Latest revision as of 03:14, 9 June 2010

Valxregen, The Fields of Rot and Sorrow

There has always been war, even in the times before time. It is unavoidable that conflict should mar the great quiet that is peace. Valxregen has always watched such battles and drank deeply of the blood spilled into the soil beneath the slaughterhouse of war. Once, Valxregen was The Fields of Glory and Might where those who were strong enough to prove themselves right were held up as heroes. In the miserable depths of Malfeas however, Valxregen has become bitter and spiteful. Now, The Fields Of Rot and Sorrow draws all travelers who cross its tainted soil into battle with each other, endlessly feeding its lust for the taste of war. ~ EwindaleMoss

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War, Glory, Impotence

Progeny Count: 4:9:6

• Sil Urxan, He Who Eats With Crows (EwindaleMoss)
  At the edge of The Fields Of Rot And Sorrow, you may always find Sil Urxan. How you will find him is another matter. Often times, you will only see a cluster of corpses being beset by crows, their eyes plucked from their inevitably broken skulls. Each of these is Sil Urxan, for he is that which is reaped from fields sown with blood. Other times, you will find a young soldier, bow slung over his back, slicing meat from the bones of the dead, feasting on it just as the crows do. His teeth are rounded points, his eyes coagulating blood. His feet are talons, a gift from his brother Adrigor after his own were devoured and processed into crows. The arrows in his quiver are fletched with the feathers of crows and know where their prey's heart truly lies, always seeking the swiftest death possible. Sil Urxan is not discourteous though, he will always offer for you to eat with him should you find him. From the flesh of the dead, one can find the truth of the conflict, where the war began, who financed it, and what priceless treasure or limitless power was its goal. In return, those that know from whence the conflict came will find their penetrating words of truth about its origins raising up an even greater war than came before. And it is their name that shall be known to another when next Sil Urxan feeds.
  
  • Hrulik, The Severing Sickness, Warden Soul (EwindaleMoss)
    The flesh consumed by Sil Urxan speaks of many persons involved with the slaughter that is Valxregen. The one most find themselves familiar with is Hrulik, The Severing Sickness. He rides a horse of bone and flame as he stalks the battlefield, a long, golden blade brandished high. Hrulik is clad in leper's rags and from beneath them weeps streams of infection and pus. He is the dishonor that claims those who live through the battle, the one who comes for those who were too weak to find a glorious death. His blade severs their will to live from their soul and leaves them a fragile husk, gagging evermore on their own cowardice.
    
    • Wropirra, The Sweeping Infection (EwindaleMoss)
      As Hrulik rides The Fields, oftentimes his bandages peel away from their diseased mass and fall to the ground. There, they creep until they find one near to death and wrap themselves around their wounds. The dark putresence within them corrupts and claims their victim's body for use as their own. They cannot bear the touch of a skilled healer and will spit their assorted illnesses like snakes if threatened.
  • Melisandra, The Alabaster Throat With Silver Tongues, Messenger Soul (EwindaleMoss)
    The most lovely of those of Sil Urxan, Melisandra is a beautiful porcelain doll draped in dresses of purest white, beaming upon you with her soft eyes. Her ebony hair perches atop her head softly, admiring you from above. She speaks to you in comforting tones as you walk through the charnel house around you and reminds you of its necessity if you are to lay claim to her. Only those watching her speak from afar see her true self as each one of her four faces spins to speak to another possible suitor. Her eyes glow the colors of the four elemental poles as her pale faces speak the language of whomever they seek. Sorcerers summon her to translate unknown texts and teach them languages lost to Creation. These translations are never perfect, always purposefully corrupting a crucial phrase that will enrage those being poken to or leaving out a critical passage in an engineering diagram.
    
  • Tar Lashan, The Blazing Web, Expressive Soul (EwindaleMoss)
    Tar Lashan is the quietude that her siblings lack. Appearing as a great violet spider with the upper torso of a woman badly beaten with crimson hair, she wields a blazing staff in each of her hands. She will smile broadly as you observe her work, for the loneliness of her position has driven her mad. She was to be the most vivacious of those that Sil Urxan observes but that will never be. Her lust for power and hunt for riches is never ending as she weaves her webs to ensnare her foes. She is the general, the vizier, the council of advisors planning for war. As her plans come to fruition and those that would move against her fall into her web, she lights it aflame. At once, she is revealed and her plans are rent into the same ash as her foes. As the flames fail, she is in darkness once more, until her next quarry is burned alive before her. Those that would summon Tar Lashan seek to know how to undo their foes and she will grant them their vengeance, but one of their deepest desires shall never come to pass in return.
    
  • Drel-Ud, The Thumb On The Soul's Scale, Indulgent Soul (EwindaleMoss)
    There is an old man in musty brown robes who walks the edges of The Fields of Rot And Sorrow, looting the corpses of the dead and dropping their belongings into the sack he keeps at his waist. In his right hand is a scale that he clutches tightly to at all times. As he walks, he eventually crosses paths with his sister, Melisandra. At those times when her charms will not sway one to enter battle, Drel-Ud smiles a smile of razors as he opens the pouch at his side. The scale in his right hand knows the cost of his victim's soul and how much coin it will take for them to enter the fray. When their price is paid, they rush into battle to slaughter and be slaughtered... and Drel-Ud gives his sister a smile and begins to walk once more, collecting his fee from the dead.
    
