Just as he was beginning to grow assured that he would not have to move further than a few more steps forward, Old N saw his fellow-distractions charge forward as rapidly as their limbs, abnormally large or not, would allow. Was that what had actually been agreed upon? The crustacean being was fairly confident it was not; then again, he had barely been paying any attention while the battle-plan was being discussed. Chittering to himself in mild annoyance, he hastily finished swallowing his mushroom's cap, and prepared to advance upon the enemy. Ahead of him, the knight and the burly Cambion who fancied himself some sort of monarch had breached the facility and, judging by the cacophony pouring out from the door, were already at work; meanwhile, the masked drunkard was apparently intentioned to transform his body, or at least a part of it, into a pyrotechnic show. Seeing as he was raising, well, Hell (that was his goal, after all) loudly enough to render any contribution Old N could possibly make thoroughly useless, the latter saw no choice but to invade the prison as well if he was to be in a position to claim any credit for an eventual success once this was over.
Reluctantly lifting himself from his naturally half-crouching posture, Old N raised his pincers, one of which was still holding the unfinished mushroom stalk in the purely cosmetic guise of a mace, and, spreading them in a manner resembling the arms of a misshapen letter Y, charged onward - which, in his case, amounted to a moderate trot. As he moved, he began to snap his mandibles together, producing a seemingly low, yet continuous and greatly irritating sound which somehow grew audible amidst the general chaos. In spite of his best efforts, most of which were, it bears mentioning, simulated, it was unlikely the crab-like demon would have been able to reach the prison hallway before his companions encountered any resistance; however, once they did, he could probably appear as though he were rescuing them at a critical moment, and might perhaps later be able to claim that it was owing to his timely intervention that the operation succeeded.
...I truly should hasten somewhat with my own sheet, should I? Depending on how matters progress, it ought to be ready some time next (or this, by this point) week.
By any means, considering the quantity of sufficiently advanced weaponry about, I might as well leave free rein to my imagination where the cult's tamed creatures are concerned - if only to give it some realistic chance of survival.
Here is a beginning; obviously, to be expanded upon later.
Faction Name: The Disciples of Yre-Keltha
Faction Type: Theocratic tribal community
Capital: Vulkorrth, the Crepuscular Shrine
Holdings: The Disciples make their home in a vast maze of subterranean caverns and tunnels whose main mouth is located near the Ashlands, and which extend to unfathomable deeps beneath the barren wastes. None has ever explored them in their entirety, and those who venture into the lower reaches often fail to return. Vague tales and rumours tell of impossibly vast chasms, black, boundless oceans which never saw the light of day and creatures strange even by the standards of the cavern-dwellers; yet none of them has ever been confirmed. Aside from their main settlement in a number of large chambers below-grounds, the Disciples maintain a few outposts at a certain distance from the cavern mouth, both in the Ashlands and the wastes to the south-west. These spots serve as observation and guard points, as well as staging grounds for hunting or raiding expeditions.
@FoxFire I trust not. I conceive my cult as mostly sedentary, with virtually all of its population, save for outriders, sentries and surface hunters, spending the greatest part of their lives in the caverns, and scarcely ever emerging into the light of day. Besides, given the harsh territories they inhabit and the fact many of their handlers are non-mammalian aliens, I doubt whether any of their beasts shall be warm-blooded - which, I suppose, could complement their somewhat hive-like society well enough.
Ah, I suppose I might as well bring my monstrous swarms here, after all. What would you say of a tribalistically theocratic community, ruled by the highest echelons of an alien cult, which dwells in a maze of subterranean caverns and is adept at domesticating the various local more or less hideous creatures?
