Altered Wailer – (Demon)
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Demon)
Description: Commonly referred to as ‘reapers of souls’ by the people of Eorzea, demons are particularly rife throughout the folklore of Hydaelyn. It is a common opinion amongst scholars of the Void that demons were once members of the spoken races of the thirteenth shard, corrupted into mindless soldiers of dark entities when the shard was flooded by the Void. These creatures were once Wood Wailers of Gridania, who were tragically mutated by the perverse rituals employed by the voidsent of the Manor.
The Wood Wailers are an organisation of lancers within Gridania that date back to the city-state’s founding. Garrisoned across the Shroud in watchtowers and settlements, the Wood Wailers extend patrols across the woods to keep the peace and protect the compact between Gridania and the elementals of the Twelveswood. The masks of the Wood Wailers are intended to emphasize their willingness to protect the forest at all costs, even should it anger the elementals, but as any scholar acquainted with the Twelveswood will tell you, the elementals have no need of facial recognition to tell one spoken from another, thus they are largely ceremonial.
The Imps ☠
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Imp/Devilet)
Description: Low-ranking voidsent of the twelfth rung of the voidal hierarchy, imps are nimble, cunning creatures with a mischievous streak. That these are capable of magics, even minor ones, suggests that they are instead devilets, eleventh ranked variants of the imp capable of magic. There were a few forms of imps in the manor during its re-cleansing, the first of which were named acrobats, likely in reference to the skittering, agile nature of the imps movement. Greater than these was the manor jester, a particularly powerful devilet who was also fought previously during the initial purge of the manor, but must have been re-summoned to entertain the house’s new dark lady.
Capabilities: The jester was particularly powerful, and seems to have specialized in necromancy, summoning wights to fight alongside it and, given the chance, reforming them into a single, larger wight in order to reincarnate the steward, a slain wight of particular strength that fought alongside the jester in its first battle.
The Succubi
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Succubus)
Description: A particularly insidious variant of the voidsent which occupies the fourth and fifth rungs of the voidal hierarchy, signifying a high rank in the minds of the realm’s scholars. This may be due to their noteworthy intellect, but it should be noted that the voidal hierarchy is a construct of our realm and does not hold authority over the void’s inhabitants own perceptions of their home. Succubi such as these operate by possessing the corpses of spoken women, and can occasionally be observed as taking on certain personality traits of their deceased hosts, which is unusual even amongst the voidsent. The first succubi encountered bore the name claviger. A claviger is a key-keeper of an estate or organization, and the title can also be taken to mean a guard or warden. In this case these figures were likely the guardians of the manor in life. Halicarnassus, the new lady of the Manor, was able to summon to her those succubi that inhabited the corpses of the Dartancours’ maidservants, as well as the being that inhabited Lady Amandine Dartancours’ corpse itself.
Capabilities: These succubi were observed by those who stormed the manor as being able to emit large waves of voidal power described as a ‘dark mist’ which not only damaged the victim’s body with its entropic power, but also disrupted one’s mind is a white-hot terror. These included infusing her blade with a baleful entropy and assaulting a foe with it, which coupled with the succubi’s outwardly beautiful aspect led to the technique being named ‘sweet steel’ by those adventurers that dodged its fatal caress.
Manor Warden
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Ogre)
Description: Ogres are immensely strong and similarly immensely stupid voidsent that occupy the ninth rank of the voidal hierarchy. They are often enslaved by more powerful voidsent, or even by talented void mages because of this low intelligence. These creatures were evidently summoned by Halicarnassus to act as guards, judging by the warden title ascribed them by the Wood Wailers.
Manor Sentry – (Gargoyle)
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Gargoyle)
Description: Gargoyles are voidsent that occupy the seventh and sixth ranks on the voidal hierarchy. They manifest by possessing rock, and when their essence is banished to the void this rock will often retain its fel shape, leading to comparisons with the gargoyles so often found on ornate buildings and thus their name.
The Wights
Taxonomy: Ashkin (Wight)
Description: Dangerous creatures typically believed animated by dark sorcery, wights are skeletal undead spoken possessed by an enduring hatred of the living. The wights on the upper floors were likely the corpses of House Dartancours’ servants, specifically butlers, higher ranking servants that presided over the maintenance of a household. In the basement were more heavily armed, presumably once footmen in service to the Dartancours, judging by evidence found on their bodies.