    • Shak El, The Gleaming Jealousy (EwindaleMoss)
      The coins within Drel-Uds pouch are alive with malice and as he dispenses them as payment, they sink their miniscule teeth into the flesh of the one who thinks to own them. As their victim plunges into battle, they flood their victim with venom that slows their movements and dulls their mind until they move a moment too slowly and have their head severed from their shoulders. Then, the coins begin a shrill wailing, calling for their father to come collect them once more.
      
• Adrigor, He Who Hungers For The Meat Of The Fallen (EwindaleMoss)
  Dotting the Fields of Rot and Sorrow are great cavernous tunnels leading deep beneath Valxregen. However, those that enter as ever lost as the tunnels sprout teeth and close on them. They have just been added to the feast of Adrigor. Adrigor is the child Sil Urxan wishes he could be. When Adrigor's great mouths open wide, all the fauna within Valxregen dive within to be added to He Who Hungers great gullet. From there, new life is excreted out through Valxregen's soil and Adrigor frees his brother. In Creation, Adrigor appears as beasts of great size and cavernous mouth. More than once he has been spotted shattering ships as a siaka of brass at the behest of an angry sorcerer.
  
  • Durgenil, The Thief of Flesh, Messenger Soul (EwindaleMoss)
    The Thief of Flesh is the prince of the twisted crows that dwell within The Fields borders. He can see through the eyes of each of his subjects and may speak through their beaks. There is a friendship of sorts between himself and Sil Urxan for he is the one who suggested to his father Adrigor to give Sil Urxan the feet of a crow when Adrigor devoured Sil Urxan's feet to create Durgenil. In return, the crows of Durgenil favor the corpse bloom of Sil Urxan more than the taste of any of dead. While this binds the two closer than Adrigor would like, it still breeds a hatred in Sil Urxan that one of a lower rank should be allowed to feast upon him. He is called upon to act as a spy within Creation, fearing only the blind, who are granted his sight in their own dead eyes as he passes near.
    
    • Axvus, The Thousand Cutpurses of Decay (EwindaleMoss)
      Axvus are often seen as the crows that fly from one end of the Fields to the other, hunting for corpses to pull the flesh from. They are swift, silent, and thorough. Even those that aren't completely dead yet may find a beak full of their back or an unguarded eye being plucked from their body and carried back to the toothy pits of Adrigor for consumption. While cats will always see an Axvus for what it truly is, these demons are called upon when a sorcerer needs something of value stolen from a rival. In Creation, they are soft-spoken and androgynous young humanoids with eyes of midnight that leave feathers wherever they walk. While the Axvus is always happy to ply its trade in Creation, it requires a full-size dead human to eat beforehand or else it may grow inattentive and stray from its task.
      
  • Skrissim, The Little Butcher (EwindaleMoss)
    Ever underfoot, picking at the carrion within the fields and carrying it back to their grandfather's mouths are the rats of Skrissim. Skrissim himself moves slowly and thoughtfully from one corpse to the next, sickly yellow eyes peering out from beneath his rat skull headress and tattered fur robes. No one knows what blackness lurks beneath the rat skin Skrissim wears and the wise choose not to speculate. Instead, they watch Skrissim's twisted claws as he carves apart the corpses that meet with his approval. He apportions out enough for his subjects, then eats his own fill. His is a disquieting mirth as he disassembles flesh. Those who would call upon Skrissim have desires to learn anatomy and physiology for few know the methods of surgery and locations of organs better than The Little Butcher. However, those that would learn his technique also find themselves gaining a deep and abiding hunger for the flesh of their patients.
    
    • Tassim, The Stomachs That Wait (EwindaleMoss)
      The Tassim are the tide of rats that follow Skrissim, picking corpses clean. They, like the Axvus, are the cleaners of the Fields, those who eventually feed Adrigor so that ever more of their kind can be excreted from the Fields. The Tassim find it relatively easy to slip through the cracks into Creation, being summoned by any great feast so indulgent that at least one guest dies from overstuffing themselves. The Tassim in Creation are small, furtive folk dressed in tattered furs. They are sent to corrupt and disrupt important gatherings by gorging themselves on any food they can reach and inspiring other guests to do the same.
• Wulgwyst, The Courteous Transgressor (EwindaleMoss)
  At the center of Valxregen, there is a great feasting hall where the conquering heroes would drink and be merry. Even now, as the mad sun of Malfeas beats down upon it, the cacophony still rages. However, within, there is no brotherhood among the feasters. Each day, as the feast begins, a smiling face sprouts between two warriors and whispers in their ears. These whispers turn into chartreuse worms that squirm into the brain of their victims until they fly into a fit of rage at the slanders the mysterious face speaks. In turn, either champion strikes the other, and a brawl has begun. It is a fight that never ceases as Wulgwyst pushes new faces from its feasting hall self to torment the celebrants anew, a smile never leaving its face. When summoned to Creation, Wulgwyst takes the form of a small slave boy, often clad only in rags with a permanent smile upon his lips and unseeing white eyes. None that hear his words can bear to strike him, even as he shatters their possessions, insults their parentage, and blasphemes their gods. Those driven mad by Wulgwyst eventually lose all sense and become mass-murderers, seeking an outlet for their impotent rage.
  
