Title: The Root of Insight

Arguably one of the most dangerous of The Discarded, Vi’daerus is the only active Discarded in Saencila at this time. His presence causes many strange world altering effects. The sky becomes as dark as night during the day and turns shades of purple at night. The sun will begin to rise from the North, shining an eerie green, and will alternate from setting in the East to the West. Fire will emit black flames while strangely still giving off the same orange glow. Shadows, of the living, will lean towards sources of light, reaching yet never touching the source. The ripples in a pool of water will move towards the source of disturbance on the water's surface. Everyday objects, such as barrels, pots or forks, will change shades of color and slightly shift positions when nobody's looking. And some people will even foresee their deaths minutes before the event actually occurs.

Vi’daerus's effects on the surrounding world differs from other Discarded. Where the other Discarded's world altering presence is used as a way to torture people to the point of breaking and submission, Vi'daerus's world altering presence may be unsettling, but is actually quite livable. What makes Vi'daerus dangerous is not how he alters the world around him, but rather the hordes of faithful followers his presence creates, even among those who haven't submitted to Vi'daerus's will. Where other Discarded torture their victims, Vi'daerus will instead seduce them into submission with his "gift" of Insight.

Insight is a side effect of Vi'daerus's "omniscience". Vi'daerus sees all things covered in shadow. He sees what has been, what is and even glimpses of what has yet to come. His sight is flawed, however. Things touched by light are hidden to Vi'daerus. Vi'daerus cannot read messages written by hand. His foresight is also not always correct and becomes more flawed the further he looks into the distant future. Vi'daerus's sight on the world around him bleeds from his being and into those in his presence. It is these glimpses of knowledge that his followers have termed as Insight.

Under normal circumstances, Insight will first come as dreams to people, touched by Vi'daerus's essence, so long as they are sleeping in shadow. The visions these dreams grant are intoxicating and often in some way personal. It will show people visions of friends who have betrayed them as well as horrible dark secrets about the people a person trusts and loves. When a person wakes from their slumber, they are left with the strange yet undeniable feeling that what they saw in their dreams was true, and it did happen. Many people feel compelled to act on their dreams. Others are a touch more hesitant. All people, however, feel a loss of euphoria upon waking and are left with a silent itch for additional glimpses of Insight.

As a person is granted more glimpses of Insight they become addicted. They become more aware of Vi'daerus's presence gripping their soul. Initially unnerving, yet euphoric at the same time. The visions begin to occur while the person is awake, showing not only the past and present, but even glimpses of the future. These future glimpses show people a path toward obtaining their desires.

Before long a person's personal goals will begin to shift towards coinciding with Vi'daerus's goals. The spread of his essence and influence. They begin to worship Vi'daerus as their god. They do his bidding even if it puts their lives at risk. These people make up Vi'daerus's followers, The Cult of Insight. The Cult of Insight is a name commonly used by most people living in Saencila to refer to the cult. The cult members, however, prefer the name The Clan of Insight.

While the hierarchy in the cult is complex, it can often be broken into two groups. The bottom level is composed of the common followers, They are the people whose goals have yet to fully shift towards conforming to Vi'daerus's goals. Then there is the top level. The Sightless. People who have scratched out their eyes, discarding their sense of sight according to Vi'daerus's will.

The Sightless are the most dangerous of Vi'daerus's followers. They have allowed Vi'daerus's root to seep into their soul, and by doing so are forever transformed. Shortly after, discarding their sense of sight, The Sightless begin to grow a black protective treelike bark across their bodies. Slowly it replaces their skin until it covers their entire body. The Sightless, do not see light. Instead they see darkness and the wisps of life. They emit a field of shade that obscures light like a thin veil. They are also capable of seeing glimpses of Insight whenever they want, and can gift the Insight to people so long as the person is willing. Their limbs are living plant mass that can grow at will and attack others from afar. Out of all their abilities, their most important use for Vi'daerus is their ability to spread his essence.

