Copolactol

Appearance
Copolactol displays the monstrous fusion of visually conflicting humanoid and insectoid anatomy common to all Sahari. But his carapace bear a large, gaping hole in it, grim reminder of the atrocities that he suffered at the hands of the pale skins.

History/Background
For two centuries the ambitious and ferocious Arahuian people ruled the entire continent of Tahutol with blood soaked obsidian blades. Year after year, their valiant and fearless warriors would pour forth from their principle capital atop the holy Hill of Hilla much like a swarm of ravenous jungle ants of the war-path, their breasts filled to a man with the desire to make vicious war upon the rebellious neighbors that refused to acknowledge the supremacy of their nation. Unleashed like a relentless deluge of devastation, they would fall upon the wretched people and carry them off to await their grim fate in the dark, labyrinthine warren running beneath the foundations of the ancient city of the Arahuains. In that nether realm, the unfortunate captives would scream their death wails as as their very brains were devoured by the Sarahi, the repugnant but seemingly all powerful children of mighty Ixtilli, the Stinging One.

A mere two centuries passed, and the eternal empire of Ixtili's people was no more. Appearing from the dread Sea, came pale skinned beings as white as the death spirits. Wielding thunderbolts and clad in the armor of thunder, they crushed the Arahuains, scattering vast armies numbering in the thousands by reducing the brave and courageous warriors to abject terror with their modern weapons that no force could thwart. Resplendent feathered warriors clad in gold and silver fell like insubstanial sun-beams before the brutal reality of steel blades and cross-bow bolts.

At last, the mighty capital of the Arahuins itself was put to the sword. The awesome earth and stone constructs of the priest kings were demolished, block by block, and the vast caches of gold that had been proudly stored within, tribute obtained through centuries of bloody war and conquest, was ruthlessly seized and loaded upon the ships of the invaders. And the people themselves suffered a fate no less degrading. Everyone single Arahuain, from the simplest peasant, to the ruling priest kings themselves, were enslaved and forced to embrace the faith of the One God that the invaders had brought with them and scattered over the entire land like a suffocating blight that smothered the glories of every native state it touched and contaminated. But the greatest humilation had yet to come.

In a deliberate affront to the humbled Arahuains,they were forced to bear helpless witness as the scared subterranean enclosures of the Sahari was purged with liquid fire, a unique invention of great cruelty. As the creatures that they had worshipped as living gods died excruciating deaths by the hundreds, the populace wept bitter tears, convinced that with the death of Ixtili's children, the glories of their civilization would never shine again throughout the breadth of Tahutol as they had once had. It was a bleak future of cultural extinction and slavery that awaited them now.

But fate was more merciful than those unfortunate people had imagined. In a powerful twist of irony, the rapacious greed so endemic among the invaders that had ostentatiously arrived only ''to remove the stain of demon-worship'',, played a vital role in ensuring that a creature of immense cunning and ambition would survive. One that would serve to keep alive, all that the invader had sought to destroy.

For unbeknownst to them, one of the Sahari survived the fiery immolation of his kindred. As the fiery deluge poured into the dwellings that had lain unmolested by no human malice in memory that crossed millennia, it rushed out from the one passage leading to a portal hewn into the surface of the ground that had so far escaped the ravages of the liquid fire, his carapace aflame. Appalled and terrified beyond all measure by the horrible extermination that had just taken place, the Sahari struggled to comprehend this most cruel reversal of fortunes. Could it be, he wondered in grim despair, as he scuttled out of the tiny entrance-way that had been dug into the dirt, that the sea of dread had finally decided to inflict the death-blow against the earth Mother by unleashing this inferno that flowed like a wave of fiery death over those that had ruled all-powerful and unassailable from their holy seat of power? Perhaps it were so. After all, the children of Ixtili were almost extinct were they not? And very soon, their extinction would be complete once the flames sending such brutal agony over his body were done with their vicious work. Why had the great cosmic powers finally abandoned the children of Ixtilti to this gruesome apocalypse ? What great wrong or trespass had the offspring of the Stinging One done to deserve this terrible fate?

As what he expected to be his last coherent thought before the red-hot claws of death closed over him, crossed his mind, an iron clad fist swiftly rushed upon him and fluidly scooped him up from the ground, smothering the ravenous flames with their unyielding steel grip. Alas, had he been rescued from the flames only to be kept alive for some far more hideous fate by these merciless beings that had wrought so much devastation to the worshippers of the earth?
As if to confirm his worst fears, the steel talons thrust him into a large wooden chest, closing off his final glimpse of the land where the Sarahi had reigned as gods for so long until the white men had finally come forth from the sea of dread to lay waste to the entire world they had known .

