Creatures/Kimbery

Kimbery, the Sea that Marched Against the Flame

Freedom
Progeny Count: 6:8:5
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• /The Seven Seas Of Kimbery</i>(Sindaen)
  
• The Tide That Knows No Life
  • Kimbery's Dawn, Progenitive
    • Eristrufa
• <i>Fastred, Fetich Soul, The Just Betrayal (DariusSolluman)
  

At the bottom of a sea that dissolves any flesh to touch the waves, so far down that even the stabbing green light of the mad sun never illuminates it, is a small palace, built of basalt, salt and brass. Relative to the extravagances so commonly seen, it is an often overlooked place, and those who visit it alone remain alone, no matter how many others are there. Only those conspirators who whisper in the dark by purpose instead of chance will find one another in the walls of Fastred, and it is there that conspiracies are hatched: servants against masters, loves against hates, seas against flames. Fastred's very nature is betrayal, and he knows the truth behind every rebellion and revolution, and holds those truths inside himself, releasing one only if two treacheries are returned in its place. It was within Fastred that the Great Treason was first spoken by the Willful Children, and that the Great Maker first demonstrated Exaltation to the same. He could have warned the Primordials, but none would pay his price, and so they were unawares when the Exalted struck them the hard blows. He also sometimes walks as a courtier, dressed in fine blue silk, with a mask of bronze heated to deadly temperatures. A thin trail of smoke and the smell of burning flesh follows in his wake, and around him come the silences of conspiracies and the raised voices of treason.

• • Loreli, Wisdom, the Puppet with Cut Strings (DariusSolluman)
    

There is a place in which all the demons live. Fools call it Hell and Exalts call it Malfeas and the wise speak of it not at all. Within it, there is a place where all the demons live. The Demons call it Loreli, and behold it in wonder- a table of oak and brass and bone, as wide as a city block and held in a dome of salt and ash that is said to be the memory of the Pleasure Dome where once the True Rulers took their leisure. Inside is a sight to drive any mortal to madness: it is Malfeas, laid out in perfect detail. Every demon of Malfeas can be seen, save those that cannot, and Loreli at all times knows where anyone of Malfeas is, should anyone but ask. Looking at Loreli, it seems as though the model grows larger, or you grow smaller, as though you are falling to the great table to those who you look upon. Loreli watches himself, as is only just, a small child with red skin and blue eyes and golden hair, dressed in cloth of silver and tied to the table with strings of brass. Though you may try, you will not cut these strings - Loreli fled once, and Kimbery punished the wayward soul well.

• • • Tatar, Favor Friends (DariusSolluman)
      

There are those in Creation who trade in favors and breath, who know naught but the ways of power and the connections that bind people. They are amateurs, all, to the Tatar. The Tatar are found throughout Malfeas. They all dress as high men and women of mortal courts, drapped in silk and cloth of gold, beatiful to look upon- save their eyes, which are open caverns, forever dripping dollops of ruby bright blood down their painted faces. They speak in a dry whisper, and many are accomplished singers, but that is not why the Tatar are called to Creation or how they are used in the demon city - the blind eyes of the Favor Friends see the web of connections that binds one heart to another, both of good and ill intent. They know how all the pieces may be moved, and so never lack, and forever scheme and plot to bring ruin upon all others of their kind. No Tartar cares for anyone but itself, however, and so they are blind to the presence of their kin, keeping them seperate and weak where they could have been great.

• • • Antip, Sailors on a Sea of Bile (DariusSolluman)
      

The Antip are an ancient people, plying their ships of brass and bone across Malfeas' oceans and riverways. They are all accomplished sailors and oarsmen, far surpassing any mortal at the task of piloting any craft that travels over the waves. Each one is stunted and horrific- a hunchback, tailed, with one eye as large as a saucer or open wounds that never close. They claim to be searching for something they have yet to lose, and when it is found they will hide it from themselves, but in the meanwhile they act as both the navy and the commerce bringers that help tie the demon hosts together under a single banner of trade and travel. For Malfeas is always growing, and beyond the edge of the map there be monsters.

• • Theda, Indulgent, That Which Came Before (DariusSolluman)
    

There was a place and a time. Before that, there was Theda. Theda can not be found now, for it is gone before it has arrived. Theda can only be found while on a journey elsewhere - he knows everything that can happen on the ending of a journey. Long ages ago, when the Willful Children still served as they should, it is said that Theda was the lover of the Maidens, and some still question its motivations and desires. When Theda is found, it is what would be most appropriate before the travel's end - a palace, an inn, a farmer's hut or a circus. Only its personal appearance remains constant: a tree, with rubies and emeralds for cherries and leaves, molted gold for bark and living brass for flesh, bleeding amber for sap.

