin

The Chaste Maiden Who Hunts The Moon

Deep in the heart of the Black Chase, surrounded by a grove of petrified trees, rises a bone-white spire. Its walls are crammed with bookshelves, and mosiacs of white and black peek out from underneath the monochrome carpets that sprawl across each of its levels. To those few who have visited its mistress and survived, it is known as the Library of Patterned Floors.

The uppermost room of the Library is filled with tables, gaming boards, and bowls of stones. In it, the Chaste Maiden Who Hunts The Moon whiles away eternity playing elaborate and baffling games against herself and unseen opponents. Only when the moon rises over the Black Chase does she stir from her chamber and ride across the blasted lands, wielding a gossamer spear tipped with soulsteel as she hunts the moon's reflection from one pool of dead and stagnant water to another.

The Chaste Maiden appears as a slender girl of indeterminate age, clad in a kimono embroidered with patterns that occasionally resolve into an image of a gaming board or a human face. When she hunts, the chain links of her armor are as pale as moonsilver and as delicate as mist, while her gauntlets are sheathed in soulsteel and exude an unnatural silence. Her flowing hair darkens even a moonless night, while her skin is pale as alabaster, and her pupils are windows onto alien constellations. Her laughter causes ghosts and mortals to bleed from their ears, and makes even the Exalted tremble.

Among the Deathlords, the Chaste Maiden is regarded as mad or inscrutable, as she holds litte territory and commands no army. Only rarely are her emissaries seen in Stygia, and when they are, the proposals they offer and messages they bring often seem pointlessly trivial. Still, those who have visited her in her citadel are loath to discount her, for it is said that on one of her game boards, there are pieces wrought in the image of each of the Deathlords, and the greatest of the champions of creation. And though the Chaste Maiden is never seen to touch them, they never remain in the same places, almost as if they move of their own volition.

The Chaste Maiden is a master of games, languages, and indirection, and she watches the machinations of the other Deathlords with apparent amusement. Though she has made no move to conquer it, she seems to regard Sijian as under her protection, and strange and unpleasant fates have befallen the agents of other Deathlords who have plotted to subject the city's population to their own masters.

Deathknights

The Chaste Maiden has several deathknights in her service, though she seems to give them free reign to serve the Malfeans as they please. One, Alabaster Blade of Morning, seems to guard the Library of Patterned Floors, and on one occasion even snatched a group of travellers from the jaws of the Behemoth of the Chase itself. Her other minions have been seen both in the living world and wandering the underworld, pursuing cryptic missions, but what greater purpose they serve, if any, is unknown.