There are two reasons why Vi'daerus is arguably the most dangerous Discarded. The first reason is his cult of devoted followers. The second is his ability to spread his range of influence beyond his core. Vi'daerus's Sightless are capable of planting seeds which spreads Vi'daerus's essence beyond his current location. All Sightless have the ability to become a seed of Insight, although there are requirements that must be met for a successful see to grow. If allowed to grow, the seed will plant its roots into the land and spread Vi'daerus's world altering essence.

Title: Mother of Unbirth

When within Ta’Nigarie’s proximity, the natural properties of the world no longer act as they should. Brushing one’s hand through water feels like moving one’s hand through tiny oily metal beads instead of its natural wet liquid feeling. Wood becomes claylike. Soft and Malleable to the touch, conforming to the shape whatever is touching it, reform back to its original shape when left alone. Wind becomes hot and feels like the prickling of a thousand needle tips against one’s bare skin. The ground becomes springy. Mud like quicksand. Stone turns flaky and brittle. Metal acts like glass while glass acts like metal. Fire cold to the touch yet still able to burn that which it touches. And the weather goes back and forth between sweltering heat and freezing cold within minutes. One cannot be too careful within Ta’Nigarie’s presence, for her very being alters the world.

Ta’Nigarie’s presence does more than alter the world. Her presence also affects the mind and body. When under Ta’Nigarie’s influence, a person’s positive emotions are dampened while the negative emotions are amplified. Mother’s become inattentive, fathers turn abusive, and children act delinquent. In addition to the mind altering effects is the unfading pain. Ta’Nigarie’s presence amplifies any pain that a person feels. Additionally her presence induces pain on the joints and muscles of anybody who moves. All pain felt in Ta’Nigarie’s presence lingers even after the body fully heals. And due to the world altering properties of Ta’Nigarie’s presence, injury to even the most careful of people is not uncommon.

The dampening on a person’s mind increases if a person is trying to escape Ta’Nigarie’s influence. It dulls the mind causing people to forget they are trying escape. It further emphasizes the person’s pain in hopes of breaking the person to the point of collapse. Escape is possible but requires a struggle. Those who stay eventually break to the pain discarding their sense of touch and any ability to feel to their tormentor, Ta’Nigarie. In doing so, they give birth to one of Ta’Nigarie’s “children”, The Unbirth.

The moment a person submits to Ta’Nigarie, that person is compelled to seek out her core, a mass of blue pulsing flesh. Once at her core, Ta’Nigarie’s mass of flesh will devour the ones who submitted to her will, and spit out a child sized cocoon of ice cold blue flesh. It’s from these cocoons that The Unbirth emerges. Gender-less, child sized, monstrosities that sap the heat from everything around them.

The Unbirth share facial similarities with the people who gave birth to them. Their skin is blue and taunt with pulsing blood vessels extruding from the skin. Their hands and fingers are long and bony with an iron strong grip to boot. Their claws and teeth are razor sharp and ideal for slicing through flesh. Their necks protrude below their shoulder and from their chest creating a V shaped indentation from shoulder to shoulder. Their heads are rotated upside-down. Hair dangling from their scalps. Faces gaunt. Eyes enlarged with oval shaped irises. Pupils the color of red.

Title: Bringer of Pestilence

The most obvious indicator of being in Ol’Falkaer’s presence is the smell. His presence taints normally pleasant fragrances into smelling off while already horrible smells become more pungent and overwhelming. Flowers will smell slightly foul. Soaps and perfumes will smell nauseating. Fresh Fruits overripe, and cooked meats are a touch rotten or sour. Although this may seem tolerable, truth the stink is constant and nausea inducing. It is not uncommon to lose one’s breakfast when encountering Ol’Falkaer’s stink for the first time. That said, the smell is the least of one’s worries when shrouded in Ol’Falkaer’s essence.

