The chest-pounding thrum of war drums and dark plumes of smoke over the horizon heralded the coming of the Red Knights long before their ships were visible to the eye. As their fleet crested the horizon, the drums grew louder, the smell of smoke drifted over the settlement they approached, and the men there grew restless. It was not fear of the Red Knights that stirred in their chests, but the inspiration of bloodlust, incensing them to battle. The ships grew closer, and it became clear that this was not a unified fleet of matching ships, but a rag-tag flotilla of stolen ships, ramshackle rafts, and even those that rode on the backs of huge maritime beasts.
Finally, the Red Knights came ashore, their chaotic fleet crashing into the shore at full speed with small explosions of sand and splintered wood. Others straggled ashore from where their mounts had left them in the shallows. At once the disjointed ships disgorged their myriad passengers, all manner of strange beasts and monstrous folk, who immediately set about tearing down the ships themselves. They pulled apart the ships' planks, ripped down the sails, and looted every oar and ration from their appropriated vessels. Ignoring this rabble, a band of warrior-beasts strode toward the gathering of leaders. They had been the last to arrive, and their coming signified beginning of the true struggle.
At the fore of this band was Jagannath, the semi-divine monstrosity known to friend and foe alike as the God-Eater. Arrayed in his full panoply of war, his brass armor seemed to boil and steam in the sunlight as he radiated heat from his red flesh, as though he were a living forge. He carried a hammer large enough to smash a carriage into splinters in a single fall, a massive blade of malevolent, violent power, and a huge bow-like apparatus strapped across his back. His accoutrements were spare besides that; a huge cloak of the stitched-together hides of hellbears, long, draping necklaces of skulls strung together like beads, and his iron elephant-helm. He was flanked by many other savage warriors, the Red Knights, who were each terrifying in their own right, but none commander the divine terror of the God-Eater in the flesh.
Jagannath stood amongst his peers, the other leaders of this desperate coalition. Only the minotaur stood anywhere close to his statue, and the others were the size of children in comparison to him. "WELL MET, LITTLE KINGS." Said the God-Eater, his dark, thunderous voice reverberating in his iron helmet. "THE LOYAL SERVANTS OF THE RED GOD HAVE ANSWERED YOUR SUMMONS, AND WE STAND READY FOR BLOODSHED. I ONLY HOPE YOU WILL PROVE TO BE LESS DISAPPOINTING THAN I EXPECT."
Ophidias Seht The Black Dragon, the Serpent of Chaos, Magician of Black Chaos Mekhari Khain (formerly)
Age
Though born mortal, Seht's corporeal form has become suffused with magical energies, ensorcelled to render him beyond the physical limitations that bind mortals. As such, he does not age, and more than two thousand years have passed since his birth.
Race
The child that was named Mekhari, born to the house of Khain, was of a people known as the Remet. Originally a mortal desert people that peacefully farmed grains on riverbanks, they came to be enslaved by demons that had been summoned into their native land, and lived for many generations thereafter in bondage. Most lived as slaves, for their labor or sacrifice, but the house of Khain was among the rare few noble families, permitted to commune with the demons and learn their secrets, and ruled their kin as their dark masters' proxy.
Appearance
Seht is a master of transformation and illusion, and so his physical form is mutable and chaotic. The most common avatar he wears among those he considers peers is that of a jester-like sorcerer with pallid skin and long hair of midnight black. Most of his forms have similar characteristics, generally masculine, though lithe, elfin, and dark-haired. In his mortal youth, Mekhari had been an enchanting youth with bronze skin and golden eyes, though he was thin and weak in the chest and limbs.
Background
Born to the desert-dwelling tribe known as the Remet, "Weeping Ones," in their language, was a child named Mekhari, a scion of one of their people's dwindling noble bloodlines. While they had been shaman-lords when the Remet were free, they were now merely foremost among slaves. No Remet had been born out of bondage for thousands of years, and Mekhari of the House of Khain was no exception. The magical talents of Remeti sorcerers were bent toward the enduring oppression of their tribesmen. They had been taught black magic by the demonic slave-masters that called themselves their kings, and were used to enforce cruel edicts, quell dissent, punish the families and neighbors of troublemakers, and crush the spirit of hope among the Remet. The servitude of the masses was stable under their lash, erecting monuments of stone for unknown purposes as their masters dictated, and appeasing their hunger for blood and suffering. Even their dead served, as mummified puppets hewed stone blocks from the earth. While the masses toiled and were tortured, the House of Khain and others like it lived as their masters' lavished pets; gifted with education, great knowledge possessed only by demons, afforded pleasures, comforts, and luxuries, and were even given medicine and restorative magic if they fell ill.
