Erut Tzau

Erut Tzau, known most commonly as the Speaker of Truths Unbearable but also by a wide variety of other epithets, is a powerful demon of the Hell of Desire.
His true form is said to be somewhat akin to a bipedal manticore, taking the form of a winged lion with horns and the tail of a scorpion, seemingly carved from a block of cinnabar.
Erut Tzau is said to be able to provide knowledge of any matter whatsoever, though he cannot give it directly; rather, he can only provide instruction on where one should look next, questions that one should ask, or experiments that one should try in order to deepen one's knowledge of the matter at hand. The answers that any such exploration might lead to are often unexpected and sometimes world-changing, but they are rarely complete and most often lead to more questions; it is all-too-easy for the curious to find themselves drawn into an ever-deepening maze of knowledge in the search of some tantalising truth which they become fixated on, but which will forever be outside of their grasp.
He is also willing to provide those who please him with assistance in following those directions of his, though he is known to insist that he cannot walk the path of knowledge for another being, and that they must discover truth themselves. The price for his assistance is steep, and often deeply esoteric in nature; the bargains that he strikes always come with the risk that the would-be-demonologist might default on them, and the penalty for doing so is inevitably that on death, the petitioner's soul is forfeit to him. Not infrequently he dispatches demonic servants to speed up the process of harvesting such souls that are his to claim.
The fate of souls that fall into Erut Tzau's hands is said to be uniquely awful, for when they are drawn to Aiskapekos they soon find themselves entrapped in the demon's great alchemical laboratory, there to be rendered down and transformed into reagents for his experiments. Erut Tzau is said to be particularly adept at distilling the essence of memories and emotional states from trapped souls, as well as more esoteric mental forms still.
Whilst some claim that Erut Tzau is interested only in the harvesting of mortal souls for his own purposes, a handful of scholars have theorised that he is perhaps more than he seems. Erut Tzau almost rarely exerts direct influence over mortals, and has never been known to force a pact on someone through coercion; he likewise appears to be incapable of directly lying, and whilst he can bend the truth or omit parts of it, he seems to find most kinds of deception to be more than a little distasteful. Some have speculated that his true intention in his activities is to teach mortals the true value of knowledge - though whenever asked of such things, Erut Tzau is said to smile enigmatically, and ask just how much the questioner really wants to know...

Divine Classification

Demon , Hamatarch

Species

Demon

Realm

Aiskapekos

Metaphysical Title
Hamatarch of Obsessive Knowledge
Masks and Aliases
Alchemist of Ruin
Eater of Cats
Lord of Cinnabar
Speaker of Truths Unbearable
Wise Manticore
Portfolio
Obsession
Esoterica
Alchemy
Secrecy