InfernalsYetAnotherTakeOnThePhylacteryWomb

From Exaltedcursejar

Revision as of 22:19, 8 April 2009

Alternative the First

Lillun, the Warden of Twisted Fate

• Lillun is still the vessel of the fifty shards. However, there are two differences.
  • One: she is not in the state of horror-show grotesquerie as portrayed in the Infernals book. She sits empty-eyed in a small room, locked in a permanent catatonic stupor from the horrors she has endured at the hands of the Ebon Dragon thus far; when he took her back to Hell with him, he whispered things in her delicate ears that no mortal mind could withstand, horrors and temptations and truths beyond imagining, until her mind broke. Now she sits in a chair by a beautifully wrought window of iron and green glass, with a panoramic view of the Demon City, and stares at the hellish green landscape her world has become. Sometimes she weeps, or even calls for her parents, if she's lucid. But usually, she stares out the window like a living doll. This room is a mockery of a young girl's private chambers, filled with all manner of toys and playthings, most of them forged of iron or brass. She is tended by demon servants who must feed and clothe her, for she will starve and die if left to her own devices. Occasionally a child is stolen from Creation to become her playmate, but they rarely, if ever, survive the ordeal.
  • Two: the shards are not stored within her body. Rather, she acts as an arcane link for the shards, their destiny grafted onto hers. She holds in her hands an enormous brass jar of what might appear, at a first glance, to be fireflies. These are the fifty Solar Exaltations stolen from the Jade Prison, rewired to this artificial "womb" by artifice and inauspicious wards. The shards themselves remain whole, until they enter the demon which then delivers it to a chosen mortal. The demon's nature and tainted Essence begins its work at that moment, and when the mortal accepts the Yozi's blessing and enters the Chrysalis Grotesque, the changes to mind and body - and the Essence itself - begin, as the Yozi takes a personal hand in shaping that power to its specifications.

Alternative the Second

The Demon Empress, Mother of Champions

• Long ago, the woman who would become the Scarlet Empress made a pact with the Yozi to gain control of the Imperial Manse and push back the rampaging Fair Folk beyond the borders of the world. All bargains must, in time, eventually be fulfilled, and so it was that the Ebon Dragon went one dark Calibration to claim his prize. Little did the Empress realize what being the bride of one of the mad creatures sealed away eons ago actually meant...
  • Revered by her "children" as Mother, the Dragon's Bride travels alongside her husband on a palanquin when she must appear for formal occasions. She retains the ageless beauty of an elder Exalt... and her womb is hugely swollen, bloated and constantly gravid with the fifty Exaltations stolen from a magic prison in the depths of Creation's waters. Occasionally one will float too close to the surface and flicker, with an eerie light. (The extraction process is just as described canonically otherwise.) As far as can be told - rather than feel horror at the mixture of labor and copulation, the broken mad Empress of Hell seems rather to delight in her newfound position. After all, she is immortal and beloved by all, and has been promised Creation when her husband breaks it upon the wheel.