The Grand OC SII: The Re-OCening: Week 28: WARD!

Today's special ingredient is...Poptart. Yea, you read that right. Show me what you can cook up!

Username: Not lying, I promise
Name: Jem Rook
Species: Human
Gender: Dude
Color: Wildlicious Wild! Cherry filling

Description: Way taller than you were expecting, like 2m easily at least. An indeterminate portion of that is the big ol' devil horns on his helmet, but anyway. Tall. Tortured past. Surprisingly personable in spite of his insistence he'll kill anyone that stands in his way. A man of not a great many words, qualitatively speaking. Under the helmet, one eye is white. Legends from yore allude to the white eye can kill you or not. Missing an arm and also a hand but is pretty chill about it.

Weapons/Abilities: A thick and spiky suit of jet black armor, and a probably-matching cool thick and spiky jet black sword. He's well-practiced at sharpening it, and uses shadow magic to wreath its edges in magical shadows. With the help of a magical pauldron, he can also summon a shadowy replacement for his missing arm and hand, which are spiky and jet black and and spooky. Darkness is on this boy's side! He's also really good at being sarcastic but hiding it from Parental Types who don't approve of Teen Cynicism.

Biography: It's Tragic™

Username: Reyweld
Name: The Forgotten Flavour
Species: Golem (material: forbidden pastry)
Gender: N/A
Colour: #371709
Description:
A huge elemental mass of poptart that towers over the typical humanoid. Similarly to a centaur, its torso protrudes from the lower body of a quadruped. However, from this torso extends four large “arms” that drip with green and purple liquids. Its lower body has a tail similar to its arms, but ending in a dripping point as opposed to a grasp. The “skin” of its body is hard with mixed patches of brown and white crumb. Its head is covered in harder white material (like a shell), with sprinkles like freckles distributed semi-randomly across the face. It has no eyes. No ears. No nose. It has only a gaping mouth with rows of brittle teeth, constantly growing like a rat’s.

If it could speak, it wouldn’t. It has no words for the beings who brought it into this world only to cast it into the void. Only hatred. It has gnawed on its teeth for almost as long as it has existed, and the built up loathing has to be directed somewhere.

Intelligence wise, The Forgotten Flavour is lacking. It knows little of the world, and is limited to instinctive, primal knowledge in regards to combat strategy.

Weapons / Abilities:
Green Liquid (passive) - This liquid is viscous, sticky, and smells overwhelmingly of artificial sweeteners.
Purple Liquid (passive) - This liquid is thinner and slightly acidic (causing skin irritation on contact and burns with prolonged contact).
Deadly Taste (passive) - All parts of The Forgotten Flavour are poisonous and cannot be consumed without major consequences.
Golem Body (passive) - Isn’t affected by pain, and has no central thought centre that controls the body. For example, if it were cut in half, it would still be in control of both halves {however not very functionally, as it cannot freely change form}. Defeating it requires complete destruction/separation of moving parts.
Poptart Body (passive) - Resistant to heat and cold, but extremely vulnerable to water (it can dissolve its face, teeth, and liquids; it makes the crumb soggy).
Consume (active ability) - Can rip apart and eat things with its many teeth to grow in size. However, it can only absorb sugars and desserts; everything else passes right through.
Sugary Bite (active ability) - Can bite into something and inject either liquid.

Biography:
When poptarts were being developed, a series of chemicals were used as test flavours in an attempts to maximise profits with cheaper reagents while still maintaining an air of variety and originality. However, this process resulted in hundreds of failed poptarts that killed the initial test rats or made the proceeding quality assurance team vomit. These poptarts accumulated in the organic waste until it transformed into an abomination.

Out of fear that an investigation of the newly created beast would result in the discovery of the company’s animal cruelty violations, The Forgotten Flavour was promptly (and secretly) captured and disposed of.

Or it would have been, if they weren’t cutting corners to limit expenses. The team in charge of capturing it and destroying it were extremely lazy and should have been rooted out during interviews that didn’t happen. They instead dumped the beast into the ocean, where it sunk lower and lower, moved by the currents of the waters.

It has existed in a slightly damp darkness for years. The Forgotten Flavour was forgotten… until now.

Username: BreadProduct
Name: Kevin
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Color: Pantone 88-9C

Description: A 7 year old kid trans-dimensionally abducted from the breakfast aisle in the supermarket after picking up a box of Smores Pop tarts which his mom was undoubtedly not going to buy.

Weapons/Abilities: Aside from light up when you walk pikachu shoes, shorts, a t-shirt that unironically says "Don't have a cow man," an unpurchased box of smores pop tarts proportionally sized to match his 150 meter size using local metrics. He's just a kid.

Biography: You might ask where this giant came from but to him he is not a giant, you are just really small, like lego minis. He spent his time at his home dimension being a typical kid over exposed to Saturday morning commercials, hyped up on sugar screaming while running in circles till he falls down. His most favorite thing in the world is Pokemon and wishes that one day he too can be a Pokemon trainer. His elementary school teacher is worried that he may have ADHD. But his mother who's father left before Kevin was born just thinks Kevin is just being a kid.

Username: Please direct your eyes to the left.
Name: One with no presence needs no name.
Gender: Prefers not to disclose.
Race: That's a secret.
Text Color: A simple blue will suffice.

Biography: Remembering childhood. Birthday partys. Cake, silly hats. Noisemakers. Pinning tails on donkeys.
Most importantly, balloons.
Yes, balloons, such a perfect representation of innocence. A solid, smooth surface, yet if pierced just once... Gone, useless.
And with your innocence lost, what can you do but tell the world?
But so many lost at once. So many colors.
There is nothing left of me but my desire to tell everyone's stories.
Red. Black. Grey. A little blue, for that corner of the sky you can just barely see.
When he wakes up, it will be what he first witnesses.
And also the last thing he sees in his life.

Weapons/Abilities: There are many balloons, arranged in a picture.
So colorful!
If you look closely, you see that all of them are broken.
But you can't look, for the picture speaks to your guilt. You know what you did.
And soon, it will be revisited upon you.
Who left it there? How did it arrive?
These questions shall never be answered.
There is only a picture.

Description: Some questions are better left unanswered.