As the ill-assorted party came to a halt, Old N, who had up to that moment been placidly munching on a large, luridly red mushroom he had unaccountably produced from somewhere, stopped shuffling forward and remained still in his tracks, crouching slightly as his segmented limbs would allow. Thus far, he had paid only as little attention to is surroundings as what necessary not to stumble into something, reasoning that, as the others apparently knew in which direction they should proceed, he might as well spare himself the effort of remembering it; and, if such was the case, observing whither they were proceeding was rather pointless. He had therefore focused his attention entirely upon the mushroom, whose acrid, pungent taste prevented him from lapsing into somnolence as he walked - a mighty unpleasant experience, that, as he vaguely recalled from his previous travels. Presently, however, judging by the fact that everyone had begun to speak, they had reached their destination.
Old N cast a glance at the prison's ominous silhouette, appraised, not without some satisfaction, the silence, however grim, which seemed to emanate from it, then turned his attention to what the others were saying. The knight had put forth a plan of sorts, which, as far as Old N was concerned, did not apparently involve him; nor was he mentioned in any of the following suggestions. This appeared excellent; yet, he reflected, if he were to appear as contributing something meaningful now, there would probably ensue a higher likelihood of no one bothering him later on. Thus, in order to gain some semblance of helpfulness, he spoke up. He had, however, forgotten he was still chewing a piece of fungus, and the result was a sound which could best be rendered as "grrurrrb". Having swallowed the morsel, he made a second attempt, this time rather more successful: "Gwryes, I remain here. That is, I distract the guards - by remaining here, and lure them out. Then you can go in. Yes?" Barely coherent though his enunciation might have been, Old N trusted in its import to dissuade the others from devising any scheme which would involve him moving any further, and returned to finishing his mushroom before any notable action began.
Possibly. Though perhaps not immediately, depending on how much time I can muster at what point.
By the bye, you mentioned Nabushan was the core of a multi-planetary empire. Would that entail there might be non-humans among its population (assuming humans are the main species), or was no one else found among the stars this time?
Seems the group will require less supplies once they get on the road, considering Old N could build some sort of greenhouse for vegetables.
Provided they are willing to eat what he grows. And are not afraid of food poisoning, or good old simple poisoning, for that matter.
Oh look! A mirelurk!
Truth be told, I tend to be utterly and thoroughly ignorant of the settings whence I derive my character images. As far as I know, I searched for a "humanoid crab".
Ngralarthrekhfehrrothirlakrathakr "Old N" the Infernal Gardener
Appearance: Old N stands, in all his crustacean glory, slightly taller than the average human, and is significantly broader. His carapace is covered in all manner of clinging foulness - moss, lichens, mushrooms, strands of algae, even barnacles - which no known force has ever proved capable of prying off, and is chaotically scattered across the entirety of his body. The only exception to this uncouthness of growth is constituted by two patches of green-yellowish lichen upon his left pincer, whose astonishingly complex forms resemble a multitude of filaments gathering into respectively a spiral and a squat humanoid shape.
Gender: Incubic
Personality: If a single word were to be chosen to describe Old N, it would be "phlegmatic". The fact there is little to be found in Hell which would fail to leave him unfazed is due not so much to a wealth of experience as to the apathy which appears to pervade his being to the last synthetic fibre. Generally, his demeanour is that of someone who has been abruptly awoken from deep slumber and is eager to dismiss anything, be it the collapse of a piece of furniture or the imminent destruction of the universe, with a feeble waving of their hand and some inarticulate muttering before turning over and returning into the embrace of Morpheus. Even those things which most irritate him, namely, urgency in any guise and being disturbed in his rest, fail to elicit a proper response, and that any attempt from his side to remedy to them is doomed to half-heartedness is a foregone conclusion. That said, when he is provoked to a degree sufficient to rouse him from his eternal torpor - a feat which only the luckiest or most determined can achieve - his indifference readily transforms into anger, and he makes it a point of compunction not to stop before anything until the object of his displeasure has been thoroughly removed.
Greatest Sin: Sloth. Despite having been created to, essentially, work, Old N loathes the very name of effort with all the passion he can muster, and only resorts to it when his explicit goal is to avoid it. He has been known to slumber for decades on end when left undisturbed, and, were it up to him to decide, would gladly never make the slightest movement in his indefinitely long life.