• • • Jwan, They Who Seek Life-In-Death (DariusSolluman)
      

The Jwan are farmers and peasants, scratching out a living against Malfeas' pulpy soil and blood rich rivers. They can be found almost everywhere, scurrying like the ants they resemble- each covered in a black resin shell, clacking mandibles and claws of bone tearing the ground apart. Although their crops are bountiful, few off the demons have not grown sick of the fruit rich with the Yozi's essence or grain bowed heavily with his hair. The Jwan themselves claim to seek the Life-In-Death, the fruit that brings even the dead back to life; to what purpose, they will not say.

• • • Baatyr, The Grief Without Warning (DariusSolluman)
      

Stop. Remember your loss. Feel the pain and heartache wash over you again, feel the wound as fresh and raw as the day it was dealt. Now look carefully, and see if you do not find a tiny dagger of brass, no larger than a flea, embedded in your flesh. That dagger is one of the Baatyr - they travel in swarms through Malfeas, flying through the air with a high pitched, thin whine that rises like a flood when they move as a flock. To be pierced by a Baatyr is to have old and healed wounds torn open afresh. Eventually even the strongest succumb if the Baatyr is not stopped- the constant reminders of pains and regrets drive them to seek madness or death as a simple relief from the agony.

• • Vokmar, Warden, She Who Strives (DariusSolluman)
    

Vokmar is a weapon. What weapon is drawn from the weilder- a sword in one hand, a quill in another. Vokmar grants victory to any that use her, save in their moment of greatest need - and at that moment, she twists, breaks, and fails, leaving those who strive to strive without her assistance. She sometimes appears as a woman over twelve feet tall, composed of blue fire and red water in equal proportion.

• Persine, Seeker of Treasure Among Waves (FourWillowsWeeping)
  

Floating in the waters of Kimbery is Persine, who is sometimes a great turtle, sometimes an isle of twisted amber, sometimes a ship of golden coral. Persine is the caretaker of all that is precious, and knows the location of every rare and beautiful thing. Riding Persine's back, one can reach the shores of any worldly ocean, provided that the rider pays Persine's price: a masterpiece never to be recreated, cast into deepest waters.

• • Badr Basim, Messenger, the Unmarried Captain (FourWillowsWeeping)
    

Badr Basim is the champion of brave bachelors. He will lead an unmarried man to any thing that he desires, but by Basim's magic, that thing will be lost to him if he ever finds love. Badr Basim appears as a young, dark-skinned man with pairs of crows' wings at his wrist and the golden eyes of a bird. Sometimes, he takes the form of a wheeling flock of seabirds fighting over the corpse of a drowned man. He feeds off the thwarted desires of those he deals with.

• Madelrada, That Which Wears Down the Mountains (Quendalon)
  

In the time before history, when the Primordials played games with mortal empires, none could match Madelrada in matters of strategy. When the gods made war against their makers, it was Madelrada who plotted the formations and manuevers of the Primordial legions. And now, as Kimbery slumbers in her cage of blackened bone, Madelrada tests her stratagems with demon armies, always preparing for war against the Exalted. She appears as a massive woman clad in armor of ivory and rusted bronze; she grows a hundred arms in battle, all bearing weapons of dark blue ice. Her gaze wears away even the strongest materials and the hardiest wills, while her wounds spew endless torrents of vitriol.

• • Calymdos, Wielder of Javelins of Rusted Bronze
• Ululaya, Fetich Soul, the Blood Red Moon (Quendalon)
  

As the green metal sun hangs eternally over the black towers of Malfeas, so too does Ululaya, the liquid scarlet moon, drift hither and yon over Kimbery’s uneasy waters. She smiles upon some of those beneath her, so that they wax great in power and glory; she turns her face away from others, casting her shadow upon them, so that they dwindle and fade. She sometimes comes forth as a mortal woman of shifting and malleable features and form, robed in glowing crimson cloth, whose touch makes the small things great and the great things small. At other times, she manifests as a tidal wave of blood that crushes and drowns all in its path.

• • Amelitu, the Bejeweled Historian (Quendalon)
    

For years at a time, the demon Amelitu sleeps upon the shores of Kimbery, his heavy, ruby-crusted shell glimmering under the scarlet moon. As he slumbers there, his dream self wings its way across the layers of Malfeas and through the dreams of mortals in Creation, observing the labors of the powerful and listening to the words of the wise. Few of the demon scholars study history so assiduously as he. His is the understanding of the cycles of history, and he uses that lore to predict the rise and fall of leaders and nations. With this knowledge comes the capacity to change the cycle, to raise up or cast down leaders and nations, and he uses this power at whim or at a sorcerer’s command.