Username: Agen, they who shits in the woods
Name: His Holiness Tharthe XVII of the New Distributed Roman Catholic Church
Species: Catholic
Gender: He/him
Color: austerity
Description: It has been said that in this day and age, the Pope is nothing but a figurehead. Many people do not know that this is literally true. His Holiness has no need for such abstractions as hands, feet, or organs, these being ties to the mere material world. Instead, from his neatly severed neck protrudes a thick cable, which thins out from neck-width to optical fiber-width. At some point the cable becomes less than subatomically thin, at which point it presumably connects to God.
Items/Abilities: His Holiness can inflict microscopically painful paper cuts. He is also gifted with a fantastical ability to proselytise with the pure and holy words of God himself, though again in this day and age no one gives a shit.
Biography: The New Distributed Roman Catholic Church didn't so much blink when he disappeared, so that gives you an idea as to how much he mattered.

Username: Mirdini
Name: Ch'rri Tn'vrr
Species: Vk'zrr (Segmentoid)
Gender: She/her
Color: Lime Green

Description: Ch'rri was until very recently the premier ear-worm of the Greater Federated Vk'zrr Systems, with her catchy singles playing at least once an hour on every inter-planetary media channel available. How she achieved this sort of musical dominance without proper vocal cords is a mystery, especially considering Vk'zrr are not even the majority species within the Systems. Still, something about her chittering and clattering seems to have struck a tone with all sorts, and it took nuclear fallout with her powerful producers to get her pulled off the air.

Ch'rri is a typical Vk'zrr, ten feet long, two feet wide and with more legs than the average person feels comfortable counting. Her maw secretes an acid that Vk'zrr once used for hunting, but nowadays it's mostly used to signal displeasure with other Vk'zrr. Nothing says 'I hate you' like spitting a caustic substance at someone else.

Not that Ch'rri needs help with that, as her bubbly media personality belies a take-no-prisoners acerbic wit and general approach to others. If Ch'rri likes you she'll defend you to the last, but get on her bad side and you'll quickly find out why so many collaborations with other artists collapsed in spectacular fashion.

Weapons/Abilities: The aforementioned acidic compound produced naturally by the Vk'zrr can melt through most biological matter in a few minutes, with active chewing reducing that number significantly. Ch'rri's pincers are powerful enough to pierce steel, and her innumerable skittering legs let her move at a cruising speed of a solid 60 km/h as well as climb most non-slick surfaces without much trouble.

Unlike many of her kind, Ch'rri's 'voice' is surprisingly nice to listen too, even for non-Vk'zrr. Some conspiracy theorists have proposed that there's something more than simple sound waves at work when she 'sings', but finding proof of phenomena no-one can properly measure has eluded them so far.

Biography: The media of the Greater Federated Vk'zrr Systems is in an uproar when Ch'rri Tn'vrr goes missing shortly after falling out with her producers in spectacular fashion. The original source of the conflict is shrouded in mystery, though the tabloids claim she accidentally exposed one of the producer's children, who had a severely compromised immune system, to the outside world with an errant wave of her pincers. Despite an unprecedented (for Ch'rri) apology, the producer apparently felt it wasn't sincere enough and went nuclear, telling her she'd never work again.

Even if the story was apocryphal it was clear Ch'rri and her producers had fallen out, and she had announced a major press conference to air a scant week after the stories about it broke. In the meantime most major news outlets began what stood out to many as a concerted smear campaign. When combined with Ch'rri's sudden disappearance the day before the conference, it made sure that it was in fact her producers who would never work again.

Let’s get to j-j-judging.

The jovial edgelord Jem Rook gets the Kracht Saw It Coming Award because the pun behind this profile was explained to me and it was amazingly bad. Anyway, he seems like a fun type of dude, cool aesthetic, cool power, even if he probably has internal monologues on a frequent basis. Such is the price of being cool.

The abomiconfection The Forgotten Flavor shall receive the Thomas Packston Elementalist Award which is hella appropriate considering its flavor is arguably elemental. Anyway, this sad pile of artificial flavorings has a straightforward power and purpose (REVENGE). Despite its goofy B-movie premise, it is solid.

Kevin, a literal child, takes home the Convolution Teamfriendliness Cup. Due to his relative powerlessness, he probably would work best with consistent interaction, bringing characterization to the fantastical participants in a grand battle and enlightening his depressing home-life. Let’s hope he’ll time travel or something.

The one that is the One with no presence needs no name will inherit the First Five Eigthths Sportsball Award due to the rather sneaky way of incorporating the theme into the structure of the profile. Dammit Fogel. Anyway, the One reminds of the monster clown from It but more avante-garde. They are very mysterious.

The pope-artificial, His Holiness Tharthe XVII (et al.), is blessed with the Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery. It took me a while to realize how this relates to the weekly theme and I admit his cybernetic nature threw me off guard. Religion in cyberpunk/posthuman sci-fi should be interesting to explore through him, even if no one cares about him in-verse.

Worm diva, Ch'rri Tn'vrr gets the The GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding (wormbuilding?). While I have to still have to find out the other incorporations of “Poptart” (pop star, acid tart, burst of popularity bubble?), her celebrity status, her dark secret, and her unique biology sheds an interesting light on the world she comes from.

ALL-STARS

It's time to bring back a Grand tradition! Back in the day, Schaz instituted the All-Stars Week, something that escaped this thread... UNTIL NOW. WEEK TWENTY.

Unfortunately we've got a pretty decent chunk more than 8 Themes to choose from, and that just won't do. So instead, I've picked the 8 most popular (read: got the most submissions) themes from the thread so far to fight each other. Minus the following: Poptart (6 entries, tied for first place with Crown and Harsh), because a. it's recent b. there's not a ton more you can do with my throwaway 'do it, Pharms' suggestion of a theme. And Failure (5 entries, tied for fourth with 3 others), because it overlaps far too neatly with Shame.

Any ties among the themes that got 4 submissions were broken by my arbitrary preference, because I'm cool like that.

So here's Week Twenty's Theme: (choose any 2-3 of) Crown, Thrall, Commute, Shame, Plane, Harsh, Puzzle, Heaven! Like before, for this week you take two or three of the last eight weeks' themes, and make a cohesive character that incorporates/embodies them!

The ground rules I'll lift directly from Schaz because they phrased them real good:

No two entries may use the same set of themes. So if someone makes Shame+Crown before you, you're out of luck - but making Shame+Crown+Heaven is a-ok.

There is no reserve system for theme choices. Anything is free game until a profile goes up, first come first served.

You've got a week! Week 21 we can get back to the usual single-theme arrangement.

Provided we have at least nine entrants (hopefully the Dini Cajole produces results as it has in the past), there will be an additional award - the Space Jam Remix Prize For Cross-Thematic Cohesion. I'll give this to the entry whose constituent themes are the least likely to work, but somehow do.

