Appearance

Engel appears to be an emaciated, youngish man.  He’s so covered with old scars, burns, cuts, and open wounds that it’s hard to tell anything more than that.  His hair is dead white, although he’s usually missing chunks of it at a time, leaving his scalp a bleeding mess.  His eye sockets are empty, scarred holes that he doesn’t bother to hide.

Background

Most demons are interested in tormenting mortals, either for power’s sake, or for their own personal amusement.  They are highly dangerous, and should be dealt with rarely, if at all.  However, Engel is not a typical demon.  He is interested in torment and suffering in a completely different sense.

Engel is an agony demon, and the ultimate masochist.  He craves sensation, and all he can feel any more is pain.  It is his greatest pleasure; more than that, it’s something he feeds on.

He gravitates to places where it is likely that he can feed his addiction: prisons, madhouses, the torture chambers of despotic tyrants, any place where he might find people to accomodate him. 

Usually, he is seen as just another prisoner, and people seldom pay him any mind.  However, his almost puppy-dog eagerness to succumb to any concievable torture tends to unnerve even the most sadistic warden, and his tendency to try to take punishments for his fellow prisoners ceases to be heroic very quickly and becomes highly disturbing.

While he is not interested in anything that happens to others, his presence sometimes exacerbates conditions, driving wardens and keepers to greater depths of depravity as they try to get a reaction from him that makes sense.  Given the general mentality and temperment of the sadists Engel seeks out, they do not generally confine their newfound exhuberence to him.

Of course, there’s always some so-called hero that comes and throws open whatever place Engel has found, slaying the keepers, and releasing the prisoners.  Of course, this necessarily means they misguidedly release Engel as well, and he has to start all over again.

Roleplaying Notes

Engel usually pays no mind to anything that happens beyond his sole interest of absorbing as much pain as he can.  He can speak, he just doesn’t.  If anyone tries to start a conversation with him, he is unlikely to pay the slightest bit of heed.  If he angers someone enough that they threaten him or actually strike him, he will keep doing whatever it is that’s making them mad, specifically so that they will inflict harm on him.

If he cannot find someone to fulfil his masochistic addiction, he will inflict injuries on himself of varying severity.  He doesn’t know much about anatomy, and if he were a normal mortal, many of his self-inflicted injuries would be fatal.  However, he is a demon, and more than that, an agony demon, and a little thing like physical injury won’t kill him.

While he seeks out people with sadistic tendencies, Engel will avoid true sadists when possible.  In fact, true sadists are among his least favorite people in the world, worse than even the heroes that try to "rescue" him.  Experience with his brother Oni has taught him that people won’t touch him, specifically because *not* torturing him is the worst they could ever do to him, and they know it.

Engel is not likely to be a threat to any PCs, unless he’s trying to provoke them into attacking him, and even then he’s more interested in lingering injuries rather than anything he’s likely to recieve from PC hands. 

It’s entirely possible that in the course of their heroic duties, the PCs might fing Engel in the dungeon of whatever madman they’re currently overthrowing.  He will almost certainly look like he requires immediate medical attention, and will also NOT want said attention.  That should thoroughly disturb most characters.

Appearance

Hisa appears as a very attractive pale young woman, with long dark hair she keeps pinned up.  She typically dresses very elegantly.  She has two expressions, a sort of detatched boredom and outright fury.  She does not speak.  Unless she makes an effort to hide them, her eyes are solid shiny black.

History/Background

She gasped, trying not to choke on the blood in her throat.  Her vision was blurred, and she could only see shadows and shapes.  Her fingers were bloody from clawing at the ground, trying to drag herself along.  The pain had receded to a dull annoyance.  All she felt now was the rage.  He’d pay, the one who had done this to her. 

Hisa was a girl from a small village.  She had everything, beauty, pleasing talents, and a wealthy and aging father who doted on her.  She naturally had many suitors, but she did not like very many of them.  One in particular did not take no for an answer, despite being sent away several times.  When it was announced that she would marry the son of one of her father’s friends, this man decided to take what had been denyed to him.  He abducted Hisa, raped her, and then brutally murdered her.

