Threats of Eden V: The Furies

Worship of the Spirits can grant great power to those who need it, or those willing to sacrifice for it. Clerics are created by investing a shard of divine power from one of the Greater Spirits into a mortal, through a complex ritual. Other variations of this ritual exist in different nations, for different purposes. Paladins can be created with one variant; in Sargasso, Seraphim are invested with a variation of the ritual as well. But there is a darker facet to every spirit. Clerics and Paladins can fall from grace by many means and into the claw of sin and sorrow. These deprivations of the spirit do not ignore the Seraphim, either, but their own tumultuous history plays a big part in the creation of one of the more dangerous ruinous forces that can threaten the Adelians.

The Fallen Seraphim

Sargasso was once a culture of patrilinear succession – one could not pass wealth to a daughter except in the absence of a son, and the wealth of a wife was put under the control of a husband. After its establishment and the coronation of Aundarius Volg, the patriarchal culture that followed greatly marginalized women and particularly young girls. There was a sense among the elite of the uselessness of having a female child, and many were given away to adoption – better not to raise one at all than be stuck with one who’s husband would siphon away your wealth. In this terrible climate, a woman slowly rose to power in the one institution where it seemed permissible: the Sargassan Church and its Inquisition.

This was a religious authority established to protect government from powers unknown, from spirits, aberrations, ancient artifacts and other beasts. The King’s life was saved by a Spirit, and he owed it to Rashine to establish a great church – but at the same time, he feared Rashine, and feared Magic. This was not long after the end of the Age of Discovery. People and Spirits were not as melded back then as they were now. The Inquisition would protect the King from religious power, while exerting it for him. The church was sex agnostic and did not turn away or suppress its female followers, and so its temples filled with ostensibly noble-born women looking for a place to fit in and prosper and it also began to run orphanages and schools. But in exchange, the Inquisition was made symbolically, to the King at least, a female organization – it had no militant arm.

That was, until Esther Benedictine II rose as High Inquisitor of the church. She pleaded to the king that the Inquisition be given the power to raise a paramilitary force, since the small number of agents involved in the Inquisition would be powerless in the event of a catastrophe. The Intolerable War was only partways over, and everyone feared new wars looming as new Nations were established. But more than this they feared the deadly magic that could be employed in these wars, the magic that made the Intolerable War so long and ardous. The King worked the Inquisition hard, too hard for their current abilities.

Esther had a source of potential recruits in mind – young orphaned girls, disillusioned with their current prospects. This was not chosen idly. She knew the King would find this proposal laughable, and he did, and so he humored her. Little did he know that Esther’s Inquisition would train and equip these girls into a force more powerful than the King’s own army. Using weapons and armor made from the Angelic steel of the creatures fallen from the sky, and the rituals and methods for investing church clerics, each girl became a Seraphim, alone thrice as deadly as any one of the king’s most elite soldiers. Though there were attempts to have male Seraphim, these have been mostly forgotten, as successive female Inquisitors continued Esther’s work of giving orphan girls a place in the church, until now the Seraphim are, and will forever be, a female-only force.

The Inquisition was divided into six Magisters under the High Inquisitor, each of which had command of many Seraphim, and were stationed in different regions of Sargasso as representatives of the Inquisition there. These Magisters were all women who, like Esther, had been orphaned and marginalized. It is rumored that Esther might’ve been the King’s own daughter. Many people were wary of Esther’s power, but in time, they came to see the Seraphim as a respectable force, and in time, an exalted institution.

What came next varies with the telling. But what is known for certain is that the King grew older and his faith in his own power waned. His body was ever more vulnerable to what he saw as the predations of the spirits and their strange magic. His senility became known to all, particularly by the Inquisition. A special group of Seraphim was selected to be his guard at all times, lest someone attack him now in his moment of weakness. But the King, in his broken state, saw this as proof of what he wanted to believe all along – that Esther and her force were after him. She came to represent those fey powers that had always haunted him, and he lashed out. Esther was publically beheaded and the brutality of this action did not sit well with those whom she trained.

Fearing that the climate in Sargasso would worsen even more under the rule of what they saw as a monster, murderous in his senility, four of the six magisters and the Seraphim with them rebelled. They seized the palace and using their overwhelming power, killed the King and as much of his family and servants as they could strike at, even the Seraphim who were ordered to protect him. This is in part the reason why in subsequent rulers, particularly current Queen Shiripo, the lineage to the King becomes more and more blurred and meaningless. For all intents and purposes the true lineage ended there, with the swords of all four magisters committing regicide. Not only did the Kingkillers commit the act of their namesake, they burned down the palace and all of the elite within, the people who had benefited from their valor while repressing them all this time.