Theme: Crown + Commute
Username: Dragon Fogel
Name: King Otobus III of Pordobia
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Text Color: I don't know, this one
Biography: Pordobia was once a mighty kingdom, but over time, it lost more and more territory to its neighbors. By the time of Otobus I, all the buildings and land had been sold; the only remaining legal property of the kingdom was its fleet of public transportation and emergency vehicles.
It didn't get much better from there. Otobus III ascended to the throne with nothing to his name except one single bus, and no subjects at all. Frustrated at his powerlessness, he passed a royal decree: anyone wishing to set foot in his bus-kingdom must swear undying fealty to him and to Pordobia.
Unfortunately, this resulted in very few customers, until he haggled it down to one hour of fealty after getting off the bus.
He was very satisfied with himself for about five minutes, when he realized he didn't have the slightest clue what he wanted his new temporary retainers to do for him.
He still hadn't figured it out when his bus vanished just after letting them off.

Description: Otobus III spends most of his time sitting in the "throne" of Pordobia, which is just an ordinary bus driver's seat. Nonetheless, he is a king, and he dresses the part. He likes to give grandiose speeches to anyone who gets on the bus, which has not driven a lot of business to his kingdom.
He dreams of one day expanding the kingdom, perhaps with a nice minivan.
The kingdom of Pordobia is a large blue bus. It doesn't really stand out in any way, being just one of a hundred buses commissioned back in better days.

Weapons and Abilities: Otobus III's primary ability is being the sovereign ruler of Pordobia. Consequently, his word is absolute within the confines of the bus. Thanks to the loyalty pledge he demands as a fare, he may also command anyone who gets on his bus, and they are bound by their word to obey him while on the bus, and for one hour after getting off.
The kingdom of Pordobia itself has all the powers and limitations you would expect of a bus.
Otobus is free to leave the kingdom at any time. He just prefers not to.

Plane+Heavens

Name: Kaguya-Hime

Gender: She?

Species: Unidentified Flying Object

Color: Green flash

Description:

An UFO. An honest to God UFO.

Kaguya-Hime (named after the folklore tale rather being the topic of said folklore tale, mind you) is a flying saucer roughly the size of a compact car. Kaguya-Hime is rather lively for a man-made machine, the malfunctions and quirks of her circuits suggests a whimsical if curious temperament. She is also a bit temperamental and her emotions are telegraphed through colors and patterns displayed on her surface.

Occasionally, you can see a figure flitting from window to window, but that’s probably just nothing.

Abilities:

Kaguya-Hime is speedy, having the capacity to bend and twist in ways no ordinary car can do and her entirety is covered in metal plates, laminated with a red, lacquer-like substance to enhance its bulletproof nature. Like classic UFOs, Kaguya-Hime can immobilize and kidnap people with her tractor beam. Unlike classic UFOs though, prolonged contact will result in a growing obsession with the moon. The obsession comes in many emotional flavors but the default is a strong homesickness, but that’s probably just nothing. Yessir.

Biography:

Spoiler :

After the mandatory badges and papers, the two FBI agents, one peculiar, one serious, proceeded to march towards the crash site. Not exactly optimal to march in formalwear but they preserved. They reached their destination.

The observatory’s domed roof loomed overhead. There was a hole punctured neatly through it. There were no birds, no buzzing of cicadas. The silence was almost overbearing, but that’s probably just nothing.

Really.

They went in. The hallways were dusty and it was a weekend, so there was no-one here. They explored deeper, the rooms became more esoteric. Bathrooms to laboratories. Pamphlet containers to screens. All the screens displayed the same thing. Today’s moon. It was a harvest moon, large and orange like a pumpkin.

Was there meaning? The peculiar one said out loud.

Maybe, the serious one sighed. That’s just probably nothing.

Probably.

They finally reached the area. Computers haphazardly sprawled here and there. Papers and dust. Many screens were haphazardly place together into a grand-large collage. It displayed a destination, the moon, then to somewhere else, far beyond the solar system, the galaxy, the stars. The stars!

Whoever broke into this observatory. It was definitely not of this world. No, not of this reality.

I think she wants to go home, the peculiar one said.

The serious one thought about it. That off-handed statement, it felt correct? Like something in her gut told her it was definitely right despite no evidence.

But that’s just probably nothing.

Probably.

Username: MaxieSatan
Theme: Crown + Harsh + Puzzle
Name: Inquisitor Ivivis Krospi
Species: Human, or something approximating it "Demigod"
Gender: Such definitions are for weaker beings than They, for They are the Gods made flesh.
Color: More-or-less-royal purple-esque

Description: Standing at just over seven feet tall and boasting considerable bulk, Ivivis is imposing at a distance and terrifying up close. They are almost never seen without Their ceremonial purple-silver checkerboard full-plate; all that can be seen underneath is Their eyes, cold and hungry and weary, for They did not see fit to rest until Their aims had been accomplished.

Under ordinary circumstances, Ivivis is a power-hungry and cruel individual; though They once hid behind a veil of zealotry, They gradually left these pretensions behind as Their collection of artifacts and influence within the kingdom grew. Upon being torn away from all They had worked for, however, Their outlook changed; Their cruelty remains, to a large extent, but lacks any direction... but it's hard to say whether it will fade or grow even more intense as a result.

Weapons/Abilities: Aside from Their military, theological, and investigative training as an Inquisitor, and Their considerable natural strength, Ivivis has collected a variety of powerful artifacts from Their realm.

• One of these is the very armor They wear, rebuilt from an ancient locomotive; though the knowledge to build railroads anew has long since been lost, the armor nonetheless allows Them to charge forth at terrifying speed on an open battlefield. Though speed is Their greatest asset, inertia thus proves Ivivis' greatest enemy, for if Their quarry can reach (or create) a sufficiently twisted path, They will be forced to walk as if They were wearing a normal suit of super massive armor (i.e., Hella Slow).
• Another is the sword at Their side — the legendary Sword of Damocles, able to "solve" just about any solid object, but requiring an obsessive amount of sharpening and general maintenance if it is to maintain its full power.
• The Diorama of the Sky City was once used to form lavish universities and palaces from the clouds themselves; now Ivivis primarily uses the edifices it summons as obstacles to Their quarry.
• The Cannon of Heaven fires wherever They choose to call it down in the nearby area, and causes immense devastation within a surprisingly miniscule and neat area. Being able to fire is, of course, a completely different question than being able to aim, but that's cold comfort if They have at least a vague idea of where Their target is.
• Lastly, there is the book known only as The Endless Lexicon, which is more or less what it sounds like. Even Ivivis has no idea what possible tangible use this could have; mostly They held onto it for religious and political purposes.
  

