Gwythaint

These vile dragons were the first ever created,
their design forming the template for all species which came after. Gwythaints
trace their ancestry back to Zoor’Ztsh, the First Dragon and right hand of
Oblivion. Their flesh is the essence of darkness and blight, their breath a
ruinous tide of disease. Out of all the creatures of flesh, these primordial
tyrants are the closest to attaining the purity of perfection. The earliest
orcish texts have recorded the existence of these frightful champions of
darkness, indicating that they were spreading their taint throughout
Thaelis-Y’Arda long before the first humanoid species was conceived in the minds of the 44 trolls.
== Gwythaint - Social Structure ==
Although these dragons revel in the spread of
chaos, illness and discord, they they have an intra-species society
that is strictly organised in a pyramid structure similar to that of many
religions. At the bottom of this social order are the gwythaints of least
ability, typically the youngest individuals. These dragons patrol the lands of
Naen, acting as surveyors and scouts for their superiors and reporting back to
them at regular intervals of time. These youngsters have permission to wreak
whatever havoc through disease and slaughter that they please. The younger
dragons answer to older individuals, typically their parents. It is common for
each elder gwythaint to preside over two to four of its offspring. These older
dragons in turn answer to their own sires and gwythaints of truly unfathomable
age who have existed since the time before Time. These ancient rulers of Mikhul
Delvin are said to serve Zoor’Ztsh directly and have been the masterminds
behind many calamities throughout the ages. In addition, gwythaints of all age
categories correspond with warlocks of similar standing in the armies of
Oblivion, sharing forbidden knowledge obtained through centuries of demonology.
Since the Shadow Scourge, few remain among the living who understand that while
some other dragon species are more individually powerful, the gwythaints are an
entire breed which acts as a cult, each individual co-operating directly or
indirectly with every other to bring an end to all light and life. Those who do
in fact comprehend the existential threat these dragons pose work tirelessly to
warn others before it is too late to save creation.
== Gwythaint - Diet ==
Gwythaints are generalist carnivores, but they
prefer the taste of thoroughly rotten flesh infested with disease. They can
also consume obsidian if other food is in short supply.
== Gwythaint - Population ==
It is thought that over 200 of these dragons exist.
It is feared that over 15 of these are individuals over 6000 cycles old.
== Gwythaint - Image ==
These horrible dragons resemble great reptiles
which stand on two squat, powerful hind legs that support a hideous torso
spilling over with thick black scales. Terrible, curved talons sink hatefully
into the earth but instead yearn to bury themselves in tender flesh. Atop the
gwythaint’s body sits a grotesque head that is little more than a razor-sharp
maw adorned with backward-sweeping, spiked or sickle-shaped horns. Hooked teeth line the
beast’s jaws and a horrid lolling tongue occasionally uncoils to taste the air.
The dragon’s eyes are small and baleful and glow with a sickly yellow
light as it observes lesser creatures with disdain and contempt. Quill-like
spines bristle behind the gwythaint’s head and extend down its spine to where
leathery, pitch-dark wings unfold like curtains of unclean shadow. These
powerful appendages sport vicious, claw-like hands which allow the dragon to
walk of all fours like a giant, monstrous bat. Behind the dreadful entity a long,
spiny tail whips restlessly back and forth, as if impatient for victims to
smite and crush into bloody stains. An aura of horror and perversion
accompanies the presence of a gwythaint wherever it treads, and entropic
vapours emit from its open mouth and from between its scales. The air around it
hums with a hollow frequency and carries the stench of gangrenous wounds,
decomposing bodies and deer musk. The tenebrous scales and unwholesome, deathly
appearance of the gwythaints has led to their being referred to as “black dragons” and “shadow dragons”. The bleak,
harrowing call of a gwythaint is said to be so disquieting that those who hear
such a sound are forever changed, as if a small part of their soul has been
irrevocably touched by eternal sorrow and impotent rage.
== Gwythaint - Relations ==
Gwythaints consider themselves vastly superior to
all other species of dragons, and with the proud verethras all but expunged
from the world, they feel like they are without a doubt the kings among
dragonkind. During the Second War of Light and Darkness, These dragons tempted
the kulshedras into aiding them in their war against the verethras, promising
to reward them with the Sun’s golden blood. However, it could scarcely be said
that these two breeds have a close relationship, as the vain fire dragons are
almost as egotistic as the gwythaints. The lack of fear the kulshedra show
their kind leads many gwythaints to wish retribution upon them, but most know
better than to tackle them in open combat. The negafooks who rule over the
frozen wastes to the south of their domains know not to challenge their havens
even when the snows advance north during Frost’s Fall. Perhaps the gwythaints’
greatest enemies in modern cycles are the wyverns, many of whom allied
themselves with the verethras in prior conflicts. The two species rarely
encounter one another, but such run-ins invariably result in violence.
Among the humanoid species, gwythaints have a
grudging respect for the kiasyd after observing their prowess in battle and
devotion to Annihilation during the Shadow Scourge. Most other children of
Darkness such as ogres and goblins are seen only as useful tools to be
manipulated and then cast aside. The acheri created by their own divine father
are left unmolested, but the dragons hold a bitter resentment towards these
dracoids for sequestering so much of Zoor’Ztsh’s attention which they believe
should be reserved purely for themselves. Gwythaints view all creatures of
flesh with universal disdain, but their greatest fury is reserved for the
solfar, ameret and of course the surviving unicorns that still fight against
the encroaching night with all their remaining tenacity.
