Immortals: The Ever Hungering

Necromancy is the foulest magic art that could be practiced on Adel. Adelians are often pragmatic about matters taboo, and often to their credit, but Necromancy is something they cannot countenance the presence of. The Intolerable War turned all of Adel into a battlefield – and in turn, into a graveyard. A Necromancer can raise a wisp or spawn from nearly any plot of dirt he or she could occupy on Adel’s surface, such has been the killing that the world has seen in its history.

But Adelians narrow the Undead into simply products of Necromancy at their own peril. There are a variety of creatures known to Adelians as Immortals, who are not products of a Necromancer’s dabbling. Rather they arise out of their own, as though demons inhabiting once-mortal flesh, sometimes to inflict wrack and ruin, and sometimes merely to sate their nihilistic pleasures. Sometimes they can be reasoned with, or even tolerated; but perhaps more often, they are a threat.

Origin of the Threat

The World of Adel is permeated by essence – the soulstuff of the world that occupies the bodies of living beings. When the Cataclysm tore apart the Lost World, it cut a deep wound into the planet that released its World-Soul, bleeding its magic energies unto the surface and out to the atmosphere. Once the world healed, the magic once caged within it gave birth to the spirits, and turned the remnants of the mortals into the prototypical Adelians who would become the races known today.

Essence permeates everything alive; in small quantities, it exists even in plants. When a creature dies, its essence is released from its body. Its aura, once a product of free-roaming essence orbiting around it, attracted to its soul, vanishes as the creature’s soul is released and joins the eternal flow. According to Aelian religious beliefs about death, the body left behind is no longer of consequence. What was special about that body was its unique palpitating essence-soul, the first breath of air taken by that child and held within it as it grew old, finally released now that it is dead, an accumulation of all the circumstances that creature had ever been in. The Adelians pray that this unique soul, now characterized by a lifetime of mortal experience, can enrich the world as it flows around it. The body is often buried to feed the Earth that so graciously held it, or it may be burnt.

But not all souls are pure and peaceful. Souls are interred within bodies that suffer numerous wracks. They may suffer the pain of being murdered or abused in some way. They may suffer from a compulsive need. They be marked by the horrible acts they are forced to commit, tied inexorably as they are to the consciousness of a mortal, fallible creature.

For most people, the release of death is a simple one. Others, however, suffer an aberrant apotheosis, becoming something hungry and powerful, something that was not fulfilled in life. The essence-soul becomes a black void within the body, and the remains rise as an Immortal, colloquially known as the Undead, forever characterized by predation.

The result is an Autochthonous Immortal. Most commonly, autochthonous Immortals arise from murder or from having a wicked soul. Someone who was obsessed about money, or incredibly hedonistic, will have nurtured a soul that will crave these material pleasures to excess, and force the body to continue seeking after them. Someone who was murdered in a gruesome or very cruel and unjust manner may rise from the dead to seek vengeance upon the murderer. These people retain their intelligence, and gain a host of new magical abilities, unlike the Spawn or Wisps that are raised by Necromancers.

Even if an Immortal was born with a singular goal (such as vengeance on one person), once completed the Immortal will continue to hunger for the same. He or she may seek out relatives of the person and wreak vengeance upon them, for example. It could even extend as far as friends if the need strikes. Other Immortals accumulate the objects of their desire, or otherwise seek to fulfill themselves constantly. While some Immortals have greater willpower than others, for most of them, their lusts must be fulfilled at least once or twice every few days. Failure to do so will just drive them ever more unhinged.

Because of the transformation of their souls, Immortals are constantly under the threat that their essence will implode. This phenomenon is poorly understood, but the soul of an Immortal is not a growing thing like a mortal’s. It does not strengthen and it cannot be nurtured. It merely feeds, on itself if it has to. As such, aside from their material lusts, Immortals must seek creative ways to replenish their souls, often through predation on mortals who have normal souls.

Classification, Powers, Modus Operandi

The Immortals aren’t a single, unified force, but rather numerous different individuals and factions with different powers and goals. Though similar in origin, all immortals have a different obsession that drives them. While Adelians are not completely aware of all the circumstances behind each resurrection, these are the facts they’ve recorded. Much of it may be speculation, and is drawn from a variety of disparate sources such as congressional inquiries, religious literature and medical journals. Perhaps, you may encounter creatures behaving wildly different from these accounts.