The smell is just the immediate effect caused by Ol’Falkaer’s presence. Shortly thereafter comes The Taint. The Taint affects all living and nonliving things ensnared in Ol’Falkaer’s grip, causing the spread of grime, rot and disease. The grime comes first, quickly covering everything. Bathing becomes pointless and cleaning an impossibility. The rot shortly follows, causing fresh foods to spoil and fabrics to fade and decay. Fresh food and non-ragged clothing becomes a rare community hoarded by the rich and inaccessible to the poor. Last, comes the outbreak of disease that weakens those inflicted.

All who stay too long in Ol’Falkaer’s presence eventually catch The Taint. Its symptoms are forever in flux. An infected person may suffer from fever one moment, to fits of coughing, to chills, to sore muscles and then back to a fever again all within 10 minutes. The Taint does not kill, at least not directly, for the dead are of no use to Ol’Falkaer. The dead cannot give themselves to him and discard their sense of smell. The purpose of The Taint is to break people down and make them too weak to escape Ol’Falkaer’s influence. Those who break before Ol’Falkaer’s will, discard their sense of smell and become one of The Tainted.

The Tainted are those who have completely succumbed to The Tainted. On first appearance, those who have succumbed to Ol’Falkaer’s will seem no different than the average person who has no choice but to live among the grime and filth brought by Ol’Falkaer’s presence. After a closer look, however, one might notice a few things off. For one, they no longer care about cleanliness. Caked in filth and grime, wearing only what can barely even be considered rags for clothes, The Tainted seem to relish in filth. Their teeth are rotten brown with gums that bleed a blackish red goop. Their hair is unkempt and oily. Their nails grow long and yellow, looking chipped at the ends. The real tell though is their smell. The smell of rot and death.

The Tainted are hot to the touch. Forever feverish, forever sickly. They are Ol’Falkaer’s tools. Contaminators who help spread The Taint. By succumbing to Ol’Falkaer’s will, they have been internally transformed forever. The Tainted are no longer bound by what one would consider normal joint movement. Their joints are flexible, reversible, and will rotate however The Tainted desires. When running, The Tainted will run on all fours conforming their joints to work similar to a canine’s. This allows them to run at greater speeds and jump greater distances.

Their irregular movements makes combat between them unpredictable and dangerous. When bleeding, they bleed a blackish red goop which is corrupted by The Taint. If the blood gets on the skin, it will seep into the bloodstream and act as a beacon. This allows the Tainted to track a person from miles away. They’ll track people relentlessly until The Taint is purged from a person’s system or until The Tainted succeed in hunting their prey down and killing them.

Title: Purveyor of Hunger

Gu’Sturrael's presence distorts the taste of all things within his vicinity. All foods and drinks become bland, extremely bitter, and near impossible to swallow without wanting to vomit. Non Food items such as dirt, rotten meat, and human waste suddenly become more edible by comparison. As one might imagine, cities inflicted with Gu’Sturrael's presence quickly find their populations famished, dehydrated and malnourished, as many people find it very difficult to swallow or drink the necessary substance and fluid to maintain bodily functions.

Unlike most other Discarded, Gu’Sturrael does not put in much of an effort to prevent people, who have been in his presence, from running away. Fact is he does not need to stop them. Simply being within his presence implants a seed of his essence into a person's mind. With the seed of his essence implanted, running away from Gu’Sturrael does not grant one immediate relief from his influence on taste. The effects will last for three days at least. More than long enough to break a person down, especially if they are already famished.

Those who begin to break from the hunger and thirst, open their minds to Gu’Sturrael's sweet whispers promising release. "Discard your taste," he whispers, "and it will all go away. Give your taste to me, and I'll serve you the entire world as your plate." Submitting to the whispers binds a person forever to Gu’Sturrael's essence and allows the seed he implanted to being its growth.

Submitting to Gu’Sturrael's will begins a gradual transformation into one of Gu’Sturrael's minions; monstrosities known as The Famished. Initially everything seems normal with two exceptions. The first of which, is the insatiable feeling of hunger. The second of course is the lack of taste. The hunger is manageable at first and can be satisfied with six meals a day. Gradually, as the hunger grows, The Famish find themselves needing to eat more and more often.