Two shadows moved toward her, but she could not make them out.  Low voices drifted to her.  She tried to cry out, but that man had taken her voice and all that came out was a low gurgle.  
"She won’t last long.  Even if she was found now." 
"Mmm, she has fire.  She won’t lie quietly."

Hisa’s death was so violent and her rage was so great that it was impossible that she would simply pass on.  Her spirit lingered where she had been killed, nearly berserk with fury, even after the death of her murderer.  For almost two years, the area she haunted was considered a deadly place.  Then something changed.

"Well, she’s calmer, now.  I suppose she woke up."
An indistinct shadow approached her, and someone gently lifted her face.  "She understands pain, and the hate there is appealing… but no.  Too much rage, no appreciation for the beauty of suffering.  She’s of no use to me."
Another shadow approached and repeated the process.  "The right or wrong doesn’t matter to you, does it?  No.  You want to punish everyone now, not just the guilty.  I can’t help you."  The shadows melted away, leaving her to do as she liked.

Hisa was not a normal ghost.  Her fury and lust for revenge were enormous, greater even than that what kept normal ghosts from the afterlife.  Her feelings were so strong that they took on a life of their own, bound together by the last vestiges of her personality.  Hisa’s ghost became a demon that fed on revenge. 

No longer bound to her place of death, she wandered.  She was drawn to those who desired revenge, and fell into a pattern of helping such people.  It didn’t matter who they were, who they wanted revenge on, or what the greviance was.  She helped a knight track down and destroy an evil wizard, and she helped a murderous overlord destroy the hero who had ruined his schemes.  It was all the same to her.

Abilities

Hisa does not have any overtly "magical" abilities; her focus is more physical.  She is much, much stronger than she looks like she has any right to be, and a good deal faster than normal humans.  She is also remarkably resilient and hard to injure.  It is possible to "kill" her, but it is only temporary and just makes her very angry.  It may take a long time, but she will be back eventually.

Hisa has a particular knack for locating her or her companion’s prey, a gift that those she associates with often find invaluable.  She also has a rudimentary instinct for finding people’s weak points (psychological, physical, whatever), although she usually lets her current companion worry about finding something exploitable.  She will always let her companion decide how to handle pursuing their revenge.

Roleplaying Notes

Hisa is usually very calm and acts in a calculated manner.  However, it is possible to make her mad, and then she is prone to violent rages.  She will do whatever her current associate wants her to do as long as it’s in pursuit of revenge (seduction, bait, violence, whatever).

She is completely mute and normally shows no expression at all.  Since she can’t speak to give her name, she allows her companions to call her whatever they wish.

There are some downsides to attracting Hisa’s attention.  A vengeful obsession strong enough for her to notice is a fundamentally self-destructive behavior, and her presence just makes it worse.  Her unquestioning help and abilities often tend to fuel god complexes (which the people she associates with are already prone to). And once her current companion has satisfied their revenge, she’ll move on… possibly helping the very people her former companion went after.  That’s not even taking into account any possible ramifications for dealing with demons in general.

Hisa usually chooses her own masters, but she is a demon, and she can be summoned.  It would probably be a *profoundly* bad idea, of course.

Currently, Hisa’s companion is Dr. Emil Vincent, a homicidal madman.  His obsessive drive for revenge is what originally attracted her, but his manner towards her reminds her (vaguely) of her father, and she’s developed a sort of affection for him.  He calls her Etellia (he simply liked the sound of it), and she functions as a servant and companion, in addition to assisting with his schemes for revenge.

Appearance

Kane appears to be a tall, thin man in his early to middle forties.  He has sandy red hair, and is pale enough that he looks almost sickly.  He usually dresses simply, in black or gray.  His eyes are ice blue, and faintly luminous, though the brightness depends on his current emotional state.  Usually, he wears a pair of dark glasses to hide his eyes.