Motivation: From his few interactions with damned souls Old N has gleaned that living humans might be easier to intimidate than dead ones and, most importantly, tend to permanently stop moving when dismembered (and make good compost, as well). His current plan is thus to reach the world of the living and kill all the humans he finds there, so that he might finally build himself a truly peaceful resting place.
Biography:
The demon who bears the nigh-unpronounceable name of Ngralarthrekhfehrrothirlakrathakr, almost invariably abbreviated to "Old N" (originally simply "N") came into being some millennia ago, when the denizens of the underworld still bothered with tormenting those who were presumably sent to them for chastisement. He was the handiwork of one particularly enterprising demonic overseer, whose intent it was to find a manner of employing Hell's rich and varied ecosystems as yet another device in the fiendish torturers' arsenal. Enter the Infernal Gardener: a creature with an unnatural aptitude for botanic crafts and abilities, physical and magical alike, enabling it to exploit the surrounding environment for all it could offer to reach its goals. Unfortunately, something went awry in the process, and, while the new crustacean demon was just as capable as he was supposed to be, he was severely lacking as far as motivation was concerned, and preferred sleeping in a warm mire over actually attending to his duties.
N spent the next centuries avoiding work as best as he could. Incidentally, despite his unenthusiastic performance, the results his efforts yielded were astoundingly better than satisfactory. The plants and fungi he sowed about his territory and let grow unchecked painfully entangled, tore and poisoned the souls tossed there; the damned he hastily buried in the ground and then promptly forgot suffered hideously in their entombment; and the screams of those he took to mangling in fits of frustration resounded most pleasingly in the air, drowning out those of his fellow-demons' own victims. Thus, he was assigned more and more "raw materials", and his more and more expedite methods wrung more and more pain from them, which caused the vicious circle to begin anew. N was beginning to seriously consider tunnelling his way to freedom from the elder demons' supervision (but could never quite gather the resolve to proceed with it), when the work-load began to grow lax as increasing numbers of demons grew tired of their routines, and eventually the overseers ruling that section proclaimed themselves kings, emperors, warlords and the likes and began warring with each other for supremacy. N seized, for once, the opportunity to quietly make his escape, and began to wander the infernal lands.
Though his needs were most unassuming - all he required was a comfortable and sufficiently fertile spot where he might lie down and surround himself with his plants, which served as a necessary protection - he encountered no lack of trouble during his subsequent peregrinations through the hellscape. The blame lay, invariably, with the realm's other inhabitants. As soon as N, by that time already Old, would find a secluded spot, a group of settlers would arrive and chase him away from there to build their outrageous houses; or else, his vegetal and fungal guardians would spread too far as he slept and encroach upon some town or the other, leading to armed expeditions evicting him from those spots as well. Amusingly, the other side of this age-spanning conflict hardly ever saw itself as being at fault, and, indeed, Old N became known as a scourge to the most peaceful and sedentary of Hell's inhabitants, even finding his way into folklore as a sort of bogeyman in some regions.
Finally, it came to the point where an exasperated victim of the incursions of Old N's plants told him that if he wanted to sleep, he ought to go into a tavern. Mildly curious, Old N wandered about until he found one; and, while the tavern itself was fairly disappointing, what he heard within it was such as to warrant his struggling curiosity's survival.
Skills: Although not as great as that of a Cambion or a demon designed for such purposes as hand-to-hand combat, Old N's strength is fairly impressive if compared to that of a normal human, though it is significantly offset by his infuriatingly slow movement pace. Additionally, his carapace is robust, rendering him quite durable, and his pincers are frighteningly effective at doubling as weapons (or shovels). His crustacean nature enables him to breathe underwater, though submerging renders him even drowsier than normal, and his training and experience have contributed to his knowledge of infernal flora reaching truly impressive levels. Lastly, Old N is capable of ingesting his own Magic Mixture without ill effects - in fact, it seems to invigorate him, though it renders his breath unacceptable even by demonic standards.
