AsuraTwice-Born
O ye of thorn'd breast
Wrath-crowned, Asura behest
With flame of blood, may ye be born again
With a blackened heart, for sake of Men
-Final stanza of the Rite of Asura, otherwise known as the Ballad of the Black Heart or the Godless Prayer
In the first half-century after the Fall of Daigon passed, the Movement of Ten Thousand Voices, with a limited recruitment base and the ongoing general collapse of civilization, was beset by a critical and unforeseen threat; the inevitability of mortal death and its rigors. Though demons and the more-than-human lived long, even indefinitely, their numbers were limited, and the essential vaporization of their population through Castigati action and sheer disunity & opposition to any true reorganization of one Nagath made this all the more acutely troublesome and apparent; few stayed true to the Movement. And even more pressingly, those generals, statesmen and scholars of mortal bent steadily died away by natural cause. Some were simply old; some had sickened or succumbed to wound and maim; some had been preserved past their death by medicine and artifice past their normal lifespans, means that could no longer be sustained; all perished regardless of cause, sooner or later.
As the full century closed, the successors of the first generation of mortal Movement leadership began, too, to show signs of age, and more of the old guard Daigonists perished or deserted in favor of their own doomed efforts. It seemed inevitable that mere attrition would be the end of Daigon's dream. It was at this critical juncture that Asurishvara broke a self-made vow, and bore open his heart to men. He shared a black secret of the kingly arts, and taught his closest 'to walk like Me 'til you may walk like You,' the bleak path of sacrifice for self-actualization; he taught men how to become Asura, to be as demons, black-blooded and high and mighty indeed. And so it was that a fresh generation of man-fiends were wrought, and many more after. A price paid in heart and spirit, a mortgage of the soul, in exchange for the power and longevity to see the Dream through.
The Asura, unlike many beings classed and catalogued under the umbrella of 'demon'- from familiar spirits, to gloomy infernals, to dream-eaters, all manner of dissimilar clade known solely by a shared brand of immundane inhumanity- are universally similar in their origin being derived from man, and their aspect remaining for the most part mannish, at least in the exterior and in personality. Form may be fluid, and those with a mastery of it may shift away from their default, but the shape of an Asura physically and otherwise is 'man.' And a high example of man they appear to be, at a glance; strong, agile, quick in mind regardless of wit, a struggle to wound, a deed to kill, seemingly untiring and definitely sleepless, ageless if death does not take them. Each wielders in theory and general practice of imperium, the power of true and full command vested in and taken out of the state and philosophically though not literally of nature itself, one and all. The depth of price paid is not quite as obvious.
Each has shorn humanity and become one of the highest aristocracy in the Circle of Kings; their state obligations now tenfold and eternal. Sleeplessness drives them to dreamlessness, at least of the unconscious sort, and lucid dreaming grants no break or rest to the consciousness. Long life, aloof stature and the universal twisting of frame of mind lends to off-and-on disillusion, gloominess and tempestuous nature, tempered though it may be by state ideology, meditationally exercised self-control, and mutual reinforcement of both aspects. Their bodies are rendered totally barren; no matter the effort, they will produce no issue, mortal or immortal. Though no memory of their former selves are lost, the Asura are never quite who they once were, but a mythologized analogue, gigantic and unreachable, even as personable as they strive to be compared to similar petty godlets or unseen Justinian.
The manufacture and upraising of an Asura is a momentous thing, the uncommon result of truly meritorious individuals rising amongst caste and rank with full attention of a member or members of the Circle of Kings, and the process is a two-layered secret; first the open secret in the riddle of religious mystery, and secondly the true deed and its technical carrying out. The former is well-known, enough so that moderately learned men well outside Nagath will have heard or have knowledge of stotram, epic poetry or parable regarding it; the latter is true esoterica, so deeply guarded as to be essentially unknown outside the Circle of Kings. Of the process, this much can be said; a thorn is taken 'from the coils about the heart of Asurishvara,' and bestowed upon the subject. 'The blood runs like fire, is replaced by flame,' after which 'the black-heart to be is watched over by his fellows, and left to the struggle of rebirth.'
Whatever the actuality of the process, it is of great import that the subject be ideally of physical prime youth, and no later than middle age at most, 'lest weakness fail and death & abomination result.' Likewise, they must be human or near-human; the result of attempts to use the process on orcs, wild bray-folk, centaurs, and other creatures which do not adhere to a human countenance and a certain proportion of at least human-like limbs can be aptly described by the monicker 'abomination and death.' The end physiological result of a true Asura, beside strength or grace, a degree of shape-changing, and barrenness as previously described, are as follows; the replacement of all non-clear bodily fluids and any fluids of strain (sweat of exercise, fury-born spittle) with a nearly black red-violet blood, a haziness in the consistent placement or indeed existence of internal organs, the ceasing of normal metabolic functions and the need for their normal fulfillment as the body becomes a sorcerously near-closed system, and the skin of the body shifting into often prime colors, exceedingly drained complexions, or other abnormalities, supposedly grossly externalizing aspects of the essential character of the transmuted on some level.
Neverborn
However much we have gained in our upraising, it is a bitter fate that we lead. Doomed and infecund, to be rendered godfather and godmother to nations. And so we are starved for heirs, for comrade, confidant, and consort, owing to the frailty of mortals and the immaturity of this all-devouring bureaucratic state of yours that would most skillfully separate wheat from chaff. Why, then, should we not bear out children neither by adoption or birth- one method insufficient, the other closed off- but by other means, should they be available to us?