History/Background

Once, so long ago he can barely remember it, Kane was a magistrate in an isolated dukedom.  He was a combination of sheriff, regional judge, and prison warden, and took great pride in his job.  Some said he was a hard man, and while he might have been, he was also a fair one.  All were equal in his eyes, regardless of name, place, or status.  He showed no mercy to the guilty, but also felt it his duty to protect those who were not guilty.

For twenty years, he faithfully served in this capacity.  He hadn’t any family, so he was able to devote all of his time and energy to the pursuit of justice.  In fact, he had rather assumed that was what he would spend the rest of his life doing.

When he witnessed a young man assaulting a local peasant girl, he did what he would have done in any case.  He stepped into the girl’s defense and arrested the man.  The law was quite clear, and Kane had no qualms about sending the man to the gaol.  The man was a stranger to him, but it mattered little; the rules applied to everyone.

The Duke, however, disagreed.  What Kane didn’t know was that the attacker was the Duke’s son, and neither the father nor the son thought it was a magistrate’s place to tell them what they could and could not do.  The Duke ordered his son released.

Kane had never gone against the Duke, but when he was given the choice of doing as he was told or upholding the law, he chose the latter.  He refused to release the Duke’s son, explaining that he himself had witnessed the attack on the local girl, and the evidence was beyond question.

In retrospect, that wasn’t the wisest course of action.

Kane suddenly found himself confined to his own prison, while the Duke’s son returned to his father’s house, unpunished and unrepentant.  Kane was too shocked and confused to put up much of a fight, and had the matter rested there, there would have been nothing memorable about it.  But prison or no, news still traveled, and it wasn’t long before Kane heard that the peasant girl he had protected in the first place had been assaulted by the Duke’s son again, and this time he had killed her.

That was more than Kane could tolerate.  He sat alone in his cell, brooding on the blatant miscarriage of justice.  It was enough to make a man like him a maniac, but he was so fanatically devoted to justice, and so enraged by the Duke’s actions that it went farther than mere mania.  Something changed. 

After an indeterminate length of time, Kane slowly realized that a prison could not hold him if he didn’t wish to be held He walked out of his cell, and out of the gaol.  Anyone who insisted in standing in his way was dealt with in short order; he did not even realize his own strength until he had killed several guards with his bare hands.

The Duke’s manor was three days’ hard ride from the prison, but by sunrise of the next day, the Duke, and his son, were both dead.  The last thing they saw were the cold, brightly glowing eyes of a magistrate who had once been human.

Roleplaying Notes

Kane is now technically a demon, although he doesn’t care for the term.  What makes him unique is that he is driven to see that justice is firmly upheld and that those who are guilty pay for their crimes.  He finds himself drawn to great injustices and has the urge to right them.  Mostly, this means punishing the guilty, generally by death.  However, Kane will very occasionally step in to protect someone; it tends to depend on what’s going on.

He is a quiet, soft-spoken man; even when he’s incredibly angry, his voice never rises.  When he does get angry, the glow of his eyes increases in intensity.  He is very patient, but also very cold and relentless.  Once he’s targeted someone, he shows no mercy.

He is a good deal stronger and faster than humans, and has an uncanny ability to sense if a particular person is guilty of a given crime.  To a lesser extent, he tends to know when someone is hiding something, although not what.  It isn’t all that hard to injure him in combat, the problem is that he seldom notices injuries.  He has established that he can’t be killed permanently, although he doesn’t hold an undue grudge if he is killed temporarily.

Kane seldom works for anyone; those who would take advantage of his services are people he is likely to target, and those he would be willing to help almost certainly do *NOT* want his help.  He is fanatically devoted to justice, but his version of what is just may not be the same as others.

Possibilities

Local criminals have been targeted by a serial killer, one who seems almost supernatural.  Either the guilds, or the authorities have requested that someone (expendable) look into this.