Manor Sentry – (Ahriman)
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Ahriman)
Description: Fourth and fifth ranked voidsent, Ahriman are powerful creatures with a prodigious ability for manipulating aether both for propulsion and as a means of attack. Voidsent access our mortal plane by possessing the eyes of animals. It is unclear if this particular creature was the same one that had been assigned as a guardian of Amandine and was responsible for kidnapping victims of the lady’s mad rituals, or if it is a new ahriman entirely. It did retain the same tendency to flee as the first ahriman however.
Capabilities: The sentry was capable of employing the common aetheric manipulation of the ahriman, namely earth aether in the form of a typical ‘stone’ spell. The creature was also able to use a technique often mimicked by the blue mages inspired by the Whalaqee tribe of the New World, commonly named ‘Level 5 Petrify’. This technique relies on inflicting an aetheric curse upon the target, which will take advantage of mental weaknesses within the victim and result in petrification if they are too weak to resist.
Ash ☠
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Arch Demon)
Description: Arch Demons occupy the fourth rank of the voidal hierarchy, and typically manifest on the Source by inhabiting the corpses of livestock, and although they are capable of speech the rotted throats and tongues of their hosts inhibit this, reducing their speech to gurgles and grunts. Their limited physicality does not extend to their control of aether however, which allows them to form solid blades of energy, which they can control at will.
Capabilities: Ash’s ability to manifest and control blades of aether was prodigious, it was able to unleash ‘abyssal swings’ and create a dark, ‘tenebrous missile’ out of an axe, swinging it towards his foes. It was also able to create ‘ghostly spears’, executing their foes as if through the use of a ‘prime guillotine’, able even to open portals to the void and cast spears through them to surprise a foe. It was also able to weave aether into a globe of blades and plunge them inwards to impale a target, an experience so traumatic that it also often paralyzed a victim with fear, should they survive it.
Congealed Blood
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Flan)
Description: Lowly ranked inhabitants of the 10th rung of the voidal hierarchy, the humble flan is a terrible beast capable of mimicking language crudely as a trapping tactic. Academic opinion is that these vile creatures form out of matter that comes into contact with the all-consuming, all-destroying influence of the Void.
Altered Wailer – (Taurus)
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Taurus)
Description: Seventh ranked voidsent within the voidal hierarchy, taurus are mostly notable for being a favorite of voidsent summoners throughout history. Slain livestock have been popular sacrifices for as long as history can recall, and taurus prefer such sacraments as their hosts on the Source, creating an easy coincidence where such rituals will commonly bring forth taurus voidsent. Evidently the succubi of the Manor were able to force taurus into hosts they did not prefer, namely spoken instead of livestock.
Writhing Statues
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Vodoriga)
Description: The vodoriga are a species of voidsent that specialize in possessing inorganic matter such as statues.
Capabilities: These vodoriga were able to channel energies through their eyes, in a technique named ‘terror eyes’, perhaps because of the fear experienced by those subjected to it.
Halicarnassus ☠
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Succubus)
Description: Those few scholars of the void that have managed to obtain a measure of insight testify that Halicarnassus is a succubus of particular power and authority amongst her kind. As with many voidsent, Halicarnassus’ true name is not the one she went by in her negotiations with Amandine, but Halicarnassus is instead a name given to her by Lady Amandine Dartancours from an ancient folk tale. This tale seems to have involved a figure who was queen of a dimensional castle, and who shared the exaggerated femininity of the succubi.
Capabilities: Just as with other succubi, Halicarnassus was able to summon forth a body of harmful ‘dark mist’. Perhaps her signature ability, however, was to unleash a ‘blood rain’ of blades from above, which cleave the flesh. What’s more, if these blades come into contact with another voidsent Halicarnassus is able to use their essence to deal a calamitous blow. As one might expect, Halicarnassus was able to release a potent ‘beguiling mist’ which was able to supplant the will of those it came into contact with, briefly seducing them to her will.
Etymology Notes: Halicarnassus was a Greek colony in Anatolia notable for three things; it retained a monarchy when the Greek city states chose republicanism as their method of governance, it chose loyalty to the Persian Empire over the growing Greek resistance and it contained the magnificent Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the ancient wonders of the world. The folklore that Halicarnassus was named for is the same one that the boss of Deltascape 3.0 was based on.
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