But the Kingkillers did not foresee what would occur next – the remaining two Magisters and their Seraphim rallied the armies of Sargasso and fought back. They were appalled at the actions of their former sisters-at-arms – Esther did not deserve her death, but she much less deserved the destruction attributed to her name by the traitors. The Kingkillers had spilled innocent blood and laid waste to what was not only a palace but a temple to the spirits (for in a theocracy like Sargasso, the palace is always a temple). The fallen Seraphim were broken-hearted and dismayed at what they saw as even further betrayals, but they would never lay down their swords, and the two sides clashed in a monumental battle. Though the regicidal Seraphim were powerful, the other side was more numerous. Both fighting in the name of the martyred Esther, the clash ended with half of each side fleeing, two of the Kingkiller Magisters having been killed by their counterparts. The Kingkillers escaped and hid in the jungles, the underground and in forgotten ruins, while the remaining Magisters helped to rebuild. A new king was crowned, though his ties to the former king were somewhat second-hand, and the capital was moved to Austrand, where it still is today. Rather than a Palace, the new king built a small temple and villa where he and all successive rulers have resided – within the people, rather than away from them.

The new king was one inspired by the actions of the valiant holy women who, though outnumbered by the powerful sisters-at-arms of the Kingkillers, managed to rally a larger number of the common people and lead them to victory with their passion and justice. He lifted all the laws that came to create this disaster to begin with and gave more power to the Inquisition, calling it “the mother of the law” and with the King’s throne being the symbolic father – but this new marriage would not be patriarchal, but mutual. And so, the situation in Sargasso bettered, and practically all of Adel is in the modern day agnostic to sex and with no institutional concept of inequality between them. And now, the “father of the law,” the King in Sargasso, is a girl, and all the concepts and history of animosity that led to this has been forgotten, as though the current state was the only one.

But the Kingkillers did not just disappear.

Rise of the Furies

The two surviving Magisters of the Kingkillers fled with their remaining Seraphim. They could not accept what had just occurred, and how they had been betrayed not only by the wretched King, but by their deluded sisters who chose to turn the other cheek at his ways. These wayward souls, beleaguered from killing their own, killing the innocent, and killing in general, had nothing to fight for anymore. In this state, their leaders vowed to labor until Sargasso was a ruin. Everything it represented would be brought to the primordial nothing, just as they had been cast off as nothing to the world.

Today, the Furies have both lost their original way as well as losing their way in general. It is unknown whether the two Magisters, the first Succubi, are still alive. What is known is that a succession of new Succubi leading new groups, some small as 10 persons and others as large as a hundred, hidden in Sargasso and even spreading to Emderuer, Andaliel and Noshiki in search of ancient weapons, as well as plunder to support themselves, or performing schemes to ruin the Theocracy that spawned them. While it would be accurate to call many of them bandits, that evokes a vision of rag-tag yokels on horseback – whereas the Furies are deadly women with distant-looking eyes, bodies covered in the strange steel of the Angels, wielding magical weapons and unholy hymns. Terrorists, too, is too simple a term for them. These beautiful nightmares are a tier of terror all their own.

Many of the current Furies are those still alive from the tumult hundreds of years back, but a lot are also new. Those that existed back then have killed for hundreds of years and their aura has been befouled, so that tendrils and wisps of black miasma seem to periodically lick across their bodies. This lends the Furies a great advantage over the Seraphim and any military force in Adel. While the Seraphim who fought them during the uprising are all dead, and new, inexperienced ones have taken their place, Furies’ wrath and hatred renders them ageless. The average Fury is a veteran of numerous battles and murders.

Furies are known to abduct girls and women and induct them into their ways. This is chiefly how they bolster their ranks, since they are averse to any scheme involving creating Furies from birth through natural reproduction – and would find difficult keeping the partners around nonetheless. Furies bind the stolen girls and use a variation of the Seraphim ritual where essence of either Koyki, Kaehma or Inunkuru is extracted second-hand from a Succubus and given to the new Fury to pervert her aura in the requisite ways. These are dubbed “nymphs” and the Succubus of a group always keeps one to herself, to mold into an apprentice, or otherwise use for whatever purposes she has. The rest are made to follow, either as combatants or, if the rituals fail to function well enough upon them, as mostly willing, mind-broken slaves. Some will eventually be full-fledged furies, by surviving long enough to scavenge a full suit of armor from dead sisters, or, rarely, by being given a new, foul artifact of their kind by the Succubus.

Sisters of the Headless Saint

The Furies exalt the broken body of Esther Benedictine as representing the brutality of the Sargassan people, for which all of them must suffer. The only suitable punishment, to them, is death for what was done to their saint and how her good intentions were abused by the royal line. They worship her death, while the Seraphim exalt in her life, works and philosophy, and seek to continue her good path rather than be led astray by the evil deeds done to her. To the Seraphim, the act of killing Esther was the test of their righteousness – they could have let their outrage destroy Sargasso, or they could have continued her dream, and they chose to keep her memory alive through works rather than to avenge her. This contrast is also shown in each side’s religious imagery. Furies decorate their hidden strongholds with depictions of a headless woman with bloodied wings, while Seraphim depict Esther warmly as she was in life. This divide is emblematic of their original differences but not of the current – new Seraphim know little about Furies until they are forced to battle them, and know even less about the events that brought them about.