Someone of great importance has been targeted by Kane, and they want bodyguards.  Dealing with Kane won’t be fun, but since he never targets without reason, finding out their client’s guilty secret could be equally dangerous.

Perhaps the PCs have come to right some great injustice themselves, and in the process encounter Kane.  He might make a good ally.  For now.

And, of course, given the typical activities of a typical adventuring party, Kane could very well target one of the PCs.

Appearance

Oni appears as a pale young man of maybe sixteen or seventeen.  He has short black hair that is combed neatly back, and wears simple black clothes.  He smiles all the time, and that, coupled with his red eyes, gives him a very frightening air.

History/Background

There are always fell wizards who summon demons and bind them to their service, despite the risks involved.  If a bound demon is not treated with the utmost caution, it will often escape and wreak it’s vengeance on the one who presumed to command it.

Oni is different, as demons go.  He has never been summoned, and approaches his masters on his own initiative.  He doesn’t care who he works for, or what their goals are.  He is quite happy to take a low ranking position.  Often, his master doesn’t even know what Oni’s true nature is.

The reason for all of this is that Oni’s greatest joy is causing pain, physical, emotional, and psychological.  He regards torture as an art form, and himself as a master artist.  He has centuries of experience in his chosen field, and knows how to cause the maximum amount of pain across the maximum period of time.  Oni’s playthings don’t die slowly, sometimes lingering at his hands for years.

He has extensive knowledge of the psychology, anatomy, and physiology of human(oid)s, and his understanding of medicine is unrivaled.  (He has, on very rare occasions, been persuaded to act as a doctor in addition to his normal pursuits, but those that ask him to do such a thing had damn well better make it worth his while, for their own sakes.) 

Of course, inevitably, some hero will eventually come and destroy Oni’s master.  When that happens, he simply leaves, moving on to the next despot, tyrant, madman, or evil wizard and offers his services to them.

Possessions

Oni owns very little of his own, mostly relying on his current master to provide the equipment needed for his art.  At most, he carries a well-cared for set of knives, scalpels, and needles.  He perceives anyone who has to rely on actual torture-chamber equipment (such as racks, iron maidens, etc.) as lacking in imagination.  Of course, he will happily use whatever he has at his disposal.

At any given time, Oni will have anywhere from two to thirteen "pets."  These are people whom he has found to be remarkably resilient or hard to break, and he focuses his attention on them when he has nothing official to do, or if he’s bored.  They can be distinguished from his ordinary victims because each of them will have Oni’s personal symbol carved into their chest.  Depending on how long he’s had power over them, they will also exhibit various sickening injuries and deformities, and most are quite mad.  Disturbingly, there have been a few pets that Oni has had for so long that they can’t live any other way, and will not leave him if they can help it.

Roleplaying Notes

He’s best used in very small doses.  Torturing people is all he cares about, at all, and everything he does is in pursuit of that.  Being a demon, he’s extremely hard to kill permanently, so he may pop up more than once.  His true name is unknown: he gives whatever name amuses him.

He smiles all the time, is unceasingly polite, and creepy as hell.  Perhaps the PCs need to rescue someone who’s fallen into his hands, or they’re just trying to take down his current master.  He might even work in the dungeons of someone technically good- legitimate ruler, guardsmen/police, etc.

Appearance

Ran appears to be a small boy somewhere in the vicinity of seven and ten.  He is very fair, with pale skin, sandy hair, and freckles.  He has very bright, intelligent eyes that seem to be a different color every time you look at them.  His clothes are usually torn or dirty, but no more so than any other small, active child.

History/Background

Once upon a time, there was a man who ran a school.  He was devoted to learning as a discipline, and the only thing he loved more than learning was sharing his knowledge.  He had several students, mostly in their late teens, handpicked by the schoolmaster.  Each would go on to become a scholar of great repute.