Mekhari was always a sickly child, having barely survived a birth that killed his mother. As he grew, his heart and chest were weak and frail, and his limbs were thin with brittle bones. The magical houses of the Remet were few, and always dwindling, as the gift of magic did not always pass on to every child. Desperate not to lose their master's favor, they had long since resorted to desperate measures to keep their bloodlines intact. As such, Mekhari did not grow to be imperious and terrible like his father or brothers, but his love of books and learning was all the greater, and he spent long whiles through his youth practically buried in the ancient, malefic tomes gifted by their masters.
When Mekhari was on the cusp of manhood, the demons' terrible scheme that had been mortal generations in the making finally came to fruition. The stone pyramids, towers, and other edifices they had constructed formed the structure of a massive ritual. A blood sacrifice like none that had ever been offered before was extracted, and every one of the Remeti sorcerers were present as the chorus to this black sacrament. Their demonic kings lent their own power to the ritual, and it was successful-- at first. Centuries of toil and sacrifice had summoned Apep, the Sun-Eater, a serpentine avatar of pure chaos and apocalyptic destruction. Its very entry into this world absorbed the souls of every living Remeti, and the power emanating from its physical manifestation obliterated every physical trace of their society. All that had been spared were the stone temples and structures that had been part of its summoning, and the mortal sorcerers that had aided in that act. Apep's first and only action in this world was to immediately devour the demons that had summoned it, which cut off the power supplying the ritual, and forced Apep to be unsummoned to the realm from whence it came.
At once stripped of their masters, their homes, and their entire tribe, the sorcerers of the Remet set off in separate ways, into the world at large. The lazy and untalented were quickly made fodder for other demons, or burned as warlocks. Some stuck together as families, and formed covens that bewitched the countryside for generations to come. Others struck out as lone sorcerers and wizards, some turning to good, most remaining evil. Mekhari was among these, setting off on his own with tremendous purpose to accumulate more knowledge and power. In time he would visit every single one of his tribesmen that remained, tracking them across the world (and across dimensions for some), and killed them himself, starting with his father and younger brother.
One of the first lessons Mekhari learned was that names carried power, and unless he wanted to become someone else's slave, he should conceal his own. He took up the sobriquet Ophidias Seht, taking the names from books he remembered from his cloistered youth, about the ancient gods of his people, and foreign treatises on astrology. Another early lesson was that he could not hope to match a demon when measuring power against power. His only hope when confronting demons, as he often did in his pursuits, was to outmatch them in knowledge or preparation. Demons often carry many secrets, and so Seht loved to learn from them, and use their secrets to defeat other demons, only to then learn their secrets as well. In this way Seht learned many varied and powerful magics, manipulating terrifying forces such as elemental death and the void between worlds. All this while Seht could only think of the terrifying power of Apep, and how if he could wield the might of the Chaos Serpent, there would be none that could ever enslave him again.
Centuries passed, and Seht grew powerful. The stronger he became, the easier it became to gain even more power. However, he was always tempered by caution and distrust, which saved his life on many occasions. The schemes of other mages were trivial to foil for one that had been raised as the slave of a demon, and grew up to battle them for their knowledge. Furthermore, he had seen firsthand what overreaching into the forbidden wrought, and it had been the doom of beings powerful enough to enslave nations. His research was methodical, careful to avoid magics that could consume him, or unfair bargains with greater powers. Seht took up a hobby of sorts through his long life and wide experience: trapping noteworthy or rare demons into playing cards, collecting them, and traveling with them so that he might summon them again at his pleasure.
It was only natural that such an august presence as the Demon Lord, a king among kings with a nation of devoted followers, would seek the service of one of the greatest black magicians to ever live. While his task seems childishly simple, Seht of course has an ulterior motive to his service. He plans gain enough power to capture and enslave the Demon Lord himself, which he could use to di the same to Apep, the most powerful chaos god of all, and assume his rightful place as master of the universe.