• Tulchinary, The Rivers That Overflow With The Blood of Heroes, Fetich Soul of Valxregen (EwindaleMoss)
  Running through the great expanse of The Fields of Rot and Sorrow are three rivers that become one, each one filled with the blood of heroes long since dead. This is the lifeblood of Valxregen and its most treasured prize. As it roiled in suffering within Malfeas, Valxregen wept forth the unending rivers of blood that are now known as Tulchinary. Once, Tulchinary was a river of mead and laughter that was drank from by those that ate in the great feasting hall at the center of Valxregen. Now, the blood that is Tulchinary seeks to ensnare those that touch it and pull them beneath its rust-red waves. Tulchinary cannot stand the touch of virgin blood or the taste of an infant and will part rather than allow these things to sully itself.
  • Prex Il, The River That Erodes Peace, Indulgent Soul (EwindaleMoss)
    Of Tulchinary's three tributary daughters, Prex Il is the most ambitious. Coursing through The Fields from the delta where her father ends and she begins, Prex Il is ever-seeking to widen her banks. Unlike most of The Fields inhabitants, she courses through Malfeas, seeking out those demons lower than herself or those unknowing her true nature. Her tumultuous bloody waters roil and bubble, lashing against the shore, calling to those near her of their neighbors treacheries. As those at her banks wade across her expanse to face those on the other side, Prex Il pulls them under and consumes them, leaving only a husk behind. These husks rise from her depths and dig along her borders to expand her reach ever further.
    
    • Hulg, The Spiteful Burrowers (EwindaleMoss)
      The Hulg are those unfortunates who plunge within Prex Il's depths to reach their foes, only to be gutted by her waters. The eyeless skins that emerge afterwards appear as they did in life barring their now blood-red eyes. In silence, they take pick or shovel or claws to the banks of Prex Il, ever widening their mother's banks. They are called upon by those seeking treasures on riverbeds or those wishing to speed up the creation of irrigation systems. Their work is often flawed however, unless the summoner pays close attention, for the original soul is never fully suppressed and will hide flaws in their until their duty has been completed.
  • Ratex Il, The River That Forbids Children, Defining Soul (EwindaleMoss)
    Once Tulchinary was the river that quenched thirst of the victorious. Now, it's daughter Ratex Il, has grown to despise those that once drank from her father's waters. Ratex Il watches the battles that rage across The Fields of Rot and Sorrow with sadistic glee, waiting for the victors to come and wash themselves in her bloody waters. As they touch her surface, she begins to siphon their strength, their will, and all the children they may have ever had. Those Ratex Il touches are evermore sterile and no amount of sorcery can return their ability to parent a child. This is the vengeance of Ratex Il; impotence, just as her grandsire was rendered impotent by his imprisonment in Malfeas.
    
    • G'Brogassmir, The Bloodborn (EwindaleMoss)
      The never born children that Ratex Il steals away from her victims are not committed to the realm of the dead. No, not at all. Instead, they fester and bubble in the clotting womb of Ratex Il and are born the G'Brogassmir. The children of Ratex Il are born with all the splendor of their sires. They beam the radiance of a hero, their strength and beauty the things of legend in the realm of Creation. And yet, once one begins to look more closely, their feet are cloven hooves and they hide mule ears beneath their flowing hair. Like her father, Ratex Il too is incapable of former glories and all the G'Brogassmir are sterile mules who blazing glory fades the longer they are exposed to air. They regain their beauty by bathing in their mother or in a foe's blood, and so are frequently challenged any who will listen to a duel for fear of growing powerless.
  • Julex Il, The River That Muffles Song, Expressive Soul (EwindaleMoss)
    Julex Il, the youngest of Tulchinary's tributary daughters, coils around the great feasting hall Wulgwyst and calls to speak with him, for she is sick with longing for his touch. Yet, he cannot leave until all his guests are dead or sated for his position is as host and undoer and he cannot betray this. So Julex Il coils round, listening for the whispers of her beloved Wulgwyst, sending out her children to drag the noisiest guests from the feast hall and drown them in her waters, for she cannot abide the sound of music or of laughter or the thought that Wulgwyst will never uproot himself and cross to her banks to be embraced. Of the three daughters of Tulchinary, she is the most commonly summoned. Often called upon by those who seek an end to joy and mirth, either out of spite or hatred, Julex Il fulfills her tasks with glee, coming as a tornado with a dozen lashing arms with which to gather up the offenders and silence them beneath her surface.

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