Vampires: A Vampire is an Immortal born often of a wealthy person who had too many possessions and too little discipline for them. Many medical manuals describe how young aristocrats come down with illnesses after short, poorly-lived existences of great greed and debauchery, and how from their very deathbeds they stood the next day demanding breakfast and wine, or calling a tailor for new finery, or other such nonsense, seemingly unaware that they had died previously.

A Vampire’s nature is to Covet and their scientific Adelian name is Lussuria Autochtonae. Vampires are said to be less harmful than other Immortals, perhaps because there are few of them and perhaps because they tend to come from the privileged class, who more easily finds excuse and innocence for their problems. A Vampire satisfies its immortal needs through excess. Most commonly, vampires accrue enormous hordes of clothing, jewelry, artwork and other things, until their manses become clogged with their possessions. Some Vampires have more peculiar tastes, such as a desire to drink constantly or take a lot of drugs (usually opium, the bane of the aristocrat). Most Vampires are eccentric, having some kind of nervous tick, however subtle. The vast majority are good looking and their bodies never get out of shape despite their excesses.

Vampires are aligned with Water and draw sustenance for their souls from Blood. Some vampires have it easy – they may have lovers or servants who volunteer blood to them. Others have to be underhanded or downright violent in order to get theirs. While a few vampires live in cities or towns, often incognito, most of them seclude themselves with a few trusted servants. Should one run into a strange villa in the middle of nowhere, it is likely to be owned by one such eccentric undead.

Often, Vampires who live long enough will accrue a strange number of abilities, including the use of Necromancy, the ability to manipulate shadows to slip by enemies or move through objects, and other improbably magics.

Ghoul: A Ghoul is an immortal born from a horrific and often pitiable circumstance, such as a tragic drowning in a storm, or from hunger. Reports from various Guard detachments who have gone to scenes of drownings have sometimes failed to find corpses even in closed water sources like wells. People have been lost in deserts and never found. While superstition abounds, there is a known relation between such isolated deaths and the rising of a ghoul, a very physical Immortal.

A Ghoul’s nature is to Hunger and their scientific Adelian name is Fames Autochtonae. Ghouls are not very intelligent anymore, and have little in the way of self-control. They are like autonomous Spawn – rather than following the orders of a necromancer and having no mind of their own, Ghouls labor for their own satisfaction in the flesh of others. Ghouls are cannibals, and will eat any vulnerable humanoid that they can find, trying to suck the air out of their lungs (if drowned), the water out of their bodies (if dessicated) or merely to enjoy the feast life would not give them (if starved).

Ghouls are aligned with the Earth and draw essence from the flesh of mortals. Ghouls are very physically strong, said to feel no pain, to run very fast, and to have the strength to lift and throw an adult with their bare hands.

Wraith: A Wraith is an immortal born of vengeance and hatred. Clergy all over Adel have recorded peculiar hauntings and misfortunes befalling local, often prominent men and women, and their own seeming inability to prevent them. Often these travails end in the death of the targeted person, after which the Clergyperson discovers a more malignant force behind the murder than previously reckoned. Though it is often too late to stop a Wraith before significant harm is done, there have been many clever and intrepid arcanists and clergypersons who have managed to do so, and recorded their experience.

Often, a Wraith can go about its dark work because its victim is supposed innocent. But most Wraiths are born of truly terrible circumstances. Lovers scorned, rivals buried, envy swelling upon the town; various events can lead to the accident or event that kills a person, and triggers their change into a Wraith. The Wraith is a stealthy, gaseous undead predator, the void-soul wrapped in the shadows, dust and ashes of its former self, and seeking only revenge for what it suffered.

A Wraith’s nature is to Hate, and their scientific name is Nemesis Autochtonae. Wraiths are dark thoughts embroiled in a cloak of inky darkness, swooping from shadow to shadow. They can possess people, who often aren’t even aware of what they are doing or why until the Wraith vacates their bodies. They can seize objects and manipulate them to dark purpose. From their void-soul they draw foul energies with which they can smite their enemies, squeezing essence out of them.

Wraiths are aligned with Fire, and draw essence by forcibly ripping it from bodies. As a Wraith strikes at its target, chipping away at it with carefully plotted misfortune and woe, it relishes the pain it causes until its target dies.

Phantom: A Phantom is an immortal born of lamentation and unfulfilled hopes and dreams. The Phantom is perhaps the most pitiable of the Immortals, because unlike the Vampire it can hardly ever satisfy its needs, and because those needs are often far less reprehensible than the ravenings of the other Immortals. Arcanists are just as often called to study and exorcise strange presences as clergy are. From their records are drawn most sightings of Phantoms. Because Arcanists tend to be very detail-minded and obsessed with academic publishing, they are more likely than the clergy to seek after the whole histories of the places they’re exorcising, to experiment within the location, and create a detailed report of numerous findings.