Ran was different than his classmates.  He was only eight, an orphan taken in by the schoolmaster.  He was extremely curious, and had a driving need to know things.  He didn’t really want to do anything with his newfound knowledge; he just wanted to know for the sake of knowing.  The schoolmaster understood this urge (or thought he did), and indulged Ran often, taking time out of his busy schedule of teaching to explain something to the boy.

Of course, the schoolmaster didn’t quite understand the depths of Ran’s curiosity, or the lengths he would go to to satisfy it.  There was always something he wanted to know or find out, and he often didn’t pay any mind to restrictions or think about what the consequences would be.  He became very, very good at finding things out.  Sometimes, the things he found out upset others; it was hard to keep secrets around him.  In fact, having a secret just made him more curious than normal.

He also didn’t seem to understand that sometimes his methods of finding things out hurt others.  After a biology lesson, he became curious about how living things worked.  He ended up hurting himself, trying to get a look inside.  The schoolmaster had a serious talk with Ran.  The boy hadn’t intended to hurt himself, but he hadn’t realized what he was doing at the time.  He’d just… been curious.

After that, the schoolmaster kept a closer watch on Ran.  Mostly, he was able to keep Ran’s curiosity in check.  He had to be careful to explain something as soon as Ran expressed interest in it, or Ran would find out on his own, and he didn’t want to chance something serious.

However, even normal boys of Ran’s age got away from their guardians, and Ran was far from normal.  Sometimes, the schoolmaster’s explanations didn’t satisfy him.  Sometimes, Ran just got so curious about something he didn’t think to go find the schoolmaster and ask.  There were some books the schoolmaster had, that he kept on a high shelf in his private quarters.  He didn’t realize that any of the students had noticed them, much less that they had caught Ran’s inquisitive eyes. 

Even with a chair, he couldn’t quite reach the shelf.  It had happened a thousand times before, and would happen a thousand times after.  The chair tilted and wobbled, and just as he was reaching for one of the books he came crashing down.  It wasn’t that much of a fall, and any other time, he wouldn’t have even had a bruise to show for it.  But his head struck the corner of a table on the way down.  He was dead before he hit the floor.

A strange thing, happened, though.  He was dead, but he was still curious.  And for the first time, he became aware of a vague presence hovering around him.  It whispered to him, about the things he’d never know now.  And then it asked him a question.

Would you like to be able to find out everything about everything in the world?

The answer was, of course, a given.

Abilities

Ran has a knack for finding people that want to know something and is drawn towards them.  While he’s stronger and faster than a mortal child of his age would appear to be, he avoids conflict when he can.  He can speak and read just about every language there ever was.  Locks are just a temptation to him, and he tends to fiddle with them until he discovers how they are taken apart.

Ran means no harm, but as in life, he doesn’t consider the consequences of anything he does to find something out.  The larger difficulty is that he’s a demon now, and his tainted nature has its own effect.  He happily helps anyone find out anything, but that knowledge comes at a price.  Someway or another, knowing is always worse.  Sometimes it’s because the answer wasn’t the one the person wanted.  Sometimes, it’s because the answer itself is dangerous.  Sometimes it’s because of the methods used to get the answer. 

He *is* a child, and looks and acts like one, and therefore is seldom threatened with anything serious.  However, people do occasionally take serious action against him.  He cannot be killed permanently, and usually doesn’t mind too much when he is killed.

Roleplaying Notes

Ran is a friendly child, and very, very curious.  He’s always asking question about everything, and gets into everything.  He can be quite irritating, but he doesn’t mean any harm.  He’s also hard to keep up with, since he tends to slip away, even if being watched.

He also tends to encourage other people’s curiosity.  They start wondering about various things, and either find out on their own, or get Ran’s help.  He is happy to help them find out anything, because, naturally, he wants to know too.  However, each answer he provides usually brings up several more questions, and it’s easy to get obsessed with answering all of them.

Ran is probably one of the most knowledgeable entities in existance, although sometimes he intentionally forgets things so he can find them out again.  It is through him that any knowledge of the Court of a Thousand and Nine Sorrows reached the mortal world, through three different scholars.  (Of course, none ended happily- one was killed as a heretic, one went mad and later became one of the Despised, and one was destroyed by the Sorrows themselves for meddling.)

