[ww80105] Manual of Exalted Power - Infernals.pdf - Vakermit.com

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Their loss shattered the king’s confidence for but a moment,
but that moment was all the opportunity the surviving Exalted
needed to hammer the Primordial into submission. All that
remained after that was for them to destroy him, but such
was their cruelty—and the horrid pseudo-mercy of the traitor
Gaia—that they stayed their hands. In one final, perverse
blasphemy, they sacrificed his fetich soul, castrated him and
ripped his body inside out—all while forcing him to swear
oaths that what they were doing was just and deserved, and
to thank them for the privilege.
Since that time, Malfeas has raged impotently. What few
understand about this fallen king, however, is that his rage is
directed not solely at the gods and the Exalted but inward as
well. His lack of foresight enabled him to help create a world
that could successfully rebel against him. In the war, he lacked
the strength to protect the Neverborn, who died serving him
and following his orders. From his prison, he lacks the power
to crush all the Exalted and their god-mentors with them. For
these failings, he rages against himself and against his fellow
Yozis just as much. Where he was weak and shortsighted, so
much more were they all. To punish them, and himself, he
flagellates them with the searing, poisonous light of his fetich
soul. Were it not for the Reclamation, he might be content
to punish them thus for eternity. The Ebon Dragon’s plan,
however, has given him hope that he will be able to share
the pain with those who locked him away.
THE SLAYERS
Of the Solar Exaltations the Yozis now possess, Malfeas
laid claim to those of the Dawn Caste. Into them he poured
all of his rage and bitterness and lust for destructive revenge.
He heaped upon them all the antipathy he still feels for the
Solars who brought him low. In his way, he despises his Green
Sun Princes just as much as he does those long-dead heroes,
and he expects them to despise him and each other and their
shared enemies with the same intensity. In this boiling rage
are they united and bound to him. From it does their power
derive. In it lies the core of their mission: They are to tear
down and destroy the wretched things of Creation. They are
to slay those whom Malfeas most despises.
Yet, the rage of this caste is not mindless, just as Malfeas
himself is not. Though much diminished, Malfeas is still the
greatest of the Yozis. So too, then, must his Slayers be the
greatest of the Infernal Exalted. If the Green Sun Princes
are the Yozis’ great weapons against Creation, the Slayers
are the vitriol that coats those weapons and gives them their
hellish strength. The Slayers must rally the akuma and other
sympathizers and lead them in vast waves across the face of
Creation. When heroes rise to defend what the gods hold
dear, the Slayers must tear them limb from limb, bathe in
their blood and hoist their bones on battle standards lauding
damnation. They must terrorize and conquer Creation and
make all its inhabitants feel the fury of their bound demon
lord. And when the Reclamation is complete, they must
aid their liberated master in starting the cycle of terror and
destruction all over again.
And perhaps, just perhaps, if the rage of Malfeas should
ever subside, it will be the Slayers who finally put their master
out of his eons-long misery.
CECELYNE
Of those who survived their defeat in the Primordial
War, she who is now called Cecelyne was perhaps the most
changed. Before her souls were broken and her sense of self
shattered, she was an arbiter between the Primordials, keeping
their conflicts civil and facilitating their cooperation whenever
cooperation was called for. Her authority derived from
her relationship to the king, who was her younger brother,
and was shored up by the hierarchical pilings put in place
by the Primordial who became known as She Who Lives in
Her Name. When rival Primordials sought an impartial party
to resolve their differences, they turned to this even-handed
princess. When wary Primordials sought rules to govern how
they should act in hypothetical situations, she created those
rules from whole cloth. When no one could agree on who
next would challenge the king at the Games of Divinity,
this Primordial established the playing order. She was the
Primordials’ judge, their mediator, their lawmaker.
The lawmaker princess fought bravely in the Primordial
War, but she herself had designed the rules of warfare under
which her fellows fought, and when the end became inevitable,
she had no choice but to surrender. Her doing so, she
felt, would set an example for those still fighting and bring
the doomed conflict to a close. Yet, as her brother learned
before her, she found that the gods and the Exalted were
not magnanimous in victory. Her fetich soul was vivisected
before her, plunging her into a temporary catatonia. When
she regained awareness, she had become Cecelyne, the Endless
Desert, wrapped around her mutilated brother and forever
forced to keep him at a distance from that which he had
helped design and create. She who had once been devoted to
making just laws and fair rules for her kind became instead a
hideous abomination stretched infinitely thin and possessed
of the mad desire to expand ever further into infinity.
This endless Yozi is still a lawmaker, however twisted her
perception of what’s right might be now. Her law no longer
upholds peaceful order, but rather venerates strength over
weakness as the only worthwhile order. Those who are strong
have the right under Cecelyne’s concept of law to exert their
strength over those who are weak. Those who are weak must
worship the strength of their betters and subject themselves
to the will of the strong. Such is the only law between demons
in the Demon City. When such is the only law between the
beings of Creation, Cecelyne will finally bridge the distance
between that place and Malfeas.
THE MALEFACTORS
From the 50 stolen Solar Exaltations, Cecelyne selected
those of the Zenith Caste. Their original purpose was to
glorify the Unconquered Sun and promulgate his righteousness
across Creation. With only minor modifications, those
Exaltations were easily reprogrammed with Cecelyne’s ver-
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