Oska's little problem

The Place and its Gods

Oska grew up in a high cold desert area called Mrassa. The tabaxi of Mrassa worship seven demon-gods they call the Seven Pillars. (Mrassa is based on Ladakh, a territory of India bordering Tibet and Pakistan; the Seven Pillars draw heavily on the seven rongtsan in Ladakhi religion, as laid out in this article, but this isn’t meant to be an accurate representation of that religion.)
The Seven Pillars are originally demons, who decided they liked Mrassa and became its protector-spirits. They’re still very powerful and dangerous; there’s always a sense of potential terror underneath the protection.

The Seventh Pillar

The Seventh Pillar inhabits the underground spring that is the source of the nuns’ divination. He is the most powerful and dangerous of the Pillars, and therefore never manifests at all lest he do damage.

The Chained Ones

Two of the other demon-gods of Mrassa are known as the Chained Ones. When they manifest in the mundane world, they are identical, except that one’s legs are chained, and one’s arms are chained. Otherwise their appearance changes from one manifestation to the next. They might look humanish, or tabaxi-like, or obviously demonic. They are so similar that they are sometimes thought to be two aspects of the same fiendish being.
The Chained Ones are known to be the most active, most trickster-y of the Seven Pillars. If they weren’t holding themselves back, they would be actively malicious; the rumour is that they wear their chains voluntarily, because they knew they couldn’t be trusted even by themselves.

Oska’s little problem

As a child Oska read an ancient text, or maybe wandered down the wrong underground passage, that turned her into a possible link to the mundane world for the Chained Ones. In the old days, this would have meant that Oska could have been a vessel for them—invested with great magical power, especially divination, in return for the possibility of the Chained Ones taking her over completely from time to time. This is a huge temptation for the Chained Ones, who can’t resist trying to tempt Oska into letting them in.