Biography:

Spoiler :

Noinia du Suokús hunched down behind the old stone wall and clung to the lantern like her life depended on it. She closed her eyes and the world around her lit up brighter than the sun. Fear-Maker had launched one final attack and received a sword through the stomach for his troubles; They kicked his corpse aside and started counting on Their fingers.

"Eins, zwei, drei, vier... Ah, yes." Unfarel and Zektrom, bless them both, turned towards each other and readied their morningstars as Ivisis turned Their gaze towards the family crest They held in hand, thirty-six squares gone dead, forty-five still glowing. "You two... now, if I have it right, you should be this way..."

They turned in the wrong direction and started walking, and Unfarel gave a nod. The two began their approach, starting silently towards their target, then gradually getting faster. Suddenly, Noinia was enlightened — They had known, the whole time; to charge Them while they held the crest was the most foolish move her brothers could have made, for it was not, in fact, possible to evade Their gaze — but she did not cry out. It would not have saved them, only doomed her.

And as her brothers prepared to strike the tyrant, They cackled as a plume of fire erupted from the ground behind Them. Both men were gone in an instant, along with the ground below their feet; all that was left was a seemingly endless well, marked by a red buoy.

"Funf, sechs." They did not even turn to look around at the damage they had done; instead they turned ever so slightly to the right, and then back in the other —

Shit, They're looking right at me.

"Well, I do hate to go out of order, but you simply haven't covered your tracks, Miss Noinia!"

Noinia broke into a sprint, opened her eyes, let the lantern burn out; now all that she needed to see was in front of her, and the sound of clattering footsteps, louder and louder each time, told her enough about the one pursuing her.

The lake, she realized, hope welling up within her. She slowed down, held the Lattice aloft, and began tracing between the stones that stood above the surface of the water; bridges formed from the aether, and finally she could see a twisted path to the other bank. If she could only make it there before They caught up to her; from there, she would have the advantage, as They would have to slow down to deal with the sharp, sudden turns. She could escape, possibly even destroy Them in the waters if They were foolish enough to pursue her far enough, to think she wouldn't destroy the Lattice if she had to...

Her lungs began to burn as she sprinted desperately forward. It wasn't enough to match the Inquisitor, who barreled forth with greater speed and endurance than the finest horse on the continent, but maybe —
maybe she was still close enough —

"Your attempt is impressive, if cowardly, but you have made an error in judgement, Our dear!" Noinia had no chance to figure out what They meant before a tower burst forth directly in front of her, formed from silt and pebbles; she slammed into it with a miserable splut. "Did you think that your good friend the Patrikios could simply enter the country and leave again, so suddenly,
so quickly, without Us noticing?"

She turned to face Them, forcing herself to show no fear. If she could no longer flee — and They had slowed down now to rub in the fact that she couldn't, that the game was finally up — then she would face death with dignity, and show her distaste for Them in her final moments. "Kriptokuota had no quarrel with You!"

"We must disagree. He quarreled with Us by helping you brigands hide what is rightfully Ours."

"It was not our birthright, much less yours!" Noinia pointed with her dagger, not to threaten, but to emphasize — none would ever threaten an Inquisitor, but as far as she was concerned, They had proven Themselves unworthy of the title long ago. "You have no right to it, not even if we were guilty! There was no forfeiture!"

Ivivis laughed loudly, and the armor made it echo and reverberate even more than it did to Their words. "You are mistaken,
young one, for all is Our birthright. It has been decreed—"

"By a terrified puppet king?!"

Though she could not see it, she knew the smile that was now beneath Their helm: wide but mirthless. "Perhaps the throne,
too, is Our birthright." They drew Their sword once more and leveled it,
prepared to thrust it through Their target's chest. "Any final words in your defense?"

Noinia shook with fear and anger, closing her eyes tight to keep the tears inside. "You would commit treason openly, then? Not even pretending, now?"

"Our dear, it is not treason if it is in the service of the realm. Now —" and she drew back the sword —

And there was no strike, and at first Noivia thought she had died too quickly to notice it; but when she opened her eyes, there was nothing but an open field before her, and the family crest lying in the grass.

Ivivis was gone, and she was far too relieved — especially since twenty-seven squares remained alight, not only her own — to care where.

She set off to find her living siblings, and to bury the dead.

Username: hi its ix
Theme: Heaven + Commute
Species: Angel, XYR (Xyriel) Class
Name: XYR-393
Gender: N/A
Colour: #C4A605

Description: A Xyriel Class Angel is comprised of two halves each of which is made of a number of panels (known as wings). When all wings are folded away the Angel resembles an enormous (six feet in diameter) sphere. When wings are opened they can be used as legs for movement across uneven terrain. Ironically a Xyriel Class Angel’s wings are not capable of flight. Like all Angels Xyriel Class Angels glow with a bright light that is mildly uncomfortable to look at.

Every Xyriel Class Angel comes equipped with a Soul Vestibule consisting of four separate Terraces; these are Economy, Business, First and Private.

The Economy Terrace is an expansive but low ceiling room shaped like a ring filled with hard plastic seats with a thin cloth covering facing inwards towards the centre of the ring. At the centre of the ring there are a number (maybe ten or so) of angels (these angels are more reminiscent of the traditional depiction of angels; wings, robes, halos etc, though on a framework that is essentially just shapes arranged to vaguely resemble a humanoid figure) and television monitors showing edited versions of early two thousands movies. There are a number of narrow pathways between the seats projected out from the centre, these pathways are strictly for angel use to allow access to any customer. Customers can call angels using a call button located on an overhead panel. From these angels Customers can purchase many simulated refreshments, headphones to allow them to enjoy the in-purgatory movie, any of a selection of sponsored novels or handheld video games or potentially an upgrade to a higher Terrace. There is a roughly one thousand soul capacity in the Economy Terrace.

The Business Terrace is much like the Economy Terrace but with more comfortable seating, more room, television screens installed into the back of every seat to allow customers to choose their own viewing from the selection available and a basic computer interface that allows customers to access the internet or use a basic suite of programs. There are the same number of angels present on this terrace but this terrace has roughly a two hundred soul capacity so they are much quicker to get to any customers who require their attention.

The First Terrace resembles a luxurious ballroom more than anything else. It is divided roughly in half, with one half being a well stocked dining area where customers can help themselves to whatever they desire and the other half being a comfortable lounge, with seating areas, enormous and well stocked bookshelves and a variety of games and other entertainment items. The very centre of the room features an impressive fountain arranged around which are an orchestra of angels playing soothing ambient music. Angels with replenishing trays of horderves and glasses of wine circulate throughout the lounge. The First Terrace is stated to have capacity for fifty souls, though many more could easily fit within.