Ran is usually in the company of his thrall, the Schoolmaster; it’s less troublesome for what appears to be a man and his son to travel than it is for a small child alone.  He also will sometimes pose as the son, nephew, or cousin of someone he’s helping, just to explain his presence.  Sometimes, however, he’s just too curious to maintain appearances and can be found on his own.

He is one of the few Sorrows that has no objection to being summoned, because he’s always curious about why the person did it.  He’s also one of the few Sorrows that all the others at least tolerate, since he often has information that even they find useful.

"Bad you say? I could tell you what bad is. But I’m better now, thanks to someone special.

And how she does it? I dunno, man. She’s not a witch or something, you could see that. Some say she’s like, a higher being. Not a god, something below those. I’m just happy it works. Living like a man, I couldn’t do that for years."

Appearance

Of undetermined age, possibly around forty, she is certainly a half-breed, though it’s hard to tell what her parents were. She has gray eyes, but people rarely notice they are completely gray… people don’t really look much into her eyes.

In her work, she does what she is told, and talks little, if at all. More than one of the serving girls has likened her to a zombie. Among them, she is rarely chosen for the night, and few guests praise her in the morning. But no one bothers to complain either, most just forget about it.

The few who actually call her by name, call her Emma. Questions on this matter are useless, as on others: she can talk, she doesn’t really communicate.

History/Background
When ‘Emma’ was young, she had a real name. She was of noble birth, cheerful and ignorant of the world outside. The greatest adventure was an occasional peek on the paintings her father has collected, their dark side thrilling her, but did no harm.

This merry existence was cut short by fate: war came, as it likes to. The horrors involved need not be described, it is enough to say she has lost her family and freedom, and much more. Freed from captivity, the role of a plaything for a mercenary army has changed her deeply - now she burned with a powerful hatred for the enemy. It was this hatred, and the last few friends of her family, that brought her to espionage, if she could not fight, she would do anything else. Anything.

After the war, she has returned, to the home, that stood no more, to a city that didn’t remember her name, and where no one recognized her face. She took on jobs no one wanted, and led an existence no one could envy. It is unknown when she has changed. It might have been a gradual process over the years, or perhaps it was the moment, when she failed even in her suicide. But she is now something else.

True Nature
‘Emma’ is a Sorrow, the Sorrow of Despair. This feeling defines her, she feeds on it without realizing, and suffers it without being able to escape.

Whoever spends some time with her learns quickly, that she emanates it as well; no one truly wants to stay around. But at the same time, she can drain despair out of the few, who muster the courage.

There are now some, who keep her company anyway: not friends, but those with plenty of despair in their miserable lives. While to be with her is hard, when she consumes their despair, they are able to live happily for whole days until it returns. Think what a release it must be, for those, who have no hope left.

Plot hooks

- private as the little group is, they are by no means secret, and the message is slowly spreading. A priest is concerned, and wants to know more about them - are they a cult, are they dangerous? Insert the heroes for research.

- a sage has studied her existence thoroughly, and used her example to support his own thesis: that magical items can turn people into higher beings, if they are carefully chosen. Simply get a sufficient number of artifacts, the more unique and more fitting the intended result, the better. And if you stay around them for a long enough time (using mystical techniques and concentrating on it) you will be transformed. If it worked for her, it must work for others, too! And suddenly, everyone started to hoard magical items…

- a very stupid thief has broken into the ruin, and taken everything that seemed valuable. What became of him, nobody knows, but a couple of items, that inspire misery, despair and hopelessness, are now outside. Someone should get them, before they destroy the small community.

- if you need to get rid of a particular cursed item, she might be the one to carry it

- the public finds out, and suddenly crowds flock to her, finding a goddess that will make all their fears and worries go away… so who will point out that it isn’t true?