**********

Unknown to the trembling creature forced to pondered on the ominous future that awaited him, his captor was a coarse foreign mercenary who paid homage to the precepts of the Church Of The One God in name alone. The promise of gold not faith, had been his motivation in emboldening him to join the Castillian expedition to bring the inhabitants of this new world to heel. Alas, a junior member of this endeavor, he had little confidence that a worthy portion of the spoils would be allocated to him. Comrades more skilled at flattery and politics than him had effectively seen to that. But there was still a chance for him to return to Haracon a wealthy man. There were certain people he knew back home that would be extremely interested in purchasing an exotic creature like the hideous abomination he had just rescued from certain death..

********

The voyage across the vast ocean separating Tahutol from the previously known world took several weeks, a hellish period spent navigating the turbulent waves and treacherous gales that had succeeded in sending so many of the invading armada's vessels to the bottom during the course of their voyage. Throughout all this time, the abductor never breathed a word of his forbidden procurement to any of his devout Castillian comrades, afraid that they might have him executed on the charge of seeking to protect a demonic entity and then upon the completion of this, seize and destroy the creature. Meanwhile, still unaware of the destiny that his captor had in store for him, the Sahari found himself terrorized by the wild rocking motions that kept assaulting his little prison and begun to entertain the dreadful possibility that he had been fed to the dreadful demon of the deeps, the being that would sunder to broken fragments any sacrificial victim unfortunate enough to be hurled into its dark bowels.

But his worst fears were not realized. A day came when the horrendous motions finally ceased their cruel torments. And for the first time in almost a moth the bright rays of the sun stormed into his dark cell again, blinding him with their brutal brilliance. The lid of the chest had been raised. He was in a building, a large cavernous one built of a stone so pale that the rays of the sun shone against it, forcing him to nearly close his eyes completely in protest. Oh, how he desperately longed for the dark and winding passage-ways of his sacred realm! But what in all creation could this place be? It was not the sea of dread surely. No, this was solid land, not the all consuming water he had foreseen in his dark imaginings.

From a dark corner of the hall, he managed to snatch a glimpse from the tightly closed corners of his eye at the two human shadows conversing with another. His keen eyes designed to penetrate the darkest depths of the earth's deeps descried them immediately as pale-skins, very similiar to the race of men that had invaded the empire of the Sarahi. If it were not them, than it was their related kindred at the very least. Astonishment followed the unexpected discovery that the invaders were not monsters come from the depths of the sea of dread to destroy the earth and her creations, but were instead a human-like race that lived on a mysterious continent across the sea. And curiosity in turn, quickly chased the heels of astonishment. There was so much he wanted to know about these beings. Were they immortal or simply another race of humans? And what had been their intent in eradicating the Sarahi and the culture that had revolved around them for so long? There was so much to learn about his captors..

''So, how much do you think Nayre Shaulle will pay for this ''demon'' the mercenary claims to have snatched from the very depths of hell itself?''. A rough chuckle. ''A lot I imagine. With all the gold that his whores bring him from the fat purses of their noble patrons, he has been a very good customer of the Keepers. Likes his exotic beasties and is never afraid to stint when it comes to paying for them. Add the fact that those filthy heathens the Castillians crushed, worshipped this little monster as a living god and offered it no less than human sacrifices, and that morbid bastard will be delighted to get his hands on it at any cost''.

And thus did the Sarahi, last of the surviving revered children of the divine Ixtili, become the pet and propety of a pimp.
*******

As the animal traders had predicted, Nayre Shaulle took with great delight to his latest purchase. Paying a very generous price for the Sarahi, Nayre in his zeal, had a cage constructed of gold just for the creature's residence. A paltry offering to something that had costly luxuries untold offered to it in its heyday of glory of course, but the Sarahi had been a captive too long to hold on to any pretentious delusions. He was a slave now, lowly chattel.

But his owner, the evidently wealthy man that the two strangers had given him over to, clearly saw him as much more than that. His cage was given a place of great pride, kept in the chamber where his master met with importantly dressed men whom he clearly respected. Every now and then, he would even make little obeisances to them, signs of outright grovelling that were unmistakable to one that had enjoyed them for so long. The guest that his master was so fond of inviting over, he soon learnt, often enjoyed the morbid pleasure of seeing for the first time with their own eyes, the grotesque uniqueness of the malformed abomination staring balefully back at them from behind the bars of its cage.

It disgusted and infuriated him to be turned into a cheap spectacle like this, but in a way he was grateful for this. Placed in a location where he could easily pick up sizable bits of knowledge about his master and the important visitors whom the man often frequented with, was no small blessing to be discounted lightly.

