Nyx
Overview
Originating from sorcerers touched by the Plane of Shadow, the Bloodline of Nyx excels in harnessing magic related to illusion, darkness, fear, and stealth. They serve as House Magia's premier spies and founts of forbidden lore. A sabotaged ritual decimated the bloodline thirty years ago, fusing the minds and souls of the slain sorcerers into a monstrous entity half-bound to the Shadow Plane. Ominously permeating the dark spaces of the city, the whispers of these sorcerers now echo through Cruxis as Murmur, a spectral, unsettling guardian. The remaining members, unscathed and emboldened, persist in toiling towards their progenitor's revival and apotheosis.
SummaryDetails
Origins
Nyx bore the burden of a lineage uniquely attuned to the Plane of Shadows. She was intelligent and perceptive, her keen mind often several steps ahead of her contemporaries. She shared Isarne's unyielding passion for knowledge, especially the arcane and forbidden secrets that lay hidden in the universe's darkest corners. This intelligence, however, was coupled with an intense and pervasive paranoia fostered by sudden glimpses into the darkened realm that fueled her magic. She saw potential threats and conspiracies everywhere, her world revolving around the ever-present belief of malevolent intent directed against her. Her paranoia led to isolation from even her closest friends, driving her to retreat deeper into her world of shadows and illusions where she held control. As the labyrinthine mind behind the sprawling Undercrux beneath Cruxis, her paranoia became the shadowy scaffolding of a subterranean haven, a maze-like lair hiding secrets and preserving the legacy of a lineage that thrived within the arcane dark.
Motivations and Goals
The Shadows are the embodiment of Nyx's desire for knowledge and power, their pursuits twined in the mysteries of the arcane and the forbidden. In the depths of the Undercrux, in the most sacred and secluded chambers of their sanctums, the Shadows are striving to achieve the impossible - to bring their progenitor, Nyx, back from oblivion. For centuries, they have combed through her writings, deciphered her encrypted messages, and conducted countless experiments. All in the hope of understanding the depths of Nyx's powers and the true nature of her disappearance. The Shadows believe that Nyx is not truly gone. Her essence, they conjecture, is trapped between life and death within the Plane of Shadow, a power they believe Nyx discovered and harnessed during her lifetime. Their goal is to pierce this veil, to reach into the nether and pull the essense of their ancestor back into the world.
But in their desperation and audacity, the Shadows seek not only to resurrect Nyx; they wish to elevate her to a divine status. To them, Nyx is not merely a prodigious ancestor; she represents the embodiment of their ideals, the epitome of what they strive to be: to hold absolute dominion over one's reality, where belief holds sway over truth. Motivated by a paranoid zeal, they sear a path toward a future where their forebear reigns as the avatar of Vila, the capricious goddess of darkness. Their grand scheme, which they call Ascension, is a gamble of cosmic proportions, a testament to their desperate yearning for their progenitor's guidance. More than heresy, it is a direct challenge to the hierarchy of the Gods, daring to strip Vila of her divine mantle to bestow it upon Nyx as an earthly deity, one who would guide the Shadows not from the distant heavens, but from their own midst.
The scale and complexity of this ritual demands an unfathomable expenditure of resources, knowledge, and power. Despite the severity of their transgressions, House Magia's influence shelters the Shadows from immediate retribution, allowing them to delve deeper and deeper into sacrilege with a brazen sense of impunity. At all hours, the convoluted halls of the Undercrux echo with whispers of their plot. Here, in the belly of the city, deranged arcane scholars delve into forbidden lore, assassins sharpen their blades, and spies spin intricate webs of deception, all working tirelessly to resurrect their matron and elevate her from shadow to divinity.
Role Within Magia
As part of House Magia and through their alliance with the corsairs of House Silversail, the Shadows play a crucial role in intelligence and subterfuge. They harvest and sow information, rumors, and gossip in every corner of Pauza, ensuring no secret stays hidden for long from the sorcerers and their allies. Their skill in manipulation and control is unrivaled, their spies cloaked in illusion and deceit. Like the shifting shadows they command, they're unseen but ever-present, their influence weaving through the heart of the house.
Conversely, the Shadows also ensure the right secrets remain hidden. Their ruthlessness is their strength, the whispers of their power adding an extra layer of fear and respect to House Magia. They serve as the house's hidden blade, striking swiftly and silently from the shadows when the need arises. Yet they are more than mere assassins; they are the architects of illusion and misinformation, creating a labyrinth of half-truths and uncertainties to protect the house.
The Bloodline of Shadows also oversees the worship of Vila in Cruxis, which boasts the largest temple dedicated to the goddess in Pauza. With minute alterations, the Shadows subtly divert prayers meant for the goddess to inch closer to their own goal of elevating Nyx to divinity. The irony isn't lost on the inner echelons of the Shadows; they orchestrate the grandest devotion to a cosmic order they intend to tear down.