Appearance
A figure of imposing, yet not gigantic proportion shrouded in a black and featureless robe. Wrapped in some malfean shroud, the figure seems to be a pillar, lacking arms and legs, yet can move with speed and unnatural grace, the barest hint of hands appear bearing a blade made of blood and scarlet flame. The face of the Masque is bone white and impassive, the eye-sockets empty and dark, and a great cleft splitting the mask into two pieces that seem to hover in front of a darkness so tangible that it has a velvetine texture.

History/Background
The nation of Azianium is ancient, it’s greatest triumphs now myths, it’s heroes now legends, and it’s great wonders of architecture are naught but dust in the wind. Yet from that now fallen civilization, that antediluvian beacon of light, a black shadow lurches. The name of that shadow is Anggartoronash, which in the tongue of the Aziani translates to the Masque of Hunger.

Anggartoronash was once a mortal woman of somewhat plain countenance and moderate if not opulent wealth. She lived in the last era of Azianium when the temperatures soared, the rivers became gouges in the earth and lakes became vast cracked basins. Famine and drought being the order of the day, it was no surprise that many of the people of Azianium forsook the gods, and cursed the hot and dry aether. Yet it is not common that the gods notice when one person forsakes them, or even when an entire nation, or even an entire people forsake them.

Yet it is another thing for the gods to have their rituals so brutally perverted and turned against the very thing they were fostered to engender. The woman who would become Anggartoronash created an entirely new realm of blasphemy as she lead a remnant of her people seeking sanctuary from the drought and famine of Azianium. As they departed from the dying kingdom, the band destroyed every temple, church and shrine they could find. In each instance the sanctum of the holy place was defiled before the building was either burned or dismantled.

At the time of prayer and communion with the gods, the refugees held inverted rituals, calling upon the gods to take back their favor. Eventually the band started to suffer from the pangs of thirst unquenched and hunger. The Lady held that the weak and the infirm would be the first to yield to the drought so that the more fit owuld survive. In a brutal act of pragmaticism, the weak and infirm were culled, their blood consumed and their flesh boiled from their bones and eaten by the survivors. In the band’s wake shrines were left, each a testament to a person who gave their life willingly or otherwise that the rest might survive long enough to find sanctuary. At each grim feast, the gods were thanked and invited to drink from the bowl of blood and death that they had been so generous in blessing.

This continued for a span of seven months and the band quickly thinned as some fled to die in the desert and the others were felled by hunting beasts, or ended their lives in the cook pots of the other refugees. The Lady was meticulous in her black piety, always thanking the gods for their gifts of drought, famine, and death, and each meal or spilling of blood thanking them for replacing bread and sweet water with the flesh of her kin and their blood for wine. Standing as a symbol of defiance and strength, she led her band more than 2500 miles before the last staggered and fell.

The Lady wept tears as she had failed, the hundreds who had started the exodus from the ruins of Azianium were reduced to nothing as she fell to her knees. Her final band, fewer than half a dozen were left to weak and dehydrated to even turn on one another for a chance to live a bit longer. She wept for failing her people, and she cursed the gods even as she used her dagger, now dull from hacking through the sinews and joints of friends and kin, to open her own veins. In a last act of defiance, she drew the bloodied blade across her tongue, tanking the gods with all the bitterness and hatred a single heart can hold that she did not perish with her tongue dry.

40 Nights and the Birth of the Masque of Hunger
After the passage of forty nights, something wicked occured. Those who curse the gods and commit wicked deeds, no matter the reason, are cast into the realms of Hell. Yet some of these souls, a very small number, are vomited forth back into creation by the maws of the hells. On that night, the now skeletal corpse of the lady shuddered as she was reborn as Anggartoronash, the Masque of Hunger, a Sorrow of famine and exile.

For the next Umbral Year, the Masque of Hunger crafted her death mask from the skull of her former lover and spouse. As she shaped the artifact, the winds carried mourning songs that caused the desert wolves to sing laments to the moon. Wrapping herself in a darkling sheet of night and turning her final spray or arterial blood, long since ruddy dust into a blade of vengeance, Anggartoronash left the place of it’s deathly dry rebirth.

