Dhalikastra

I saw a forest made of trees whose roots were made of hundred of fingers, each one with a thousand knuckles; sprouting eye-fruits and ear-flowers; trunk with a bony bark and teeth instead of thorns; great locks of hair in place of leaves.

 -Litua Kortos, lilim of the Dhalikastra's garrison.

     This fortress' role has been to lure nefilims for the last four hundred years, drawing the evils of the Unquiet Lands. If something conquers it one day, the garrison has the duty of warning the world of this. Dhalikastra is shaped as a titanic hexagonal prism, red and bright amidst a land of an opaque, dead grey. The radiance pours out of the goddess Dhalila herself. It sustains, protects and heals the defenders, at the same time attracting nefilims like ants seeking sugar. And when they come, the guardians gather in walled balconies and shoot from arrowslits, protected by heavy adamantine armors. The latter are reinforced with leather and cloth to portect their users from the toxic elements and the ocasional vacuum of the Unquiet Lands. Every helmet must have a glass-sap visor and miasma filters.

    The current castellan is Volya "Smeyas". A blond shardokan, with dark circles under his eyes and grey spots in the arms, wielding a flintlock grenade launcher. Like all which stay here, he adopted a new name for a new life, leaving his old self outside the Unquiet Lands and the terror that they create:

My babuskha, Valeria, told me how the man she loved was attacked from within his own guts, and how she had to kill what was left. She told me of a voyage which lasted a year more than it should, being awakened in the midnight by a feeling of pain and finding saliva and bite marks where it hurt. May Corallin forgive my baba for burning down a forest to escape the Thing That Laughs. When baba died, I sacrificed ten sheep to Corallin so her soul would reincarnate into a better life. Then I came here. Volya means "freedom". I spent my entire life afraid of the stories about the terrors and carnages she saw. I was tired of being afraid, of being a victim of these bastard things with larval teeth. Now, even amidst this hell, I'm happy. You can't imagine how good it feels to be free of the fear which was more intimate to me than my own parents. My nickname here is Smeyas, which means "the one which laughs", because I can laugh in the worst situations. Half of it is due to despair, the other half for the happiness in finally reacting upon my fears, all of it for the chance of exploding a nefilim.

     Like Volyas, most of the defenders had their life marked by nefilims in one way or another. Many came from exile colonies for those which suffer from nefilim leprosy, administered by the Lazarus Order.

Anyone may be a volunteer, no matter the race, beliefs, crimes or status. As much honor as can be had among men and gods, amidst enemies on the battlefield, there can be no honor nor peace among mortals and nefilims. The lilims themselves agree with this. We're all equal when facing nefilims, just food and fun for them. They will regret teaching us to be equals.

     Here also lies an observatory meant to identify nefilim falling nests and the place of their crash. Most of the nests come from the Gharian Planetary Ring, therefore having rich adamant veins. Dhalikastran expeditions depart to eliminate the infestations and claim mining rights over these asteroids. Part of the extracted adamant goes to Dhalikastra. The rest is sold to sustain the exile colonies and the cult of Dhalila.

Runics

     An empire with a hundred million inhabitants has many races, cultures and ethniticies. Some are more relevant, like the feidralin. Others are despised. That is the case of the runics. "No-clan" Runaros was a common dwarf until he was infected with nefilim leprosy in 1092 Post-Idura. The disease made his skin become grey and flaky, beard and hair turning into dry ash. But the disease was also lethal. Fearing a plague, his clan exiled him as it was custom everywhere after the Nefilim Invasion. No-Clan lost the security of the community, his family's love and everything he couldn't carry in the wagon. It's unknown what he did afterwards. No one has records, although the runics have a thousand stories, sometimes contradictory, about their founder. No one even knows how he died. What is known is that, somehow, he developed runic tattoos which slow, or, if applied fast enough, stop the progress of the pranic corruption caused by the disease. The tattoo is different for every individual, but the lines, curves and angles always seem to reflect the carrier's personality somehow. Runaros treated many and taught some of them.