The Private Terrace is a collection of private rooms for the most devout/highest paying customers. These rooms can be customised for each individual customer's preferences. This Terrace is also home to the pilots of the Angel, in XYR-393’s case Veronica Rose and Saito Hisae. Their private rooms are the only rooms that allow access to the Helm where the Angel may be manually controlled.

XYR-393 is identical to any other Xyriel Class Angel. When it was taken to be part of a battle it was transporting roughly 550 souls and operating on autopilot. Its default behaviours are to locate and collect any disembodied souls and when it has reached capacity to bring them back to Paramundis.

Weapons/Abilities: Xyriel Class Angels are not designed for combat. Its functionality is simply to collect souls. If under attack its default behaviour is to quickly retreat and call for an Azazel Class Angel to defend it. It is however quite bulky, heavy and well built, if piloted as such it could be an effective fighter.

Biography: Paramundis is a manufactured afterlife built by humans after the discovery of technology that allowed us to directly interface with the soul. Paramundis was initially a private corporation, though they were acquired by the government after the monumental nature of their enterprise was ascertained. Even so their modus operandi hasn’t really changed; an artificial heaven which you can buy your place in, and a hell for those who, for some reason, want to experience that instead. Paramundis has been recently promising brand new afterlife experiences coming soon including Valhalla, Elysium and the Fields of Aaru. It is unknown what Paramundis does with any souls that don’t qualify to enter either of its afterlives and there has been a lot of controversy around that issue with many seeking to find ways to keep their souls out of Paramundis’ hands.

XYR-393 is a pretty unremarkable Angel, recently manufactured it is still on its first collection run.

well, shit, everyone else is being dwellings and/or vehicles, why should i be the one to break the combo

Puzzle / Plane

Username: Benedict
Name: Ark.Theseus
Species: Spaceship
Gender: Not really
Color: #7812e5

Biography:
Ark.Theseus was originally built by a dying world to carry the backed-up minds and DNA of desperate colonists to a habitable planet, where they would be revived. Unfortunately, the habitable planet chosen actually was inhabited, by a species of small primitive eight-legged ferret things with approximately primate intelligence. On landing, Ark.Theseus was immediately taken apart by a curious troop of xenoferrets who had no idea what they were doing.

Ark.Theseus's onboard AI- or, not so much an AI as a mind-meld of the backed-up colonists- defended itself by using the technology originally designed to load the colonists' minds into cloned bodies. The xenoferrets taking apart the ship had copies of the colonists injected into their tiny brains, which... failed to perfectly take root. They acquired the directive to pilot the ship to a new habitable planet (ignoring the fact that they were already on one), and they got a partial understanding of the ship's operation on top of incomplete personalities. Unfortunately, this was enough knowledge for them to finish dismantling the colonist backups- not understanding what they'd done.

Description:
Ark.Theseus is a modular spaceship. It wasn't originally a modular spaceship- it just got taken apart beyond real repair by its crew of brainwashed uplifted xenoferrets, and now they're desperately trying to keep the damn thing from falling apart in the void of deep space. It used to be all sleek purple curves, but now it's mostly exposed machinery and jury-rigged life support bubbles. What remains of the AI is preoccupied with keeping the xenoferrets from breaking anything oh god what are you doing don't touch that AAAGH

The fifty or so xenoferrets occupying Ark.Theseus are furry, eight-legged creatures with oversized ears and eyes. They're each roughly a foot long. They can understand language, to some extent, but have a hard time following anything too complicated- you'll need to talk slowly and avoid too many big words to get anything across. They have a single-minded interest in surviving, reaching a habitable planet, and settling down. They have a little religion where they each worship the colonist whose incomplete memories and personalities they've inherited, as a sort of precursor whose will needs to be interpreted and followed.

Weapons/Abilities:
The xenoferrets have fairly sharp claws, and the advantage of numbers. Ark.Theseus has some laser cannons for deflecting asteroids, but they're on the fritz and take roughly half the crew and five minutes to fire. It can hover, fly, project shields, and do your standard spaceship stuff- but generally only one thing at a time. Reconfiguring the ship to fire weapons is different from reconfiguring the ship to fly is different from reconfiguring it for shielding is different from etc. etc. etc. and takes a few minutes and the whole ship's crew to do without risking collapse.

The xenoferrets are also capable of cannibalizing parts of the ship to improvise new capabilities- maybe they could build a teleporter, maybe they could build a hologram projector, maybe they could build an electromagnet. Doing so means navigating a mess of technobabble and, of course, taking up time and manpower and risking breaking the ship (moreso than usual). If they have the assistance of someone knowledgeable, though, they're capable of following instructions to equip the ship with just about any sort of fancy futuristic device.

Username: Come on and slam
Theme: Commute+Thrall
Name: Alain Wisteric
Gender: Male
Race: A compelling argument for rigorous necromantic education
Text Color: Higan-bana

Description: Alain sits a comfortable 16 hands at the shoulder, astride a mount roughly 13 hands tall. His "horse" is actually a many-legged mess of several animal skeletons, with all the tendons and musculature replaced by bundles of soulvine. Moss manages to grow where the underlying tissue doesn't flex too much; the sporecaps on the moss glow like foxfire in low light. The skull is mostly obscured with an explosion of spider lilies; the stamens twitch whisker-like toward interesting smells and sounds. The skulls of a couple smaller animals sitting at the base of the steed's neck sport a similar infloresence.

Given the mismatch of leg bones it's picked up, some of the longer ones started bending to accomodate, giving it a tarantula-like gait. It normally ambles along, but can pick up speed if it senses Alain panicking.

Alain is in slightly better shape, though the soulvine has worked its way through most of his lower body and torso. When he closes his eyes, he sees the coil of spider-lily petals on his eyelids. He wears the official dark green cloak of apprentice necromancers, and his hands and lower arms are wrapped securely in Silk-of-the-Veil. Only his fingertips are exposed, and these have pale rootlike hairs that wave around when he places them near his mount.

Weapons+Abilities: Alain can control the steed's movement by placing his fingers on it. It can accept instructions like moving toward a specified location/person that Alain knows, or walking toward more abstract concepts like safety or sanctuary.

Alain also has a hunting knife at his belt, and a bow and quiver strapped within arm's reach to either side of the steed. He's got about a dozen arrows left, and knows how to use 'em. Neither Alain nor the steed are much good at close combat, though the soulvine has a habit of engulfing and strangling whatever tries to assault it, then stashing the remains in one of its multiple rib cages for digestion.