Special Equipment
The Shroud of Endless Lament - The black robe worn by Anggartoronash, the shroud is woven from strands of night, spun by the skilled and deft hands of politicians who sold their souls unto the nine hells and the abyss. The shroud offers the same level of protection as full plate armor, as well as mystical armor equivalent to 50% magic resistance. As long as the wearer remains motionless, they can automatically hide in shadows without any sort of check.

The Anggar’tor’Onash - Literally translating to Hunger-possessive transitive-Mask, or Mask of hunger, the Anggar’tor’Onash is a traditional Aziani funeral mask worn by the corpses of the mystics, nobility, and seers of Azianium. However, the mask has been split into two pieces, the result of a great hero and his mythical exploits to defeat the great and terrible Masque of Hunger. While the original powers of the Mask are gone, and the Masque of Hunger has been diminished by the damage, the demon retains both pieces, using them as it’s face. The broken pieces are demon tainted and have no powers.

Mask of Hunger refers specifically to the funeral mask worn by the demon, who is properly known as the Masque of Hunger, thank you

The Elder Days
While Azianium was still standing, abandoned but still silently defiant, Anggartoronash made the city her citadel of hatred. The Masque of Hunger slew any who entered it’s desert, adding their shades to it’s growing army of incorporeal host. It was not long before this spectral army was unleashed on an unsuspecting world, as most were not terribly bothered that the arrogant and autocratic Aziani people were all but exterminated. Hundreds perished as the Masque of Hunger strode through the fields, the plants withering in it’s wake, even the insects of the field died, and birds fell from the sky. But this was not the greatest of it’s powers, the worst was that with a wave, the wells would burble and run dry, streams and creeks turned into dry cracks in the earth. The sound of the Masque’s laugh drove rain clouds from the sky, and with that the desert of Aziani grew outward from the ruins of the now dead city.

The names are now long since dust, but a hero rose up from the afflicted nations and rode against Anggartoronash. With his companions, the warrior brought the battle from their homelands and back to the sunblighted ruins of Azianium. There among the splintered and broken stone, the Masque of Hunger slew the warriors and magi who rode against it. Each corpse was found withered and grey, and only furthered the resolve of the warriors. In a mirror of it’s own mortal life, this continued until only one warrior remained, at which time Anggartoronash quit plays of stealth and confronted the warrior. With his last stroke, the warrior expended everything he had, and shattered the Mask of Hunger, deeply wounding the Masque of Hunger.

The sorrow dispersed into the winds, leaving behind the corpse of the warrior and the two broken pieces of the mask.

Roleplaying Notes
The Dawn of Hunger - The weather has suddenly and dramatically changed, no rain has fallen and nothing stops the harsh light of the sun. The wells have gone dry and their are places where swaths of farmland near the desert are found utterly dead. After centuries of lacking substance, the Masque of Hunger has coalesced once again. Now the Sorrow explores the lands around what was once it’s Kingdom. As it passes, all plant and animal life flees or perishes.

A Black Relic - A high ranking wizard hires the PCs to explore the ruins of Azianium, now little more than rounded nubs of stone and heaps of sand. Among the ruins and sand eroded skeletons, a PC or NPC liason finds one half of the Mask…

A. The PCs are further contracted to find the other half of the mask, inadvertantly returning Anggartoronash back to the realm of existance.

B. The PCs are stalked by a nihilistic desert cult of thugs and assassins who want the other half of the mask to summon their demon-god of retribution. They are the target of assassination attempts, theft, banditry, and summoned monsters sent to attack them.

Jeeze! Another Quest? - After the comming of Anggartoronash, it is determined that no current magic or weapon can destroy the elder Sorrow, and instead the PCs must seek out the tears of a God and a magical Loaf of Endless Bread to appease the Masque of Hunger.