Skills and Abilities
Ophidias Seht is a black magician of nightmarish strength, with mastery over many different styles and studies of magic, centuries of experiences, and the victor of countless magical battles. He has proved himself more than a match for many demons that greatly outstrip him in raw power, as he can win out through guile, preparation, and the breadth and esotericism of his knowledge. His expertise is focused in powers and lores such as necromancy, void magic, alchemy, psionics, draconic magic, infernal sorcery, diablery, hexes and curses, chaos magick, dimensional travel, pyromancy, sangromancy, umbramancy, oniomancy, ophiomancy, astrology, hypnotism, and haruspicy. He of course knows much of the natural world, mathematics, and philosophy, as would be needed to attain his magical expertise. Seht's physical body is completely suffused with enchantments and spells empowering and protecting his mortal flesh, to the point where magic has taken over for almost all of his vital functions. If one were to manage to pass through his numerous wards and protective spells, and harm his reinforced flesh, magic would keep him alive for the few moments until his flesh was healed.
Quips
The familiar of Ophidias Seht is the mutant beast he calls Omega. She was the final result of Seht's dragon breeding program, which itself was a product of his lifelong fascination with dragons following him witnessing Apep destroy his people's civilization. With a careful selection of stolen dragon eggs, and painfully extracted dragon hormones, he was able to magically force dozens of generations of dragons to grow, breed, and die in mere decades, accelerating the timetable of his artificial selection by centuries. He suffused the dragons with enhancing magics and dark blessings until their bodies were saturated, and chose the children that kept those traits, enchanted them, and repeated the process. This often carried painful, unwanted side effects though, and after fewer generations than he had hoped, the dragons began to pass on defects and mutations. Many eggs were stillborn, and more did not survive long past birth. Omega was the final, and most successful subject of these experiments, a mutant dragon suffused with darkness to her core. A sleek, silvery-grey beast with five heads, she is a creature of ferocious, evil power, and cold, predatory intelligence. Normally she would hold no affection for Seht, and likely kill and devour him for the crime of her birth. However, he has implanted powerful mind-altering crystals into her brain, forcing Omega into slavish loyalty. This terrifying, hulking monstrosity accompanies Seht into pitched battle, or wherever he wishes to terrify others into compliance.
Seht currently holds 108 different demons enslaved in his deck of cards. These correspond each to a symbolic figure on the card. These are his rarest and most treasured minions, valued greatly over the ghosts, undead, and other entities he can summon to do his bidding.
Seht's skills in political maneuvering and subterfuge were forged in his noble house, as his family and their peers would often scheme and sabotage each other to gain their demonic masters' favor. In his youngest years, before he had learned deadly curses, Mekhari favored poison in the wine cup as a means of dispatching rivals. He killed two of his brothers this way before reaching age fifteen.
The ruins of the demonic ritual site that destroyed the Remet now serve as Seht's home and headquarters. The stone monuments and much of the ground below them has been hollowed out to form his lair. The ruins serve as the hub of Seht's network of leylines, portals, and teleportation circles, allowing him to travel great distances with almost no effort. Besides that, his lair is warded with powerful geocentric enchantments and charms, guarded by numerous malevolent entities under Seht's control, and the land itself is cursed and inhospitable, teeming with tortured Remeti ghosts. The location is now known as the Tomb of Chaos or the Serpent's Lair.
An avid alchemist, Seht has crafted a series of homunculi through advanced alchemical practice. They are each very different, and serve different purposes for him. The first he created, and weakest is Nigrido, who resembles a many-eyed humanoid made of living tar. Nigrido is Seht's most "domestic" familiar, and serves as his equerry, butler, and bodyguard on many excursions.
Seht's magical focus of choice is called the Leviathan Staff, a deeply cursed magical staff. Carved from the bones of a demonic whale-beast, adorned with the preserved skull of a snake-demon, with "eyes" that are orbs of concentrated chaotic power, the staff serves as a locus of prepared spells, a reservoir of stored magical energy, and either a magnifier or focus for Seht's spells. To those with magical or spiritual sight, the staff takes the form of a searing black tear in reality. An artifact of chaos, the staff is capable of warping its shape to better match Seht's forms and disguises.
Ophidias Seht The Black Dragon, the Serpent of Chaos, Magician of Black Chaos Mekhari Khain (formerly)
Age
Though born mortal, Seht's corporeal form has become suffused with magical energies, ensorcelled to render him beyond the physical limitations that bind mortals. As such, he does not age, and more than two thousand years have passed since his birth.
Race
The child that was named Mekhari, born to the house of Khain, was of a people known as the Remet. Originally a mortal desert people that peacefully farmed grains on riverbanks, they came to be enslaved by demons that had been summoned into their native land, and lived for many generations thereafter in bondage. Most lived as slaves, for their labor or sacrifice, but the house of Khain was among the rare few noble families, permitted to commune with the demons and learn their secrets, and ruled their kin as their dark masters' proxy.