The soulvine has replaced a fair bit of Alain's muscle mass. If he cut himself free he'd have perhaps an hour or so of free movement before the severed vines began to dissolve into shadow. On the upside, he's slow to tire or hunger and can sleep sitting up straight on his mount no problem.

The steed is powered by a Dying Wish, the energy signature produced by particularly powerful mages when they die.

Biography: Alain should've had another twelve years or more learning the necromancy trade from his father, but some bandits cut his education short. His father's last words were to take Rattan, their cart"horse" sunning itself by the nearby pool, and run.

There was so much Alain had yet to learn. Of soulvine constructs, he'd learned the fundamentals and the few basic do's and don'ts to stay safe around them, but only as stern commands and not with any kind of deep theoretical knowledge.

He'd been told not to tack up Rattan for long durations without gear lined with Silk-of-the-Veil, had been too distressed and exhausted and fallen asleep in the saddle and the one thing he remembered when he woke up stiff was that soulvine never hurt as it absorbed its food. He had to tear his arms free, wrap them in Silk to make sure they wouldn't stick more permanently.

When a cold wind struck his back and Rattan's skull was aburst with flowers, Alain knew his father was dead. He's been wandering the wilderness since, a scared abomination, with little hope of finding someone who could safely disentangle him.

Shame + Commute

Username: Agen of the morning after
Name: Esperance Heien
Gender: She/hers
Species: Depantheoned Goddess
Color: mmmmm

Biography: "mmmmmmmnnaAAAAHHHHH!"

Flump, flump. The feather-light sound of pillows settling into new dents in the silken mattress. "You're amazing."

"Not as amazing as you. In you. Stay the night?"

Rolling over. Sitting up, with the creak of springs in the bedframe. "I can't. My wife..."

"She won't know. Just say you worked late."

Creak. "Like the last three times?"

"Feminine intuition." She knew his wife wouldn't believe him. Pity. He had been good for a few weeks.

A push, back down into the mattress. "I..."

"Mmmm."

"I...!"

"Mmm."

And in the darkness, she smiled.

Description: Esperance is - was - a minor goddess, focused on the long walk home from a night at the brothel. In recent days she's not so much worshipped as cursed, but what's the difference to a deity? The mounting terror, the half-baked excuses, the divorces and the teasing - all of these are power to her.

Items/Abilities: She lures people in. As long as someone shuffles home, dragging their feet, almost crying with fear... she will have the powers of a goddess: immortality, supernatural attractiveness, persuasion. Pray the walks of shame never end, mortal.

Puzzle + Thrall

Username: Akumu

Name: Box of Mystery

Gender: Inanimate

Species: Lemurian remnant

Color: Indigo

Description: The Box of Mystery is a cube about five inches on a side. Its outer surface is highly variable.

Biography: Years upon years ago, in the now lost continent of Lemuria, the Box of Mystery was created as a psychic weapon. Lemuria didn't last very long after that.

Ability: The Box of Mystery emits mystic fields that induce pareidolia in nearby intelligent beings. Getting closer to the box strengthens the feeling that the environment contains significant patterns and a strong urge to decipher the meaning of these patterns. The surface of the box alters itself to contain hidden information, creating a puzzle that incorporates itself and the surroundings. The box has a crude intelligence, specialized toward creating puzzles, but can piggyback on the additional minds under its influence to attain greater cleverness and extend its pareidolic fields. Its goal is to collect and distract as many thinking beings as possible, though it has no understanding of its purpose beyond that. As a failsafe, each puzzle created has an intended solution. After reaching this solution, the compulsion produced by the box is neutralized. However, as more people add their brainpower to trying to decipher the puzzle, the box becomes more clever and its puzzle ever more elaborate.

Username: Sai
Themes: Thrall, Harsh
Name: Federal Marshal Jon "Gentle" Gronk and the Darton Gang
Species: An orc, two dwarves, an elf, a human that thinks he’s a demon, and a cat that might actually be one
Gender: Male, male, male, female, male, female

The Darton Gang was the nastiest, meanest, dirtiest, killiest band of outlaws to ever run rampant in the New West.

When you're talking about the Darton Gang, you gotta start with the Dartons. That's right, there's two of them. A pair of dwarves that would as soon shoot your head off than listen to you, and tend towards packing the action to make it happen. In Dale Darton’s case, it’s a blunderbuss. Having stolen it off a squad of High Orc Dragoons, he never read the user manual instructing him to load it only with standard issue lead balls. As a result, the bore of the gun has been scored and scarred by the nails and gravel and whatever else he’s stuffed into it, making the already imprecise weapon even less accurate. Daniel Darton, by comparison, favors a pair of long barreled pistols, designed for halflings with a light calibre that produces little kick. When Daniel decides you need to be shot, you get shot all quiet like. Now what makes the pair so dastardly isn’t their predilection for violence - plenty of folk have that, and not a one of em ever got the singular Darton reputation. It isn’t even Daniel’s waxed moustache. No what makes the Dartons such a terror is their criminal cunning. They say that the brothers used to be nothing more than mine vultures, sneaking into other folks’ claims and taking the silver that was already near-dug. Then one day, Daniel (or it might’ve been Dale) came across a strange merchant. They say this merchant was a devil in disguise, selling goods of infernal origin for an earthly price. Well Dale (or it might’ve been Daniel) got while the getting was good, and bought themself an Elixer of Genius. Only the thing was, he only got to drink half of it before his brother swiped the bottle and drank the other half. Each of them got half the spark, which is more than most get, but it also left them stark mad. Any plan that the pair can agree on is sure to go off without a hitch, which makes it lucky for honest folk that the two are constantly fighting. That’s how Jon Gronk caught them, after all - but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Next up in this band of trouble is Windwhisper. She’s the muscle of the group, and as quick with her axes as your more genteel elves are with their bows and spellsongs. She fell in with the Dartons on account of following them out of a jailbreak, and she liked their work enough to stick with em. She don’t talk much, but then again she don’t need to, what with the constant bickering of the brothers she works with. While the gang may be named after the pair of dwarves and the jobs they pull might come out of their heads, Windwhisper’s usually the one to settle disputes. Part of it’s just on account of how the Dartons themselves can’t ever seem to agree, but Windwhisper’s got enough of a body count that when she tells you to shut up, you don’t take the time to argue.