Before long, The Famished will start eating things that one would not normally eat. They will grab chunks of dirt off the ground and stuff it into their mouths. They will devour spoiled milk, rotten meat, cockroaches, and even living rats. The eat nonstop, tears pouring from their eyes, crying happily about how good what they are eating tastes despite their inability to even sense taste. Cries such as "Sooo good... sooo good..." will often be heard in-between mouthfuls of trash and the joyful sobs of The Famished.

Before too long, The Famished begin the next stage of their transformation. Their arms, jaws, hands and fingers begin to elongate. Their fingernails and teeth fall out and are replaced by claws and razor sharp teeth. Their backs become hunched, their saliva slightly acidic. Any remaining body fat remaining on The Famished is burned away to nothing, leaving only skin and bone. It is during this transformation The Famished become far more dangerous. They start biting chunks out of wood, stone, clay pots and, before long, people. People quickly become their favorite meal, particularly people who show little signs of succumbing to Gu’Sturrael's will.

Gu’Sturrael likes to keep his full-fledged Famished close at hand, hidden and away from the normal populace in order to keep the knowledge of what becomes of those who submit to a minimum. He will only let a few loose at a time, often at night, to do his bidding. The Famished who have yet to undergo their transformation he allows to wander the streets of whatever town or city he is currently inhabiting. They are used as his "town criers", so to speak, often putting on displays and shows of what submission to Gu’Sturrael's will has to offer.

Title: Reaper of Anguish

Out of all of The Discarded Au’Diurale is by far the cruelest. She revels in the torturing and suffering of the unfortunate people she ensnares in her essence. Her very presence creates a high pitched painful ringing in the ears, which will erratically change frequency making it impossible for people to get used to it and cast aside as white noise. The ringing cannot be ignored. Covering one's ears will only block out the ringing slightly but not enough to block out the pain. Earplugs made of wax have been shown to block out the majority of the pain, but they do not block out the sound.

Finding sleep in her area of effect is near impossible. Whenever someone is on the verge of drifting off, the ringing will bore into a person’s mind quickly waking him/her. People suffering from her presence for a few days or less, will quickly become irritable and violent. Staying for longer than a few days often causes people, who have yet to submit to her will, to inflict bodily harm in hopes that the new pain will overcome the pain caused by the constant ringing. Many will bang their head against nearby walls, claw at their ears, break their fingers, tear off their nails, or worse. Despite their efforts, inflicting bodily harm only makes the ringing worst.

People trapped in Au’Diurale's presence find leaving or even committing suicide to escape near impossible. As whenever someone tries to do one of the two in order to escape, the ringing becomes so unbearably painful that it will often cause loss of balance. Only those who have help, those who have only been in Au’Diurale's presence for a short time, those with wax earplugs or those with extremely strong will are capable of escape/suicide.

The constant ringing isn't the only effect of Au’Diurale's presence. Every sound heard within her field of affect becomes twisted and wrong. The singing of birds becomes an ear piercing screech. The rubbing of wood against wood sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Music turns to noise and even the soft sound of footsteps becomes a reverberating thud. Oddly enough the sound of one's voice remains unchanged, with the exception of the erratically rhythmed reverse echoes of the speaker's voice, which begins a half second before the speaker begins to speak. All of it is very disorienting and gives an immense sense of wrongness. It's enough to give chills to even the bravest of people.

Those who break and discard their hearing before Au’Diurale's will, must do so by piercing their ear drums, one by one, with a metal nail. Doing so submits one to Au’Diurale and forever opens their mind to her essence. These people become a part of her army of servants known as the Silent Ones. The Silent Ones sole purpose is to obey her every command and unleash torture and anguish upon those who have yet to submit. Forever are they deaf to cries of mercy to those they bring harm. They are her voiceless soldiers, her silent assassins, her quiet executioners. They say there is a way to tell if someone has submitted to the will of Au’Diurale. Every sound that person makes can be seen with the naked eye, but never can those sounds be heard.