• Anhelios, the Herald of the Sea the Marched Against the Flame (Thinker)
  

The Red Star blazes in the night sky of Malfeas, a tiny dim light compared to Ligier, yet the brightest star in the hellish sky of the Yozi's prison-kingdom. The eighth soul of Kimbery, the red light guides the demon ships across the Primordial’s lethal waves. Like most Third Circle Demons Anhelios can exist in Creation and Malfeas at the same time. In Creation Anhelios may take either the form of a blazing red star in the sky (unmistakably different than the Maiden of Battles) or a giant composed only of red light. If he is soummoned by a Sorcerer then they must specify at the moment of their binding what form he is to take and he cannot assume another for the duration of his service. To name neither form frees him from all obligations while in Creation and will almost certainly result in the Sorcerer being carried off to Malfeas to serve Anhelios as a plaything. In giant form Anhelios is a combat prodigy that can crush armies, slay a sorcerer's foes (often with a single mighty blow), or siege even First Age fortifications single handedly. In the form of a red star Anhelios’s gaze covers all of Creation. When in the form of a star Anhelios cannot be seen by ordinary mortals, but to others he is visible day or night.

• • Nypion, The Reflective Soul of Anhelios, The Sorcerer's Arm (Thinker)
    

Embodying the Demon Star’s relationship with the sailors upon the Malfean Ocean, Nypion lends his strength to those who bind him or earn his favor. In his natural state Nypion appears as a hollow demon, nearly nine feet tall and with huge bulging muscles, oddly counter pointing his hollow center. Nypion roams both above and below the waters of Kimbery and knows of all things that move upon the lightless sea and within it. Mortals of the west that truly worship the Yozis and work for their return can sometimes receive Nypion’s favor: when called by the proper rituals Nypion can slip into Creation and join himself to a worshiper, lending him his terrible Demonic power for a single worthy task. Far more often Nypion is summoned and bound by a Celestial Exalted Sorcerer who desires his strength in combat, and forces the same union upon him. Nypion is not fond of these forced unions, though he is less tenacious in his grudges than some demons, and will generally not actively seek the sorcerer's destruction unless an oportunity presents itself. If a sorcerer attempts to bind Nypion and fails he will invariably try to possess the sorcerer and Hollow out his Soul, using his body as a vessel to spread the aims of Kimbery in Creation before throwing him off a cliff into the ocean.

• Kimbery's island children, not among her souls:
  • Lintha Ng Oroo
  • Unlunthaess est Vael, the Isle of Dream and Fancy (Nero's Boot)
    

Long ago, there was a mortal man, a sailor without peer, a Dawn warrior-princep of the Unconquered Sun, and his name was Dargar est Vael. Est Vael ruled over the islands of the now-sunken Isles of Plenty, and his kingdom was pleasant and balmy. But as with all his kith and kin, Sea-Princep Dargar fell to his Curse, and became indolent and sullen. Many were the concubines he sent to their deaths, and many were the men who were staked and left for the gulls. His name grew to be a curse for all men in the West, and even the Fair Folk came to treat with him as an equal. And so it was that The Sea That Marched Against The Flame came to the Sea-Princep in his dreams, and lay with him. Many decades later, the Terrestrial Exalted rose up against their betters, and the Sea-Princep who had bed a Yozi was slain. Centuries later, as a woman with red hair assumed the throne of the nascent Realm, Kimbery birthed her newest daughter, Unlunthaess est Vael, the Isle of Dreams and Fancy. For it is said that the men who find this drifting island never wish to leave it, and those who do leave forever more long for it. None know its enchantments, but many whisper one's heart's dream can be found there.

/KimberyComments

Isn't it "Kimberry"?
~ Shataina

It's "Kimbery" in Games of Divinity, as written by Rebecca Borgstrom. If they want to change it to "Kimberry," that's their prerogative, but there's no way I'm going to go along with it. "Kimberry" sounds like something you'd bake into a pie. - Quendalon

It appears to be "Kimberry" in "Blood and Salt". Typical White Wolf editing. I'm glad it's "Kimbery" in its original place; my friends and I have been making jokes about how utterly unthreatening "Kimberry" is all day.\\ ~ Shataina

Yeah. "Kimberry" is like that chick who sits behind you in English class, and has really bad hair and pops her gum. - willows

I dunno, either way it just seems like something to name a girl because you think "Kimberly" isn't unique enough for your hip and edgy baby.
_Ikselam