And then there’s Maurice. If the Dartons are eccentric, Maurice is downright crazy. He’s an old man that seems to think he’s hell’s servant on earth, and is keen on causing as much mayhem as he can. Way I see it, he’s probably some miner who breathed in too much sulfur - he certainly got his skills with dynamite somewhere. As he is now, though, you’d believe he crawled out of some pit somewhere. Dale Darton (or it might’ve been Daniel) managed to convince him that he could cause more damage with a lifetime of robbery than just going up in smoke the once, but anyone can tell he’s got fuses going in his head.

Now while Maurice might think he’s a spawn of Satan, there’s a case to be made for that weird cat. It ain’t got a name I’d heard, other than just “That Cat,” but it’s been sighted at every Darton hijacking and heist since the pair got famous. Rumors are it’s the devil that sold them the brew out looking over its handiwork, but then again cats have always been drawn to trouble.

Now that we’ve gone over the villains of this piece, it’s time to say a word about our hero. Federal Marshal Gentle Gronk, born “Jon Gronk” out of the Hopestown Valley is about as noble of an orc as you’ll ever meet. Folks wouldn’t have taken him for a future lawman when he was growing up, on account of his picking fights with the Pinkertons, but then he got it into his head to make a change from the inside. People still had their doubts when he first ran for sheriff, and he had a pretty tight race against the old law dog Gerald Lefty, but after chasing off the bandits at Goody May’s farm using an old cannon as a long gun, well, he was a shoe-in. Soon enough he had the valley cleaned out, but the man wasn’t satisfied. Seemed he had it in his soul to try to clean up the whole of the West.

Now he wasn’t the first lawman to take a posse after the Darton Gang, but he was the one that caught them out. As far as how he did it, well, the Darton’s will be happy to tell it to you themselves. Fact of the matter was, though, that he did it out in the badlands, with no one but his posse and the bandits themselves within a hundred miles or more. Much too far from any jail that could hold them, he used a Scroll of Geas to lock the whole of the band to his word - a real heavy burden of a spell, even for an orc his size. Until they were delivered safely to the proper court of law, not a one of them could disobey his commands. He had the band setting up camp later that night, when Gentle Gronk and the four criminals just up and disappeared, and I’ll be damned if the cat didn’t go too.

Alright with 9 profiles in and me having the time to make this post I'm going to say anyone who still wants to join the contenders has 24 hours to get an entry in!

It's Awards Time!

The Kracht Saw It Coming Award goes to Dragon Fogel for King Otobus III of Pordobia, who was certainly in the race for other awards but ended up making a stop at this one. At least it seems he's got the drive to get his kingdom through a grand battle!

The Lucky VII All-Rounder Award goes to Ixcaliber, mostly because XYR-393 fits for a lot of awards (certainly a great incorporation of themes, and possibly an interesting mix with other entries should they die) but is just all-round an interesting battle contestant.

The First Five Eighths Sportsball Award goes to Pharmacy for Kaguya-Hime, both for incorporating the color field to actually mean something and UFO is a great species to run with.

The The Thomas Packston Elementalist Award goes to Schazer for Alain, the poor guy in thrall to his family's commuting aid. Integrating themes by unwillingly integrating your character into their themes (one of which involves unwillingness) and various other parts of this profile def. ticked the boxes for this one.

The Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery goes to Benedict for Ark.Theseus, the stellar puzzle plane that I initially thought would be some sort of space-colonist-amalgam but A SUPER FUN TWIST HECK YES give me more of these xeno-memory-worshipping ferrets yesterday, please.

The Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award goes to Sai for Federal Marshal Jon "Gentle" Gronk and the Darton Gang, as this motley crew is sure to get up to all sorts of grand-battley hijinks even if that Geas doesn't start fraying at the edges immediately. With the ability to have multiple 'parts' of the character doing different things in different places at once, as well as an inbuilt conflict with Gronk's restraint and the Gang's hell-raising, they'd be sure to properly spice up any battle they end up in.

The GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding goes to Maxie for Inquisitor Ivivis Krospi, who while a solid entry for any award in Their Own Right (and they would likely believe They Deserve Every Award) seems to come from a character-populated and politically convoluted background I certainly wouldn't mind hearing more about.

The Convolution Teamfriendliness Cup goes to Akumu for the Box of Mystery, a puzzle box that profits and functions entirely off of synergy with the other candidates (and possibly other inhabitants of whatever battlezone they all end up in). I've always been a sucker for This Is Actually Just An Object battlers (props to The Vase) and this seems like a pretty cool twist on the idea.

And finally, the Space Jam Remix Prize For Cross-Thematic Cohesion goes to Agen's Esperance Heien for combining Shame and Commute in a way that didn't involve the obvious route of 'something embarrassing happening on public transport'. A solid entry!

That's it for the slightly-extended Week Twenty of GROC SII, take it away, whoever's next!

A brief note that the Box of Mystery entry is itself a small puzzle.

Since nobody else is coming forward for this round I'll take it. Because I'm predictable and respond well to pandering this week's theme is Mask.

Name: Nome D’Plume
Species: Fae
Gender: She/Hers
Color: Indiscernible

Description: Nome (Nome-Ee) has no true physical form and can best described as smoke in the rough shape of a humanoid. Anything she possesses (see Abilities) gets a few ornamental additions including a beaked domino mask, avian-centric finery, and an imposing countenance. Nome is can be described as “vampiric.” As a liminal creature, she naturally envies the living but with decades of solitude, that envy has been extended to anything remotely interesting. She can be charmingly eccentric but her fickle nature and need for control ensures whatever pleasantries developed will be brief as summer nights. Nome is not nice and caution should be advised when approaching her.

Abilities: Nome can possess literally anything. She is parasitic, consuming at her vessel’s existence. If left unchecked, the victim gradually fades away and leave no trace of soul or any means of recovery even through supernatural methods. However, Nome also gives a great blessing in the form of impossible charisma. Every unbelievable lie is as persuasive as truth. Every faux-pas more brilliant than the most cultured of formalities. You can kill a man but no one will bother to connect the dead body with you in that ridiculous bird get-up. Nome is the perfect murder weapon if you can handle the whole “eventual absolute annihilation” sort of deal.

Biography:

Spoiler :

“D’PLUME! GET THE DAMN OUT OF HER!”

The woman slowly stood up and turned towards the Inquisitor. The feathers of her dress waved gently in the unfelt winds of the fallow-fields. Not a speck or smudge of dirt on her and in the dead of night, she practically glowed. She was breathtaking like an ancient forest and radiant like whatever nature-spirit dedicated inside. The Inquisitor felt her knees beginning to buckle, a thought itching at the back of her head to bend down, worship, and kiss at her feet. She refused to concede. Mere sorcery. It was the mask.