       Municipal archives in the empire and beyond started registering the presence of caravans self-named "runics" in 1165 PI. Itinerant bands of merchants, artists, charlatans, smiths, smugglers and thiefs, they were infamous and their merchandise was wanted in equal measure. Commoners disdained the runic customs and professions. The expression "runic way" soon appeared, when someone seeks advantages or jumps into an opportunity even if there's no clear reason or it's even dangerous to do so. In the other hand, this way of living was the only one in which the runics weren't prevented or forbidden from doing. The people always objected when a runic tried to be their neighbor. At most, there were slums nicknamed "leprosariums" where they lived apart and always outside the walls. Stealing was often the only way to survive, and not all runics were good people. But either good or bad, runics were more remarkable than the common man.

       When they realized that they were many and with a common trait no one else had, they organized themselves. They founded the Lazarus Order and made deals with Dhalila's cult. Half the caravans would settle in isolated or empty places; each one would provide a volunteer, fully equipped, to integrate the order and protect runics everywhere from dangers that sometimes included crows of furious northerners and lords seeking scapegoats. The other half would remain going here and there, buying and selling as they always did. But now they would sell something in Dhalikastra's name, a product which ensures the opening of gates and even a measure of half-baked politeness: the adamant retrieved from falling nefilim nests eliminated by Dhalila's cult. Being pariahs. nomadism. adamant. selling of goods, services and information; all this makes the runics well-liked by adventurers and vice versa. After all, it's a simple step to go from runic to adventurer.

Nefilims

 

If anyone wishes to know, what can be found about the origin of the Nefilims is this: Before almost everything, rebellion and conflict generated losses and disasters. No victory, for the war still goes on. Many of the horrors created were creature conceived in chaotic and corrupted shapes. An accident created a place where to keep them, a prison for all that excess of wrong flesh. Once put there, they were forgotten because of reasons more immediate, greater and more dangerous. This place had no earth, air, fire or water, only creatures and its jailers.

 Hunger was inevitable, and the only thing in common among all the things inside. In a moment wrong in many levels, certain creatures eliminated the barriers between reproduction and cannibalism, eating each other and defecating stronger offspring. In this generation, the will to live and hunger matched each other and became one, exponentiating their hunger beyond the other prisoners. Thirty generations later, the competition was eliminated, partially without meaning to. Even so, they were imprisoned and fading, but the history of Creation is made of failing plans. When Genesis unlocked the gate from outside, he freed something that couldn't distinguish between hunger and gluttony. 

-Arms for Secrets: conversations with the Baba Yaga sisters, written by Valeria Afanasyev.

A group of diverse creatures and entities with following common characteristics:

• Their place of origin is the "Abyss", a dimension dominated by the Nefilims. Originally the greatest of the ephemeral zones, now it is a cursed realm with its own will and is also the closest the Nefilims have of a symbol valued by all.
• Parasitism. Nefilims require vital force (prana) to reproduce, harvesting it mostly from the souls of mortals and even from the essence of gods. Every type of nefilim infects its host in a different way: fluids, digestive processes and larval teeth are just some of them. What happens next depends on the host's spiritual strength. A weal one may form purple teratomas with consistence of a barely cooked egg, which grow until the victim dies of blood loss. Strong hosts eventually may turn into a giant egg of calcified flesh with a nefilim inside.
• Great physical variation. It is suspected that nefilims were once a single species, but it went through many changes due to the innate capabilities of flesh warping. It is also common that the following generations mutate significantly from their ancestors. Some nefilims are even capable of instantly transform and twist the flesh of their enemies.
• A feeling mixing "hunger" and "gluttony": they always need to eat, but they always eat more than they need.
• Omniphagia: nefilims consume any entity possessing traces of prana, be it the local fauna, mortals, ghosts or gods. Some also can consume the very elements which enable life, creating grey regions where there is no air to breathe nor water to drink.
• Nefilims are incapable of forming meaningful relationships with mortals due to lacking souls. However, some nefilims can turn mortals into "avatars" or "ambassadors". The better known examples are: the Baba Yaga sisters, servants of the biped huts which follow them; Ellequin, avatar of a Decarabia, a flying nefilim which stayed in Ghara after the Nefilim Invasion; and the Sack Man.
• They have much difficulty in cooperating or forming plans. Competition is common. This is their greatest weakness. If the Nefilim Invasion had been organized, Ghara might have not survived
• Immunity to scrying, oracles and similar. The lack of a soul or essence makes it impossible that they be detected or foreseen.