Green Thumb - This spell enables Old N to briefly animate nearby plants and fungi, causing them to gather into vaguely humanoid shapes, and bind them to his will, directing their movements. The larger the amount of energy he channels, the more vegetation he can animate, and the longer the duration of the spell.
Enchanting - Old N's Magic Mixture - By infusing with Manus a foul brew of dubious herbs, malodorous mushrooms, discarded by-products of genetic experiments and some unmentioned, and probably unmentionable, "secret ingredients", Old N can create an elixir he names Magic Mixture. If poured onto vegetation, the latter will be hideously mutated, and have its growth and reproduction rates abnormally increased. The Magic Mixture is normally toxic to lost souls and demons alike, though its creator is, as mentioned, able to drink it himself.
Gear:
A worn, filthy bag containing, in a number of jars, seeds and spores of Old N's favourite plants and fungi.
Two large metallic flasks filled with Magic Mixture.
Here is, then, my character. This time, it is not spider-man, but...
Ngralarthrekhfehrrothirlakrathakr "Old N" the Infernal Gardener
Appearance: Old N stands, in all his crustacean glory, slightly taller than the average human, and is significantly broader. His carapace is covered in all manner of clinging foulness - moss, lichens, mushrooms, strands of algae, even barnacles - which no known force has ever proved capable of prying off, and is chaotically scattered across the entirety of his body. The only exception to this uncouthness of growth is constituted by two patches of green-yellowish lichen upon his left pincer, whose astonishingly complex forms resemble a multitude of filaments gathering into respectively a spiral and a squat humanoid shape.
Gender: Incubic
Personality: If a single word were to be chosen to describe Old N, it would be "phlegmatic". The fact there is little to be found in Hell which would fail to leave him unfazed is due not so much to a wealth of experience as to the apathy which appears to pervade his being to the last synthetic fibre. Generally, his demeanour is that of someone who has been abruptly awoken from deep slumber and is eager to dismiss anything, be it the collapse of a piece of furniture or the imminent destruction of the universe, with a feeble waving of their hand and some inarticulate muttering before turning over and returning into the embrace of Morpheus. Even those things which most irritate him, namely, urgency in any guise and being disturbed in his rest, fail to elicit a proper response, and that any attempt from his side to remedy to them is doomed to half-heartedness is a foregone conclusion. That said, when he is provoked to a degree sufficient to rouse him from his eternal torpor - a feat which only the luckiest or most determined can achieve - his indifference readily transforms into anger, and he makes it a point of compunction not to stop before anything until the object of his displeasure has been thoroughly removed.
Greatest Sin: Sloth. Despite having been created to, essentially, work, Old N loathes the very name of effort with all the passion he can muster, and only resorts to it when his explicit goal is to avoid it. He has been known to slumber for decades on end when left undisturbed, and, were it up to him to decide, would gladly never make the slightest movement in his indefinitely long life.
Motivation: From his few interactions with damned souls Old N has gleaned that living humans might be easier to intimidate than dead ones and, most importantly, tend to permanently stop moving when dismembered (and make good compost, as well). His current plan is thus to reach the world of the living and kill all the humans he finds there, so that he might finally build himself a truly peaceful resting place.
Biography:
The demon who bears the nigh-unpronounceable name of Ngralarthrekhfehrrothirlakrathakr, almost invariably abbreviated to "Old N" (originally simply "N") came into being some millennia ago, when the denizens of the underworld still bothered with tormenting those who were presumably sent to them for chastisement. He was the handiwork of one particularly enterprising demonic overseer, whose intent it was to find a manner of employing Hell's rich and varied ecosystems as yet another device in the fiendish torturers' arsenal. Enter the Infernal Gardener: a creature with an unnatural aptitude for botanic crafts and abilities, physical and magical alike, enabling it to exploit the surrounding environment for all it could offer to reach its goals. Unfortunately, something went awry in the process, and, while the new crustacean demon was just as capable as he was supposed to be, he was severely lacking as far as motivation was concerned, and preferred sleeping in a warm mire over actually attending to his duties.