From the compounding evidence and the disappearance of several prominent figures, it was definitely the mask.

“Oh darling, darling,” the presence within the woman purred. Her lips did not move with the form of the words and the noblewoman’s voice, sing-song and twisted with mockery, did not seem to originate from her mouth. “I don’t understand why you think I did wrong.”

“People disappeared.”

“Those who deserve it.”

“And those who did not.”

“So what if they did not,” she shrieked as she turned for the terrifying. Smoke started to pouring out of her hair and ghostly talons wormed her way out beneath fingernails. “They took my queendom, slew my children. Locked me in a cage of cold iron.”

“D’Plume.”

“Unspeakable acts!”

“D’Plume –”

“So what if those I took do not come back? I told them and they understood. They helped. They helped.”

“D’Plume.”

“What! What other nonsense will you spill out of your wretched mouth?”

“The war was two decades ago. You don’t need to do this anymore,” the Inquisitor paused. “You can go back home.”

The woman started to convulse as clouds upon clouds of smoke started to pour out of her mouth. The Inquisitor could barely see her sword in the hand, let alone a strange creature peeling from its vessel like a butterfly from a chrysalis. She soon found herself hit with a tremendous force and knocked amongst the grain. Her head was pounding and her chest was hurting. She could barely recover her breath when she realized a line of fog, ominous and seething like a thunderstorm, rushing towards her. She could see a strange creature, not exactly avian, but not exactly human, coming towards her. It raised its hand and she raised her sword –

It was gone.

Username: Agenmom
Name: Mother Siege
Species: Witch
Gender: she/hers
Color: Fortification brown

Description: Ever felt trapped without knowing why? Ever looked out the window at an empty horizon and felt the urge to leap through? Ever, in short, had cabin fever without the cabin?

Then the withered hand of Mother Siege is upon your heart.

She lurks in corners, unnoticed, a stooped crone reaching only five feet tall, with long arms ending in skeletal hands. Give your Ma a hug, dear.

Items/Abilities: Siege - she claims it to be pronounced sie-ge, a hard g, but the traditional meaning applies just as well. People build walls around their hearts all the time, replacing their faces with indifference or false happiness. She just helps.

Weavers' hands, she calls them, those shriveled digits of hers, topped with brown, cracked fingernails that scuttle, spider-like, over the back of your neck. Pluck, pluck go your heartstrings. The warp and weft of dual misery and fear bind together, forming thread that weaves around your soul. She ties you to the job you hate, the partner you no longer love, the house you said you'd move from three years ago, but the rent is too high for you to afford the movers.

Biography: Still, you smile. This is fine.

Username: Stratocaster
Name: Dandizette and Quaintrelle
Species: Lesser Sphinxes
Gender: Gal pals
Color: Fops and Macaroni

Description: Large, serpentine creatures whose personalities and bodies can fill any space shy of a ballroom, The Sphinx Sisters are the life of any party, and were invariably the hosts of any party worth attending in Nikelean-era Lun Dune.

Charismatic, charming, and more or less inseparable, it's quite common for the two to be whispering and gossiping at each other - even mid-conversation with someone else. Each has four large soft paws, whiplike tails with a thick grasping tuft on the end, any odd number of birdlike wings, and long necks that end cylindrically with a white panel shaped like a human face. These panels are like marble to the touch, but flow smoothly into whatever expressions the sphinxes will 'em.

Dandizette is the more extroverted of the two. She ornaments herself with a great many ruby-red wings where wings should not be (including a great many small ones like a mane around her false face) theatrical gestures, and a morbid sense of humor. She knows everyone who's anyone and is happy to introduce you.

Quaintrelle is less likely to initiate conversations, though is quite happy to chatter with those who approach her first. She often crouches on her hind legs and keeps her forepaws free to play with whatever trinket's recently captured her imagination. Her matte sand-gold outfit is more subdued than her partner's in both hue and silhouette, though it's tastefully studded with red gems and glass.

The pair's throats are bedecked with dull white pearls embedded in their flesh. Dandizette's got an even sixty arranged in two tightly-packed rings, Quaintrelle's got a slightly-more spaced out twenty-three.

Items/Abilities: Dandizette and Quaintrelle trust each other utterly, mostly because they don't spend enough time apart to scheme. The possess a passive illusory magic which reinforces how normal it is to be talking with two twenty-foot-long socialites regardless of what actually passes for normal in a given person's experience. This power persists long after you've encountered them - this can make describing them to someone who's never met 'em a weird experience, but also encourages folks to bring their confused friend to meet them personally.

Being entities of Infernal Planar Energy mythical beings, they don't have to eat food, instead feeding off of attention. Their favorite is praise and adoration, so for most intents and purposes they'll be paragons of society and quite content doing so (as long as they've got each other). In a pinch though, they're happy to settle for notoriety if they know they've got a getaway prepared to haul them away from any consequences.

They're also very fond of puzzles and riddles, and any major favor they'll do for you is contingent on your either solving one of theirs, or in very rare cases teaching one they can't crack. Such exchanges are binding contracts, and the Sisters have every right to repossess your soul (and re-possess your vacant body with someone from their collection) if you can't find a solution. They'll release you as promised as soon as you provide them an answer, sure, but they'll feed off of your fear and frustration of them in the intervening years. Win-win!

Biography:

An A to Z of Aracanizoology Wrote:Velvet Wyrms are a nominally harmless variant of Infernal - a common sight in magic-infused urban spaces like Lun Dune and Steadfastipol. They coagulate into existence around Infernally-aligned magic, and make their group nests in tight, dark spaces. An infestation can be identified by the hollow praise they dole out to one another.

Largely unintelligent and exceptionally vain, their ability to grow and feed off of attention exacerbates the mischief they may make once men are aware they are the cause. Troublesome individuals are best removed by a trained demonologist, who will lure the Wyrm close with flattery before cutting its long neck off at the shoulder.

The creature's "false face" will form from its solidified innards at the site of decapitation. The now-neckless beast will have a healthy fear of humans and cease its mischief. In addition, when it returns to its nest its new appearance will be ridiculed and torn apart by its nestmates. The only substance capable of permanently harming or killing a Velvet Wyrm are its own teeth; these rapidly dissolve from the inside out when extracted so are largely useless as implements to fight them.

While mostly harmless, Velvet Wyrms like all Infernals grow larger and more intelligent the longer they survive. Inexpert decapitation may leave a Wyrm with enough neck to be immune to the criticisms of its pack, so pest removal is best left to expert hands.