Like all his kind, he was blessed with the ability to divine the very thoughts of mortals. Within a very short space of time, he had amassed a bountiful amount of knowledge. He learnt that his master was a man who provided a sizable income for himself by providing the ruling nobles of Marsuth, the capital city of this land called Haracon, with beautiful concubines. He also came to understand that many of the people with whom his master was often engaged in deep, engrossing conversations with, were deeply devoted to the pursuit of obtaining great amounts of gold. From those with professions officially outlawed by the state to the occasional senior cleric that dropped by, they all hungered after the yellow metal, striving to obtain ever larger amounts of it. And now for the first time, he understood why his brothers had been so callously slaughtered, and the riches of their followers seized with equal avarice. The pale skinned ones were creatures driven by utter greed alone. Their One God was simply an excuse for them to steal the riches of the Arhuains and others whom had possessed that which they so coveted. Gold was their true god. No other. They did not worship the bountiful earth or fear the powerful and ruthless ocean. God was what they prayed to, and a lack of it was what they feared above all. A more hollow, grasping culture he never heard of. Extreme contempt and rage filled him for their greed that had reduced the glorious civilization of the Arahuains to slavery and destituion.

*******
But he did not die of despair as one would have expected a being in his wretched position to have done so. For there was another interesting fact he had harvested from the patient hours spent on spying on the the thoughts of his master. Nayre Shaulle may have claimed to worship the one god like all his brothers, but in truth, he preferred to put his trust in the existence of powerful spirits that could affect one's destiny. He was not a native son of this land, but an immigrant who still retained the shamanastic practices of his ancestors, albeit secretly. In that lay a vital opening for the Sarahi to exploit.

One night, he did something he had not done in a very long time. The deprivation of human brains to feast on had weakened his gift severely, but he still had within him, the innate ability to mesmerize a mortal's sleep with visions of breathtaking and mystical portent. And so he intruded into Nayre's dreams, assuming the form of Nayre's family deity. Assuring the dreamer that he had taken on the from of a freakish monster only to slip into the home of his professed devotee and test the faithfulness of the latter with the intention of determining if had had remained loyal to the god of his ancestors in a land where the worship of the One God alone was tolerated. If Nayre did everything the god of his fathers commanded, he would prosper. But if he refused to do just that, never again would he be blessed, but would instead be forsaken and reviled by the one he had renounced.

Life took a dramatic turn for him following that little deft feat of manipulation. Overcome with superstitious reverence, Nayre awoke from his slumber and immediately rushed into the meeting room and fell prostate before the cage where he was held, promising to do anything the great god desired. From that day on, Nayre was effectively his pawn.

And the Sarahi had such grand plans for his new minion to carry out. By exploiting the relentless greed that the pale-skins cherished for gold, he would begin anew the progeny of the Sarahi and enable them to recover some degree of the pomp they had lost. There would be a powerful element of supreme irony involved in this, one that would make his brilliant stroke of inspiration that had inspired him to transform his master into his pawn, childishly simple in comparison. By drawing on Nayre's vast resources of wealth and contacts in the criminal underworld, he would begin an industry that would smelt counterfeit gold. So perfectly forged would it be, that many would mistake the copper alloy for actual gold and use it as such. And out of their blind greed, he would profit immensely.

A few years passed, and the Sarahi had established a powerful net-work that specalised in smelting counterfeit currency, even going so far as to install in place a perpetual representative at the infamous Black Market, the notorious attraction held every year by the criminal barons of Haracon.

Nayre Shaulle become wealthier than ever, and all that vast wealth was for his pet alone to exploit. The powers of the Sarahi had regained their former potency as well, nourished by the never ceasing stream of fresh human brains eaten straight from the skulls of struggling sacrificial victims delivered to him by Nayre's henchmen, considerably augmenting his abilities in the process. But his work would be pointless unless he had heirs to share the fruits of his awesome success with. Selecting the choicest beauties from Nayre's harem, he coupled with them as his bothers once had with the daughters of the priest-kings of Arahuai, and from their wombs obtained numerous offspring, awarding each of them a seperate part of his invisible empire to control. Names he gave each and every one of them, names that would serve to remind them of their pedigree, the stolen grandeur their kind had once enjoyed, and most importantly of all, the land that their sire had been abducted from by the pale skinned ones. To illustrate to them how important it was to ensure that the ravaged glories of Ixtili remain alive forever in their collective minds, he insisted that they address him as ''Copolactol'', a word in the Arahuain tongue that means '''Dispossessed or displaced one''.

Some things never perish. For the Sarahi exile now known as ''Copolactol'', the dream of one day resurrecting the glories that divine Ixtili's followers were robbed off still lingers. Warriors he has begun to arm, and weapons he has begun to purchase in great quantities, both done in the interest of preparing for the eventual re-conquest of Tahutol, an effort assisted greatly by the elaborate financial network erected in place by his offspring and allies. A foolishly impossible goal it might seem to most, but until the Sahari rule again triumphant and unchallenged upon the seat of Hilla, true satisfaction will always remain an elusive goal for him.

Plot Hooks:
Bad Mistake-The PC's are sent by a rival guild to assassinate the leader of one of his sub-operations. In doing so, they are compelled to slay one of his demonic spawn and now find themselves hunted down by the minions of a vengeful Copolactol.

Missing People-Alarmed by a rash of missing people, the PC's are sent to investigate grisly rumors of human sacrifices in the heart of Marsuth.

Special Equipment

None

Roleplaying Notes