The Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears
Only one Deathlord scares all of the others, even if they hide it better in some cases. Only one of their number has made an enemy of hope and compassion, and made love her tool of searing them from creation. A dreaded witch-queen in the north, and a canny corruptor elsewhere, her light touch allows her influence outside the sophisticated in spirit, but poor in the material sense tribes who call her one of their Great Dead, and all but worship her as one of their ancestors. Her Fortress of Crimson Ice stands in the wastelands of the north as a beacon of cold desolate perfection. Here, she serves Hunanura, the Heart-Frost Unending's eternal, unfillable loneliness and cold. Testing her followers incessantly, pretending their participations in plots against her. Not a signatory, she works her plots through Stygia through agents, controlling heads of Mansions, or like her main plenipotentiary ambassador The Curate of the Desecrated Sacrament, who began life as a Gondolier in stygia. In Stygia, members of the Transcendant Course, gondoliers and custodes both, end up in her service. Few know of this, as most signatories wage war on the more vocal agents of the faith. Her involvement in the plot against the Maldi family is most especially heinous. I helped spirit away the girl, Yurumi, unaware of her nature, nor of her third soul. I almost paid for my lack of knowledge with my life, for indeed, a fierce fighter she is. Luna rode her soul that day, and her claws almost ended my spirit's time then and there. She escaped my custody in the wilderness surrounding Fortress of Crimson Ice and was not seen by any other of her agents for years. I kept a wary eye on Stygia as her agents for decades, many of her enemies were signatories, arrayed around the ruling council's table or in its palaces, ordering ghosts to new orders. I also cultivated agents in the other mansions at her direction, the Pale and Thousand-Hued ones particularly. Black Heron's control over Pale Mansion was never as sure as that Deathlord believes. Only The Curate and The Sorrow-Siren knows more of the Lady's secret than I do, and put together, we know less than one hundreth of her secrets, especially since her tenuous alliance with The power behind the throne, a deathlord of formidable reputation, he has claimed to me to have had training with the Incarnae herself, the maiden of secrets, and his precautions on the matters related to secrecy, leave me no cause to doubt him.
Conditions
Children
Founded Settlements
Ruled Locations
Comments