Appearance
Seht is a master of transformation and illusion, and so his physical form is mutable and chaotic. The most common avatar he wears among those he considers peers is that of a jester-like sorcerer with pallid skin and long hair of midnight black. Most of his forms have similar characteristics, generally masculine, though lithe, elfin, and dark-haired. In his mortal youth, Mekhari had been an enchanting youth with bronze skin and golden eyes, though he was thin and weak in the chest and limbs.
Background
Born to the desert-dwelling tribe known as the Remet, "Weeping Ones," in their language, was a child named Mekhari, a scion of one of their people's dwindling noble bloodlines. While they had been shaman-lords when the Remet were free, they were now merely foremost among slaves. No Remet had been born out of bondage for thousands of years, and Mekhari of the House of Khain was no exception. The magical talents of Remeti sorcerers were bent toward the enduring oppression of their tribesmen. They had been taught black magic by the demonic slave-masters that called themselves their kings, and were used to enforce cruel edicts, quell dissent, punish the families and neighbors of troublemakers, and crush the spirit of hope among the Remet. The servitude of the masses was stable under their lash, erecting monuments of stone for unknown purposes as their masters dictated, and appeasing their hunger for blood and suffering. Even their dead served, as mummified puppets hewed stone blocks from the earth. While the masses toiled and were tortured, the House of Khain and others like it lived as their masters' lavished pets; gifted with education, great knowledge possessed only by demons, afforded pleasures, comforts, and luxuries, and were even given medicine and restorative magic if they fell ill.
Mekhari was always a sickly child, having barely survived a birth that killed his mother. As he grew, his heart and chest were weak and frail, and his limbs were thin with brittle bones. The magical houses of the Remet were few, and always dwindling, as the gift of magic did not always pass on to every child. Desperate not to lose their master's favor, they had long since resorted to desperate measures to keep their bloodlines intact. As such, Mekhari did not grow to be imperious and terrible like his father or brothers, but his love of books and learning was all the greater, and he spent long whiles through his youth practically buried in the ancient, malefic tomes gifted by their masters.
When Mekhari was on the cusp of manhood, the demons' terrible scheme that had been mortal generations in the making finally came to fruition. The stone pyramids, towers, and other edifices they had constructed formed the structure of a massive ritual. A blood sacrifice like none that had ever been offered before was extracted, and every one of the Remeti sorcerers were present as the chorus to this black sacrament. Their demonic kings lent their own power to the ritual, and it was successful-- at first. Centuries of toil and sacrifice had summoned Apep, the Sun-Eater, a serpentine avatar of pure chaos and apocalyptic destruction. Its very entry into this world absorbed the souls of every living Remeti, and the power emanating from its physical manifestation obliterated every physical trace of their society. All that had been spared were the stone temples and structures that had been part of its summoning, and the mortal sorcerers that had aided in that act. Apep's first and only action in this world was to immediately devour the demons that had summoned it, which cut off the power supplying the ritual, and forced Apep to be unsummoned to the realm from whence it came.
At once stripped of their masters, their homes, and their entire tribe, the sorcerers of the Remet set off in separate ways, into the world at large. The lazy and untalented were quickly made fodder for other demons, or burned as warlocks. Some stuck together as families, and formed covens that bewitched the countryside for generations to come. Others struck out as lone sorcerers and wizards, some turning to good, most remaining evil. Mekhari was among these, setting off on his own with tremendous purpose to accumulate more knowledge and power. In time he would visit every single one of his tribesmen that remained, tracking them across the world (and across dimensions for some), and killed them himself, starting with his father and younger brother.
One of the first lessons Mekhari learned was that names carried power, and unless he wanted to become someone else's slave, he should conceal his own. He took up the sobriquet Ophidias Seht, taking the names from books he remembered from his cloistered youth, about the ancient gods of his people, and foreign treatises on astrology. Another early lesson was that he could not hope to match a demon when measuring power against power. His only hope when confronting demons, as he often did in his pursuits, was to outmatch them in knowledge or preparation. Demons often carry many secrets, and so Seht loved to learn from them, and use their secrets to defeat other demons, only to then learn their secrets as well. In this way Seht learned many varied and powerful magics, manipulating terrifying forces such as elemental death and the void between worlds. All this while Seht could only think of the terrifying power of Apep, and how if he could wield the might of the Chaos Serpent, there would be none that could ever enslave him again.
