The Chaos Demon Scroll ( The Scroll of Ixonal )
"How can you say you remember a thing from before time? You've cracked Tathalion!" Said the man to the hulking troll beside him. He was of strong build near 2 meter tall, but looked like a child next to his companion. He wiped a cloth over his face - olive skin, large hooked nose, dark eyes and lashes accentuated with now streaked kohl. In one hand was his dented and dusty steel open-faced helm. His tight napped black hair was cut and shaped into the likeness of small ram horns and set with bone and wood bands and tips.
" It's a Fae thing. Some of us can recall things from past lives. Sometimes if ya think real hard. Sometimes in dreams. Sometimes like this... you see it and it comes back." The troll stood with arms raised holding up the stone lid of the four meter by three box. Faint scales visible on his muddy brown skin, square face with a potato for a nose with pointed ears and short black bull's horns tipped in white sticking out of his blue-black mane. His violet eyes in their deep cavern sockets, locked on the contents of the box, a white scroll set between handles of black bone, shot through with veins of silver and pulsing luminous red. "I tell you, this is the Chaos Demon scroll, but when I was guarding my High Fae Master in the Demon Age war it was called Ixonal, the Breaker of Laws. Ixonal destroyed cities of Demons. I was there again thousands of years later, I recall the Taurien fighting the Damamila, someone used it and it devoured both the armies. And now we meet again."
Summary
In the ancient Demon Age a dimensional crack was contained in a scroll and within the crack was contained some primordial thing of Rage and Chaos with Godlike power. It was called the Scroll of Ixonal - though it is unclear if this was the maker, the creature or the substance of the scroll. The holder of the scroll might summon the creature forth (generally called the Chaos Demon) and command it, at least partially. The legends say as often as not the Chaos Demon destroyed everything within reach for a period of time, summoner included, and then returned to it's container to sleep hidden for centuries.
All the records agree that the scroll is a white substance that is indestructable, coiled around a rod of black material of a texture like bone, but shot through with fine veins of faintly glowing and pulsing silver and red.
All the records agree that the scroll is a white substance that is indestructable, coiled around a rod of black material of a texture like bone, but shot through with fine veins of faintly glowing and pulsing silver and red.
Historical Basis
The Chaos Demon scroll is reported to be an ancient device, a spell and a container for a creature of Chaos and fury. The documented history dates to the earliest Taurien records when nomadic tribes started settling and working copper and characters were first set to hide and clay. Somewhere about the second century of writing and letter marking, the Taurien had trade with giants one-eyed people to the south, likely the Damamila who later became the undead Dead Kings or fled their kingdoms to become savage tribes of barbarian raiders. The Taurien wrote that there was a war between two great Kings of the Southern Giants, and one brought forth a white scroll marked with blood and silver. From the scroll came a huge beast of unequal form - neither arms, legs nor tails matched as sets. It's very form shivered and shifted but also without color - stark white and black bands and stripes that flowed and shifted across the thing. It waded across the battle, each step and motion a separate Warp Storm, transforming flesh to wood, stone, living bone, self consuming flame or shapeless goo. Others tossed away, swept up and dropped elsewhere or elsewhere dropped on the warriors - gouts of fire, pillars of water, meters of snow and ice. Parts shuffled and mixed. The creature strode to the city of the other King and it ceased to be, the entirety turned to dust and sand. Everything surviving fled.
The Chaos Demon Scroll appears again several times in the Bronze age as Taurien and Damamila Kings warred with each other. The Scroll is used and the same creature and effects are seen, except it destroys both sides and is lost for nearly 800 years before appearing and destroying a Dwarven stronghold under the ground and being believed lost. A few stories exist of a mage or some warlord laying hands on it and it consuming them and their towns, villages or guarded keeps. And then it goes dark again before the end of the the Bronze age kingdoms of Taurien and the fall of the Damamila.
Next is recorded a story of the Shadows Period (late T: 3900's): That adventurers found a lost crypt of Corrupted and foul Dead Kings origin. They battled and gained many treasures within the ruin and one of them, a Troll, found the scroll and recalled his past lives around it. He related his memories, named it the Scroll of the Ixonal and tried to destroy it. Neither fire, magics or blows from blades or hammers could mark it and the Troll, Tathalion, fled to hide the thing once more, swearing that the Gods meant him to guard it from any who sought it.
