Thari

Thari, the Word Serpent

The Ebon Dragon’s sister rides the winds of the Demon City on wings of poetry. Her vast body roils with the characters of every text ever penned by mortal hands, folded one upon the other in ever-denser layers of script. Her eyes sparkle with philosophy; venom drips from fangs of satire; ornamental traceries of gold and vermilion glimmer on inky black armor of impenetrable legalese. In her inmost heart, her true name pulses like a star. Quendalon

Significance
Progeny Count: 1:3:4
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• Halkomelem, the Enigma of Red and Gold (FourWillowsWeeping)
  Halkomelem is a serpent scaled in shining paper; he has three faces surrounding a single, gaping mouth. Halkomelem coils through the libraries of Orabilis, learning all that he touches. Halkomelem knows all the languages of the world, but he will only address a mortal in a language the mortal cannot understand. As he moves, his scales fold themselves into little paper creatures which fly away for fear their progenitor will eat them. Catching and reading one of these can grant a mortal the key to a cipher; an Exalt, capturing several, can piece together a language.
  • Tremembé, Reflective, He Who Beats the Drum (FourWillowsWeeping)
    In the time before the Primordial War, all of Creation was a dance; all beings moved to the beat of Tremembé's drum. When Chakchiquel Fetich Tongue-of-Truth was slain, and the Word Serpent came into being from Vaach, the Shape of Thought in Space, his power was diminished, and now he only commands the motion of one tongue in a moment. He is a tall man with skin like polished rosewood, dressed in a grass skirt and garlanded with ferns. In one hand he carries a string of tiny drums, and in the other he has a stick with which to beat them.
    • Lehali, the Gold-Dust Golem (FourWillowsWeeping)
      Whenever Tremembé strikes one of his drums, a puff of gold dust issues forth. This dust gathers itself together and joins the lehali; when they have enough, they make another of themselves. A lehali is a man of wax, impregnated with this spiritual gold; he always has more arms and legs than he needs. When circumstances require, they can melt themselves and move fast as flowing water, or break off small pieces and make homunculi to perform small, simple tasks.
  • Gobasi, Indulgent, the Unctuous Capnomancer (Translucidity)
    All knowledge changes as it is recorded, oftentimes lessening its truths, occasionally becoming something new and profound; so too does the smoke from burning books reveal new insights to Gobasi. Appearing as a suave sophisticate of the South, his finery reeks of smoke, and an indispersible haze chases him to wherever he may seat himself. Ever-intoxicated by the fumes of lost knowledge that bubble through his hookah, he can be tricked into revealing immeasurably valuable lore in his efforts to prove his sagacity.
    • Kayabi, the Tenebrous Amphibologies (Translucidity)
      Each puff of smoke enjoyed and expelled by Gobasi joins the indispersible haze about him; where the fumes of three lost texts are commingled, the air takes on an oily iridescence. This is the birthing of the Kayabi, whose indistinct forms exist to distinguish others. To look upon three Kayabi dancing is to see the invisible within them; seven, an echo of what has passed from the world; thirteen, the foreshadowing of what may be. Yet within each glimmering revelation is three more, and a truth hides in all and none of them.
  • Euskarra, Reflective, Never-Ceasing Speaker (Mockery)
    Euskarra appears as a six-armed man covered in small sheets of gold and silver, which he peels from himself constantly, eventually revealing himself as herself, and continuing to peel and shed until he is male again, ever going back and forth. He/she too speaks all the languages of the year, and constantly, but only the tongue of the current month of creation. During Calibration, he/she falls silent, and her/his hands turn to works that cannot be explained when her/his speech begins again.
    • Kalevala, the Child who Births the Mother (Mockery)
      When it is Calibration, all of Euskarra's hands fall from him or herself, and the tiny bits of foil build up until the dawn of the first day of the Calendar. At this point, Euskarra pulls himself free and leaves behind a cast of himself, and this cast becomes the Kalevala. The body, massive and multicolored from so many metals, is silent as the grave, and does as it is told by either Euskarra, or whoever has summoned it. It is a little-known secret that the Kalevala's birthing wound never truly heals, and it may open this to hold its summoner inside itself, and be controlled from such a position as if it were a warstrider of no little strength.
    • Ogham, the Rambling Centipede (Mockery)
      Euskarra has been summoned more than once, and she sheds her skin even in creation. And more than one summoner has sold those precious metals to a jewler, or been on themselves, and made rings and necklaces and pretty baubles. These things are cursed, though, and Euskarra may reach through Creation to pull those people who bear such an item back through to Malfeas, where she works dark magics into them and forges their body anew. An Ogham has the same face it did in its mortal existence, but its teeth are lengthened into sharp and silvery fangs. Its torso remains humanoid, though chitinous at the same time, and insectile arms run up and down its length; below the waist, the body becomes completely centipede, though appropriately massive and with streaks of whatever precious metal damned the human. They serve whatever ineffable will their father does, though they can explain it no better.

Comments

I'm trying to name everything I do for Thari after a language of the real or literary world, a writing system, or a famous piece of literature (in descending order of preference). I just thought it felt appropriate for such a being. A good resource for this kind of thing is the Ethnologue; you can Google for it. - FourWillowsWeeping

I like! Especially neat are the dandruff-like spawn. More demons, please.  :) And thanks for the Ethnologue link, it looks very cool and I hope to find some evil demon-creating uses for it. - Quendalon

I think I've fallen in love with this page already. Enciphered origami animals flying off a paper serpent, everything named after obscure linguistics terms... Yay.

Hm. I wonder what the demon of metasyntactic variables is like?

Pardon my soul-theft with Gobasi, but I felt the need to contribute something :) Here's hoping you actually like 'im. - Translucidity

Good work, you two. Keep it up! I must have more! :) - Quendalon

Sorry my demons ran so long. I just have the tendency to type and type, and I just didn't seem to want to cut out any of it. ^^;; - Mockery