Centuries passed, and Seht grew powerful. The stronger he became, the easier it became to gain even more power. However, he was always tempered by caution and distrust, which saved his life on many occasions. The schemes of other mages were trivial to foil for one that had been raised as the slave of a demon, and grew up to battle them for their knowledge. Furthermore, he had seen firsthand what overreaching into the forbidden wrought, and it had been the doom of beings powerful enough to enslave nations. His research was methodical, careful to avoid magics that could consume him, or unfair bargains with greater powers. Seht took up a hobby of sorts through his long life and wide experience: trapping noteworthy or rare demons into playing cards, collecting them, and traveling with them so that he might summon them again at his pleasure.
It was only natural that such an august presence as the Demon Lord, a king among kings with a nation of devoted followers, would seek the service of one of the greatest black magicians to ever live. While his task seems childishly simple, Seht of course has an ulterior motive to his service. He plans gain enough power to capture and enslave the Demon Lord himself, which he could use to di the same to Apep, the most powerful chaos god of all, and assume his rightful place as master of the universe.
Skills and Abilities
Ophidias Seht is a black magician of nightmarish strength, with mastery over many different styles and studies of magic, centuries of experiences, and the victor of countless magical battles. He has proved himself more than a match for many demons that greatly outstrip him in raw power, as he can win out through guile, preparation, and the breadth and esotericism of his knowledge. His expertise is focused in powers and lores such as necromancy, void magic, alchemy, psionics, draconic magic, infernal sorcery, diablery, hexes and curses, chaos magick, dimensional travel, pyromancy, sangromancy, umbramancy, oniomancy, ophiomancy, astrology, hypnotism, and haruspicy. He of course knows much of the natural world, mathematics, and philosophy, as would be needed to attain his magical expertise. Seht's physical body is completely suffused with enchantments and spells empowering and protecting his mortal flesh, to the point where magic has taken over for almost all of his vital functions. If one were to manage to pass through his numerous wards and protective spells, and harm his reinforced flesh, magic would keep him alive for the few moments until his flesh was healed.
Quips
The familiar of Ophidias Seht is the mutant beast he calls Omega. She was the final result of Seht's dragon breeding program, which itself was a product of his lifelong fascination with dragons following him witnessing Apep destroy his people's civilization. With a careful selection of stolen dragon eggs, and painfully extracted dragon hormones, he was able to magically force dozens of generations of dragons to grow, breed, and die in mere decades, accelerating the timetable of his artificial selection by centuries. He suffused the dragons with enhancing magics and dark blessings until their bodies were saturated, and chose the children that kept those traits, enchanted them, and repeated the process. This often carried painful, unwanted side effects though, and after fewer generations than he had hoped, the dragons began to pass on defects and mutations. Many eggs were stillborn, and more did not survive long past birth. Omega was the final, and most successful subject of these experiments, a mutant dragon suffused with darkness to her core. A sleek, silvery-grey beast with five heads, she is a creature of ferocious, evil power, and cold, predatory intelligence. Normally she would hold no affection for Seht, and likely kill and devour him for the crime of her birth. However, he has implanted powerful mind-altering crystals into her brain, forcing Omega into slavish loyalty. This terrifying, hulking monstrosity accompanies Seht into pitched battle, or wherever he wishes to terrify others into compliance.
Seht currently holds 108 different demons enslaved in his deck of cards. These correspond each to a symbolic figure on the card. These are his rarest and most treasured minions, valued greatly over the ghosts, undead, and other entities he can summon to do his bidding.
Seht's skills in political maneuvering and subterfuge were forged in his noble house, as his family and their peers would often scheme and sabotage each other to gain their demonic masters' favor. In his youngest years, before he had learned deadly curses, Mekhari favored poison in the wine cup as a means of dispatching rivals. He killed two of his brothers this way before reaching age fifteen.
The ruins of the demonic ritual site that destroyed the Remet now serve as Seht's home and headquarters. The stone monuments and much of the ground below them has been hollowed out to form his lair. The ruins serve as the hub of Seht's network of leylines, portals, and teleportation circles, allowing him to travel great distances with almost no effort. Besides that, his lair is warded with powerful geocentric enchantments and charms, guarded by numerous malevolent entities under Seht's control, and the land itself is cursed and inhospitable, teeming with tortured Remeti ghosts.
Ariamis
Lemons
Izurich
DeadDrop
Mixtape Ghost N
Sep
Expendable
PerfectThought
Randomness
Rothurage