The most recent report of the Chaos Demon is some 1798 years ago in the far north. A Sidereal High Fae called The Drinker of Light covered hundreds of miles in gloom. It's Horde, Heart and Hand, as well as the Sidereal itself consumed the light of any torch, lantern or candle as well as any pleasures of happiness from the mortals within it's gloom. Many sought to destroy or drive back the Drinker for nearly a hundred years until it seemingly vanished in the night. It's throne and lands had been ravaged as if by armies of thousands - burnt, twisted, and ruined with heaps of rotting flesh that not even the vultures or ravens would touch. The sages and learned all agreed it had to have been the Chaos Demon, but none stood up to claim the deed who could explain it nor produce the Scroll. None knows who or what wielded it or what became of it and no story has come to any of the Naming Races in the whole Inner Sea region of even a sight of the Scroll.
The Chaos Demon Scroll appears again several times in the Bronze age as Taurien and Damamila Kings warred with each other. The Scroll is used and the same creature and effects are seen, except it destroys both sides and is lost for nearly 800 years before appearing and destroying a Dwarven stronghold under the ground and being believed lost. A few stories exist of a mage or some warlord laying hands on it and it consuming them and their towns, villages or guarded keeps. And then it goes dark again before the end of the the Bronze age kingdoms of Taurien and the fall of the Damamila.
Next is recorded a story of the Shadows Period (late T: 3900's): That adventurers found a lost crypt of Corrupted and foul Dead Kings origin. They battled and gained many treasures within the ruin and one of them, a Troll, found the scroll and recalled his past lives around it. He related his memories, named it the Scroll of the Ixonal and tried to destroy it. Neither fire, magics or blows from blades or hammers could mark it and the Troll, Tathalion, fled to hide the thing once more, swearing that the Gods meant him to guard it from any who sought it.
The most recent report of the Chaos Demon is some 1798 years ago in the far north. A Sidereal High Fae called The Drinker of Light covered hundreds of miles in gloom. It's Horde, Heart and Hand, as well as the Sidereal itself consumed the light of any torch, lantern or candle as well as any pleasures of happiness from the mortals within it's gloom. Many sought to destroy or drive back the Drinker for nearly a hundred years until it seemingly vanished in the night. It's throne and lands had been ravaged as if by armies of thousands - burnt, twisted, and ruined with heaps of rotting flesh that not even the vultures or ravens would touch. The sages and learned all agreed it had to have been the Chaos Demon, but none stood up to claim the deed who could explain it nor produce the Scroll. None knows who or what wielded it or what became of it and no story has come to any of the Naming Races in the whole Inner Sea region of even a sight of the Scroll.
Spread
The legend and histories are known to many scholars and researchers of Imperial (including Fae), Taurien and presumably Dead Kings domains. Harrowlanders, barbarians and the peasants of the Empire speak of the Chaos demon as the source of Warp Storms, though they know only it is black and white and is of no fixed form. Indeed it is a thing which hates order and stability and so is constantly throwing it's attacks at the world from somewhere in the western Sea.
Unknown to the Inner Sea region, there is far to the south a region called Inx. In the Inx region roughly 500 years ago, there was a wizard of unrivaled might who brought the whole of the Inx region to it's knees before the various races united to destroy him. This Wizard was called Bihigan and he used an artifact to summon a monster of stark black and white, patterned in shifting stripes and bands, a thing which shifted and changed the very laws of nature, magic and the spirits. Everything it came in contact with was destroyed or changed/ transformed forever.
The only thing that stopped it was that it seemed to weaken over time and within a half hour returned to whence it came. The thing was last seen in the final battle of the united armies and heroes of the age against Bihigan and his minions, on his island stronghold. After the battles, the island was set with guardians and powerful magics and spirits, and his fortress sealed across dimensions and with magical wards so than none could ever find and gather Bihigan's secrets and artifacts from the ruins. It is widely suspected that various beings under Bihigan's control snatched what treasures they could and fled at the end of the War.
The only thing that stopped it was that it seemed to weaken over time and within a half hour returned to whence it came. The thing was last seen in the final battle of the united armies and heroes of the age against Bihigan and his minions, on his island stronghold. After the battles, the island was set with guardians and powerful magics and spirits, and his fortress sealed across dimensions and with magical wards so than none could ever find and gather Bihigan's secrets and artifacts from the ruins. It is widely suspected that various beings under Bihigan's control snatched what treasures they could and fled at the end of the War.
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