As such, we know that Phantoms are an imprint of a person’s essence on the world. The Void-Soul itself is the entire shape of the person, turned gaseous and incorporeal but still presenting a coherent form. A promising academic who died young and unfulfilled, a death on a wedding day, a soldier who failed to protect his or her home – all these tragic deaths, borne from a seemingly callous Fate, can generate a suffering Phantom doomed to a cage of pseudo-mortality.

A Phantom’s nature is to Yearn, and their scientific name is Hostia Autochtonae. Phantoms share many abilities of Wraiths, but not the motivation to use them. At least, not always. Phantoms exist for so very long that they often come completely unhinged, alone and unable to satisfy their longings, often incapable of leaving an area to which they are bound, such as their hometown, or the academy within which their careers went awry, or the cemetery where their bodies lay. Phantoms are characterized by their desires, by all the hopes they had and the objectives they have not accomplished, but long for.

Cruelly, a Phantom is aligned to Air. Phantoms draw essence from their environment, because their void-souls are greatly expanded (they encompass the whole of the body). It takes a very, very long time for a Phantom to sputter and dissipate on its own. Phantoms are almost certain to exist in their wretched states for much longer than would be kind.

Necromancers And Necromancy

While most Immortals work alone, seeking after their own needs, they can be rallied in numbers, often by Necromancers. A Necromancer is an arcanist devoted solely to the study and control of death and the dead. Necromancy is very difficult to learn properly, and Necromantic spells are difficult to cast. While most arcane spells are cast primarily with one vector (a part of the body through which energy is channeled), Necromancy must be cast with the whole body. To help channel energy through their bodies, Necromancers often have numerous silver body piercings – typically they pierce the tongue, chest, navel, hand web, feet web, and the genitals. The silver serves as a conduit for magic energy through the chakras.

Often, the Necromancer’s initiation, if performed by another Necromancer, involves a tortorous process of applying these piercings, displaying a willingness to suffer (and be humiliated or abused by the master) for the craft. The Necromancer then learns various rituals for the use of bodies. The most common summoning a Necromancer can perform creates Wisps, little ghostly balls of essence in an incoherent shape, that attack quickly and sputter out just as fast. Necromancers seeking more permanent and mindless minions create Spawn, skeletons and zombies raised out of the ground.

More advanced rites allow the Necromancer to do the unthinkable – and either kill someone or raise an already dead corpse into one of the previously mentioned Immortal types, against their own will. The Necromancer treads on dangerous ground, however, by invoking these rites. Such creatures are difficult to control, and even the most experienced Necromancers may overlook a lapse in their protective magic and find their necks between the fangs of a ghoul.

Always experimenting, Necromancers have created various new types of undead. They can stitch together humanoid Eenaw from the body parts of several corpses in various degrees of freshness. Eenaw are humanoids with minds of their own born from a twisted necromantic ritual, obedient necromantic servants to help with their surgeries and tasks – or to guard the lairs of Necromancers. Eenaw whose masters are killed often escape and pursue their own ends.

For as long as he or she maintains control over the creatures she’s created, the Necromancer has a ready-made organization, often one that may, if too bold, attract the attention of the Guard or of local adventurers.

Of all Necromancers, the most powerful are those women who swear themselves to the Furies of Sargasso. The Furies, particularly the Carrion Legion cult, perform a rite upon the Necromancer that removes her heart, giving her immortality and greater power. However, the heart is preserved and kept by the leader of the Fury Cult, the Succubus. As such, the Succubus has complete control over the Necromancer. She may become a right-hand woman, a prestigious ritualist among the cult, or just another plaything for the Furies – and often the decision to join is made without quite knowing which will come of it. Should the Necromancer try to defy or escape the Succubus, her heart will be tortured, causing her pain; the heart can also be crushed, causing instant and agonizing death. As such the Necromancer often trades her freedom and receives incredible power.

Necromancers joining the Furies are not Furies themselves, however. They do not undergo the Freyja procedure. Though they wear angel-steel armor and carry Fury weapons, and serve among them, they are not as physically strong or as resilient in battle. But they do offer a malicious new variety of spells to the Fury warband, so they are welcomed. As usual, Furies do not accept male necromancers among their ranks, and will kill any of them who show themselves.