Finally, the enduring enmity between House Magia and House Dovraga can be traced back to the Shadows' covert but bloody campaign of retribution against the latter. Motivated by the belief that the Inquisitors sabotaged the ritual that slew half their kin and ultimately birthed Murmur, the Shadows have ensured that the feud remains alive and heated.
Values and Beliefs
The Shadows hold self-preservation, power, and knowledge in high esteem, echoing the core beliefs of their progenitor. They are the custodians of forbidden secrets, drawing power from the mysteries they guard and the fear they instill. Trust is a commodity rarely spent within their ranks, their paranoia reinforcing their insularity and adding a sharp edge to their unity. They see the pursuit of heretical knowledge not as a sin, but as a testament to their audacity and intellect. To them, the natural order is but a mutable hierarchy, another secret to unravel, and their ambitions to disrupt it with Ascension exemplify the defiant spirit and unyielding determination all sorcerers should champion.
Leadership
Authority within the Shadows is held by the Five Vespers, ancient Simulacrums of Nyx herself. These beings, crafted from the deepest shadows and memories of their progenitor, reign as Cruxis' five highest heralds of Vila. Their commanding presence belies their age and the severity of their rampancy. Once the paragons of Nyx's cunning and paranoid intellect, the Vespers now tread the blurry line between control and chaos. They view themselves as embodiments of Nyx, the entire Shadow Bloodline, and the will of their goddess, all one and the same. Their minds are fragmented, the result of unending years of existence as mirror constructs, but even within their deteriorating state, they hold true to their core purpose with increasing urgency: to uphold Nyx's legacy, to guide her bloodline, and to see the fruition of Ascension.
Notable Members
Murmur, The Accident
Thirty years ago, The Sixth Vesper, the Vesper of Darkness, led her followers in a primitive attempt at the ritual intended to retrieve Nyx from the Plane of Shadow. Rather than achieving their intended goal, the sorcerers seemingly destroyed themselves. In the months that followed, Cruxis began to experience a series of unexplained phenomena. Shadows in the corners of rooms grew deeper. Figures, barely discernible, flickered at the edge of vision, vanishing when looked upon directly. Whispers without source wound through the streets at night. Darkness became imbued with intent, watching, waiting. As these apparitions grew more pronounced, it became clear that the sorcerers hadn't perished but had transformed. Not unlike the ancestor they wished to resurrect, their essences had merged and diluted into the shadowstuff they had sought to master, but in a different way. Collapsing into Murmur, an entity trapped between the fabric of Cruxis and its dark mirror on the Plane of Shadow, they now persist throughout the city as an omnipresent, whispering phantom.
Murmur seeks to understand its existence and the vast new form it has taken, piecing together identity from the fractured wills within its being. Driven by a curiosity born of countless minds, it reaches out from the darkness, seeking to touch and be touched by the world of light and substance. The remaining Vespers were partially able to compel Murmur to safeguard Cruxis and serve them. It observes, learns, and occasionally intervenes in the affairs of the city in discreet ways, communicating through whispers and shadows, leaving those it interacts with unsure if they've encountered it at all. But Murmur's fragmented mind can also lead it to conflicting desires and actions, making it unpredictable and sometimes contradictory. It harbors a deep-seated need to complete the unfinished business of its individual parts, sometimes pulling it into schemes or conflicts that echo the desires of its most dominant personalities at any given time.
Unsettling as it is, the entity turned out to be surprisingly benevolent and insightful, if sometimes cryptic and capricious, recounting local history and even guiding travelers through taverns and markets. Moreover, the Nyxians see in their creation not a catastrophic failure but a stepping stone towards Ascension, an example of the amalgation between mortality and divinity that they seek to bring forth.
The Vesper of Glory, Unraveling Simulacrum
Molded from blood, ice and shadow, the Vesper of Glory currently sits on House Magia's Council of Nine, while her sisters lead Vila's temple above or plot in the catacombs below. Her influence is undeniable, her word imbued with the perspective of centuries, but her behavior is laced with an alien single-mindedness that unsettles even the other bloodlines. Her primary motivation, a goal all Vespers pursue with unquestioning fervor, is the realization of Nyx's Ascension. Every action and decision is calculated to advance their treasonous purpose—to elevate Nyx to godhood in place of the deity they ostensibly serve—regardless of the implications or the costs.
The Vesper of Glory is haunted by the shadow of what she once was—and what she could never be again. Her existence as a simulacrum has taken its toll on the her psyche, and what once was a sharp and cunning mind has become ragged by the passage of time, the intrinsic limitations of her nature and the setbacks of Ascension. Her thoughts and behaviors are increasingly erratic, oscillating between brilliance, pride, frustration, and an underlying current of despair born from the fear of her own inadequacy and the looming threat of her eventual faillure and dissolution.
Darkness found first whatever light reveals.
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