The Furies divide their forces among a number of ranks, depending on a few factors.

Nymph: A nymph is a girl that has been given the Fury ritual. Her mind a tumultuous mix of terror, elation, lust and disgust all at once, they are skittery and distracted until they are able to muster their willpower. Nymphs are rarely given the armor that furies wear, which is made from the steel of fallen angels. They must instead collect their armor piece by piece from fallen furies until they’ve assembled the whole suit, or kill angels and use the material and whatever ingenuity they possess to create a tortured-looking suit for themselves. Nymphs are armed with whatever weapons they can scrounge up or that any merciful older sisters grant them to use. Each Succubus takes a personal nymph, considered the most beautiful and least mentally shattered of their current crop. Nymphs don’t usually do battle in great numbers – many are used as servants since not all kidnapped girls are capable of fighting, even after the rituals and brainwashing.

Lilim: Once a nymph gains a full suit, she becomes a Lilim. Though still relatively inexperienced, she is now able to survive battle and can grow into her new powers. They are armed with a variety of cast-off weapons unwanted by higher Furies. Lilim are the generalists among Furies, and the more numerous type, trying out different styles of combat to see what they take the most pleasure in using to kill others.

Delphyne: A Lilim that has gained enough experience in melee combat becomes a Delphyne. Her aura shapes her armor into numerous overlapping blade edges, making her difficult to strike and dangerous to be close to. She is armed with the best melee weapons collected by the group, and her ferocity is terrifying to behold.

Medusa: A Lilim that has gained enough experience in magical combat becomes a Medusa. Her blood courses with magic power, and whenever it is spilled in great quantity it lights into cursed flames. Medusa strike with magical attacks akin to those of an arcanist, choking cold clouds, evil-looking lightning and foul purple flames. Her armor glows with numerous odd runes and symbols, but becomes oddly thinner. She is also capable of fielding the technical knowledge of an average arcanist.

Harpy: A Lilim that showcases great speed and agility becomes a Harpy. She is given a special armor made from a Cephaetera angel, allowing her to fly. Whatever weapon she is equipped with, she is a terror to battle as she falls from the sky upon the enemies and then takes off again. Her boots become taloned and she can control them like she can her own fingers, and with more precision even. They serve as scouts and shock troops.

Banshee: A Lilim that who is looked to with admiring or covetous eyes by the rest of her sisters is trained into a Banshee. Banshee can tap into the emotions people have toward her. She is taught perversions of hymn songs that manipulate the minds of furies around her into fighting harder and shrugging off pain. She can sing them into a euphoric, lustful state to reduce pain or into a murderous frenzy to increase their power. She can sing terror into common mortals and nausea and sickness into Spirits. Banshee are armed only with a shotwand or hand crossbow and a small sword, and rarely fight in front of other furies. They can field the technical knowledge of spirits and rituals that a Cleric has.

Lamia: If the personal nymph taken on by the Succubus performs too poorly, she is discarded or kept only as a plaything. But if she is as outstanding as one raised under a hundred-plus year-old killing machine should be, the nymph is ascended through the ranks into a Lamia, the personal consort of the Succubus. She is the best armed and best taken-care-of of the Furies aside from the Succubus, and gets to bask in the leader’s centuries-old aura of devastation and hatred. This constant contact with such defiled and fallen essence grants the Lamia great power of her own, and she is always the second-strongest among the furies. Lamia act as personal spellcasters and caretakers to the Succubi, as well. Most nymphs are not “fit” to perform such “high” duties. This is the primary reason a personal Nymph is chosen in the first place.

Succubus: Either one of the two Kingkiller Magisters, or a number of early (or relatively young) Lamia beneath them who broke up to start their own paths to ruinous glory, the Succubus are terrifying to behold. Though armored in the same heavy plate as other furies, the glowing purple, red and black haze about them instantly unsettles any normal person beholding it. They are often adorned with the symbols of the threefold powers and curses and spells written in Old Adelian or in the Spirit tongue. Physically, they are tallest, most graceful and athletic of the Furies, and their faces are preserved in perfect beauty, giving them their name – they are definitely appealing, but their countenance can inspire no love even if it does lust. Succubi are proficient in all the terrible arts of the Furies, and they are the undisputed leaders of their warbands. Succubi do not reveal themselves if not necessary – they will send lesser Furies to do their bidding and remain in their hiding places, viewing through their eyes and communicating to their minds. Their motivations are manifold. Some are mere plunderers, who do not care any longer for the religious implications of their original crusade. Some wish to wipe every sargassan off the map. Others see Adel as a fallen place, and seek its cleansing in a new Cataclysm.

In addition, many warbands of furies ally with evil spirits, and some may even see fit to ally with Sorians, particularly if they think it would be entertaining to betray and battle the large, powerful lizardfolk after their shared work is completed. Particularly, Furies of Koyki will behave this way. Depending on their ideology and goals, many spirits might join their host and even partake in the same cruelties and depravities they perform on innocent adelians and sometimes even on each other.