-Quotation of He Xiuying, speaking in heresy to an enraged Asurishvara in defense of her Neverborn. He would later relent in bitter humility.
With the revelation and inception of the Twice-Born, many proverbial birds for the Movement were struck by this one stone. Mortality quashed, lesser vulnerability to generational loss of competence, a degree of the quantity gap with the Justinian occupiers and petty suzerain-successors closed by extreme density of quality, and perhaps most importantly, a pliable crop of fiends that Asurishvara did not have so great a risk of losing his hold on as the old Daigonists that had largely deserted him. With these fresh advantages, the fiends serving as living idols to rally around, and the fruits of Asurishvara's logistical consolidation in the East, the way was paved for a wave of explosive expansionism, the first of its kind. And with that expansion, many of the same cracks formed; with more ground covered, more of Nagath reclaimed, military lines stretched thin and the Movement, by now having taken on its name as The Enveloping Kingdom, was left with a deep want for administrators.
Enter He Xiuying, hag-demoness, arch-misanthrope and sorcerer-queen of the people of Ỵāṇ, at the farthest easterly end of Nagath. Holding the distinction of being one of the sole trueblooded fiends of the old guard to stay with Asurishvara from the inception of her fealty, whether for sentiment or simply in obligation to her geographic position and realpolitik, she had been figurehead of her peoples' enclave in Nagath since Daigon had first invited her and her vassals to settle in Nagath- a matter of his keen interest in far-flung esoterics- uprooting herself all the way from the decadent tributary kingdoms to the far southeast, in much the same way as the people named Bhaskara came from the south and Elladas from the southwest in what is now the Justinian realms came to form. Her governorship, on the other hand, was an off-and-on affair, as she most often locked herself away to labor in her palace atop Mount Xún, working heady magics and sponsoring frivolous art to amuse herself, much as she had always done. To this end she would delegate to one subordinate or another.
This pattern of hermitry was broken with the Twice-Born, and He Xiuying's habit and demeanor changed. The former creature of sour indifference, a rare sight at court, was now putting herself fully at the disposal of Asurishvara; active, cooperative, and a sudden collaborator in the sorcerous realm. She quickly involved herself with the processes of creating the Twice-Born, a subject she was familiar with the theory of but had not herself practiced; evidently it was to her surprise that Asurishvara had been capable. Her insights nonetheless led to a refinement of the process, lessening fatalities, mistakes and abortions within the procedure. Formerly at arms' length if only for her prickly indifference, she became a darling of the inner circle, enjoying full respects to her titles and her vainglory. Certainly, He Xiuying appeared to be on the ascendant, a rising star.
This meteoric rise would come to an abrupt halt when Asurishvara arrived without announcement or invitation to her palace at Mount Xún, and in his haste to see his favored servant, refused all hospitality and placation to directly seek her out within her laboratories deep in the lower reaches. There, he discovered the fruit of Xe Hiuying's research and the reason for her intense interest in the Twice-Born process; she had melded his method with generative alchemy, and began the manufacture of fiends. Through thorns bequeathed from his heart and the spilt blood of criminals and undesirables, be they man, orc, garuda or brayfolk- punished in Ỵāṇ at that time with punitive justice rather than flagellated as was the orthodoxy- she had made devil-homonculi, then poorly things of locked misshape and fierce features. Asurishvara, infuriated beyond measure at what he viewed as a deep violation of his Asuran formula and its moral precepts, poured out his wrath upon the laboratory and these miserable creations, demanding the halt of her experiments and the destruction of its proceeds; so confident he was in his power of command, and stubborn in his reservation of external punishment for the irredeemable, that he left the task to Xe Hiuying herself.
Xe Hiuying, of course, redoubled all her efforts manifold. When the Red Empire overran the turncoat Tshriv principalities, even threatening to penetrate past the Kuzyan borderlands and into the heart of the Kingdom such was the general military disorder caused by the rebellion and subsequent western invasion, it was the arrival of the Ỵāṇ and a brigade of fiends alongside them in right and wrong shapes alike that turned the Red Empire back in terror and deeply shamed the Naukada Krin of the time. When Asurishvara turned wrothfully upon them in the aftermath of the battle, he was disarmed by their universal submission to this fate and their offer of fealty regardless. Thusly humbled, and with some further probing as to the nature of their thought, he accepted the Neverborn one and all into service. Rather than forbid their further creation, Asurishvara forbade the use of irregular punitive action as a pretext to acquiring the lifeblood necessary, instead demanding that it be acquired piecemeal from donation from zealous people amongst the regular populace, the soldiery and the priesthood, allegedly to elevate the character of their creation and the character thus created. The rest is history.
These creatures- some mannish, some twisted, but all of a similar mind- now codified in method and class as items of use to the Enveloping Kingdom, came to be called as Neverborn. What distincts them from the Twice-Born, men who have shorn their humanity, is that they are essentially orphans inherent- children sired by no parent, wrought from blood and sorcery, most often raised as vassals of the Circle of Kings; savant-children grown by the alembic, almost all bereft of any natural early lifespan, thrust into consciousness with intrinsic cleverness, but no experience. As such, despite earning a similar idol status to the Twice-Born, they tend to be straightforward in nature, feckless though attentive, inquisitive to a fault, and steadfast in their loyalties. Where the Twice-Born wished to be as fiends, the Neverborn wish to be as men; and so an equilibrium is formed. These soulless things, bereft of much agency, often serve as attendants to man and Asura alike; theirs are the roles of bodyguard, steward, temple guardian, familiar, understudy, and speaker of wisdom from the mouth of babes.