To learn what I wrote here, I had to talk with creatures so bad that I would be sorry for the venomous snake which bit them. This book means to transmit everything I know about the nefilims, so that no one else has to go through what I did when they came. And I find it fitting to start with the beings I was forced to live with: the Baba Yaga sisters.

-Arms for Secrets: conversations with the Baba Yaga sisters, written by Valeria Afanasyev.

Lilims

From the city's dark corners, mysterious creatures watch the constant passage of others. Even without seeing them, they can understand the mind spectrum of every individual passing through the streets above. The world through their eyes is like a labyrinth made of logics only they can solve.

Half Humans Half Nefilims

     Nefilims are abyssal entities extremely voracious, devouring everyone and everything, parasitizing what's left. Diverse in shapes and sizes but always hideous. The Nefilim Invasion was a cataclysm which decimated the entire planet centuries ago. There are lifeless and grayish places which never recovered. The largest and better known are the Unquiet Lands, so called because its borders expand and contract from time to time. During the invasion, a nefilim entity called Lilith wished to have offspring. Incorporating countless women on itself, generated something that wasn't nefilim but also wasn't human: lilims.

     Despite the fusion of nefilim traits with the body and soul of mortals, lilims have desires, thoughts and needs similar to humans. They thirst for relationships which are made difficult for three reasons, all the result of their demonic heritage: the disturbing appearance; the difficulty of comprehending feelings, both theirs and of others; the face which hardly expresses what they feel. Were it not for the fact that Dhalila, the goddess of sacrifice, adopted the race, they might have not survived. She taught them to use logic to deal with the world and people.

Prejudice and Fear

     A lilim is seen, at the very least, as a strange creature. Due to this, most individuals fear and mistrust lilims, marginalizing them. Lilims are seldom found in cities, but they manage to acquire some respect in more developed places. For example, the empire's capital houses little more than a hundred lilims. They founded an ethnic guild, in an attempt to band together and feel how it would be to have their own society. Lilim communities almost never exceed this size, both because they are few compared to the other races, as well as to avoid being used as scapegoats for any problems the region might have. An organization called Lazarus Order helps them with forming isolated villages throughout the empire and outside of it. They say that there are cities with thousands outside the empire and in other nations, perhaps even nearby the Unquiet Lands, where no race or civilization dares to colonize.

Place

• Coeus Ossuary: a citadel of five thousand people near the Unquiet Lands, but still within the Northern Empire. The population, mostly lilims, mine the bones of an old titanic god consumed by nefilims during their invasion. Besides serving as raw materials for weapons and armour, the bones are used to reinforce important structures such as the Imperial Palace and some fortresses. The urban aspect is unsettling: houses raised among ribs as long and large as avenues; the mayor lives inside a skull as huge as a castle; vertebra's shards used as columns. Despite this, the bones are harmless. The danger are the occasional nefilim attacks trying to gnaw the bones to reach their marrow, which has useful alchemical properties.
  

Lilim Traits

• Ability Score Increase. Your intelligence value increases by 2 and another ability of your choice increases by 1. Lilims have powerful minds due to their supernatural lineage.

• Age. Lilims mature and live at the same rate that humans.

• Alignment. Lilims tend toward no particular alignment.

• Size. Lilims are considered Medium size creatures, usually have thin builds and their height varies from 6 feet to 7 feet tall.

• Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

• Dreadful. You have proficiency in Intimidation. Besides their strange appearance, lilims learned to analyze others through observation and use it to manipulate one's fears. However, most of them use this as a defense mechanism.

• Nefilimcunning. Whenever you make an Intelligence (arcana) check related to nefilims, you are considered proficient in the arcana skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.

• Mental intrusion. Once per long rest, the lilim may attempt to invade someone's mind up to a 30 feet distance. He makes an insight check against the target's intelligence. If the lilim suceeds, he learns a secret kept by the target, determined by the DM. Any target immune to charming or psychic damage is also immune to this trait, as well as creatures whose Intelligence value is 2 or less.

• Omniphagia. Once per long rest, the nephilim may attempt to absorb the essence (prana) of an object or creature. To do so, he needs to touch it. If it is a creature, the target must roll a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + lilim's proficiency + Intelligence modifier). If the target fails, this causes force damage equal to the lilim's level (half if the creature succeeds at the test. The lilim recovers a corresponding number of hit points. When used in objects, it always causes half damage. Creatures and objects affected by this ability present flaky and grey surfaces or skin.