N spent the next centuries avoiding work as best as he could. Incidentally, despite his unenthusiastic performance, the results his efforts yielded were astoundingly better than satisfactory. The plants and fungi he sowed about his territory and let grow unchecked painfully entangled, tore and poisoned the souls tossed there; the damned he hastily buried in the ground and then promptly forgot suffered hideously in their entombment; and the screams of those he took to mangling in fits of frustration resounded most pleasingly in the air, drowning out those of his fellow-demons' own victims. Thus, he was assigned more and more "raw materials", and his more and more expedite methods wrung more and more pain from them, which caused the vicious circle to begin anew. N was beginning to seriously consider tunnelling his way to freedom from the elder demons' supervision (but could never quite gather the resolve to proceed with it), when the work-load began to grow lax as increasing numbers of demons grew tired of their routines, and eventually the overseers ruling that section proclaimed themselves kings, emperors, warlords and the likes and began warring with each other for supremacy. N seized, for once, the opportunity to quietly make his escape, and began to wander the infernal lands.
Though his needs were most unassuming - all he required was a comfortable and sufficiently fertile spot where he might lie down and surround himself with his plants, which served as a necessary protection - he encountered no lack of trouble during his subsequent peregrinations through the hellscape. The blame lay, invariably, with the realm's other inhabitants. As soon as N, by that time already Old, would find a secluded spot, a group of settlers would arrive and chase him away from there to build their outrageous houses; or else, his vegetal and fungal guardians would spread too far as he slept and encroach upon some town or the other, leading to armed expeditions evicting him from those spots as well. Amusingly, the other side of this age-spanning conflict hardly ever saw itself as being at fault, and, indeed, Old N became known as a scourge to the most peaceful and sedentary of Hell's inhabitants, even finding his way into folklore as a sort of bogeyman in some regions.
Finally, it came to the point where an exasperated victim of the incursions of Old N's plants told him that if he wanted to sleep, he ought to go into a tavern. Mildly curious, Old N wandered about until he found one; and, while the tavern itself was fairly disappointing, what he heard within it was such as to warrant his struggling curiosity's survival.
Skills: Though not as great as that of a Cambion or a demon designed for such purposes as hand-to-hand combat, Old N's strength is fairly impressive if compared to that of a normal human, though it is significantly offset by his infuriatingly slow movement pace. Additionally, his carapace is robust, rendering him quite durable, and his pincers are frighteningly effective at doubling as weapons (or shovels). His crustacean nature enables him to breathe underwater, though submerging renders him even drowsier than normal, and his training and experience have contributed to his knowledge of infernal flora reaching truly impressive levels. Lastly, Old N is capable of ingesting his own Magic Mixture without ill effects - in fact, it seems to invigorate him, though it renders his breath unacceptable even by demonic standards.
Green Thumb - This spell enables Old N to briefly animate nearby plants and fungi, causing them to gather into vaguely humanoid shapes, and bind them to his will, directing their movements. The larger the amount of energy he channels, the more vegetation he can animate, and the longer the duration of the spell.
Enchanting - Old N's Magic Mixture - By infusing with Manus a foul brew of dubious herbs, malodorous mushrooms, discarded by-products of genetic experiments and some unmentioned, and probably unmentionable, "secret ingredients", Old N can create an elixir he names Magic Mixture. If poured onto vegetation, the latter will be hideously mutated, and have its growth and reproduction rates abnormally increased. The Magic Mixture is normally toxic to lost souls and demons alike, though its creator is, as mentioned, able to drink it himself.
Gear:
A worn, filthy bag containing, in a number of jars, seeds and spores of Old N's favourite plants and fungi.
Two large metallic flasks filled with Magic Mixture.