== Gwythaint - Location ==
Gwythaints are found almost exclusively within the
Troxian Mountains, including the giant spire known as Mikhul Delvin, which is
rumoured to be the birthplace of these dark dragons. The cave networks and
underground vaults which lie beneath this craggy range contain hundreds of
lairs, each occupied by a single gwythaint. Occasionally these dragons fly out
into foreign lands on some errand ordained by the Court of Darkness, but most
remain in their cavern homes, slowly gathering their armies for the time when
Creation will finally come to an end under a storm of fever-laden talons. It is
rumoured that a select few gwythaints have made their scum-encrusted lairs
within forgotten regions of Daakas.
== Gwythaint - Religion(s) ==
These dragons are loyal to their creator to a
degree which renders them almost unquestioning of his judgement. The
overwhelming majority of gwythaints worship Zoor’Ztsh or Oblivion, regarding
most other divinities as unworthy of their attention. So concerned are these
beasts with the cleanliness of darkness that only a couple have ever turned
their reverence towards Amarok, and have kept their devotion a secret. Some of the oldest gwythaints have agendas to
ascend to claim a crown of divinity for themselves, gathering fanatical
cultists around them to amplify their growing spiritual power. Like demons,
these dragons know well the abhorrent nature of Thaelis-Y’Arda, and none
question for an instant that that which is, must be unmade.
== Gwythaint - World View ==
The world and all who dwell within it are a grave
insult to our heritage. Destroy them - destroy them all.
== Gwythaint - Personality ==
All gwythaints are brutal, scheming and remorseless creatures. Of all
the breeds of dragon, this species is the most arrogant and megalomaniacal, for
they know that all others are mere pale imitations of their own magnificent
image. Gwythaints are psychopathic and have no regard for those they quash in
pursuit of their dark designs or for simple amusement. They acknowledge the
truth that these insects were never intended to be and therefore have no right
to life or happiness. The emotion of love is as incomprehensible as it is to any
demon. Despite their deeply spiteful and sadistic personalities, each of these
dragons has an ambivalent relationship with its own parent. While parent and
offspring are bound to each other by instinct and common loyalty to the cause
of Annihilation, the younger dragon knows that its parent stands between it and
its own greater glory, and no gwythaint willingly allows one of its children to
surpass its own station in the hierarchy of Darkness. The cthuloid mind of a
gwythaint is more alien than that of any other dragon.
Unlike some dragons, gwythaints care nothing for amassing treasure and
utterly abhor gold. Material wealth is simply one more illusion which must
ultimately be unmade by the Outer Darkness, and all opulence is cheap and pitiful
when compared to a gwythaint’s immaculate image.
Nothing pleases these macabre creatures more than watching entire
communities of sapient creatures suffer as they die a slow death from plague.
Some theologians theorize that the bottomless hatred these dragons harbour
stems from a deep-seated inferiority complex; although almost one with the
demons which infest their bodies, every gwythaint knows that it is still a base
creature confined by the prison of flesh, never able to truly attain the purity of shadow. The sheer horror of this
realisation drives these dragons to blind fury – woe betides anyone who reminds
one of these beasts of its own limitations.
== Gwythaint - Athanc ==
A gwythaint’s Athanc is a huge black diamond which pulses with a dark
glow while the beast lives. Black diamonds are extraordinarily hard to procure
due to the tremendous hazards associated with harvesting them. Even the Athancs
of dead gwythaints have scarcely been discovered or mined, for almost all of
them lie within the mountains surrounding the Black Spire itself – a dangerous
region in its own right without even considering the fact that it is inhabited
by the majority of the world’s living gwythaints. Items incorporating these alluring
yet blasphemous gems are highly offensive to the followers of the divinities of
Light.
== Gwythaint - Reproduction ==
Like all dragons, gwythaints are sexually hermaphroditic and reproduce
asexually by two methods. The first involves the dragon speaking words in
Tartarian while letting its own blood, which invokes a mystical process by
which the spilled essence becomes a horrid species of pseudodragon known as a
gannog. True draconic reproduction involves the gwythaint shaving off a
fraction of its Athanc. Once removed, this fragment of the gwythaint’s heart
must immediately be interred within a mound of rotten bodies which died of
disease, where it becomes an egg over a period of one chain. Once the new
Athanc has encased itself it begins developing a new dragon infant, which takes
over a cycle to form completely. Once this period of time has passed, the baby
gwythaint gnaws its way free from the egg, ravenously hungry. Gwythaints watch
closely over their eggs, knowing that the creation of another crusader of
Darkness is a task of utmost importance, and immediately begin indoctrinating
the hatchlings in the teachings of Zoor’Ztsh and Oblivion. Young dragons stay
with their parent until they have completed their theological education, at
which point they strike out on their own to aid in the annihilation plan,
reporting back to their sire periodically to share emergent intelligence. While
the parental bond gwythaints cultivate is not at all one of love, it is one of
strained respect.
Of all the species of dragons, gwythaints are the least likely to
assume the forms of other species, viewing such an action as a debasement of
their fundamentally superior nature. For this reason, there have been no
reliably documented gwythaint scions, although the clergy of Sorin-Sam insist
that when King Saam Vintoras locked blades with Mikhalinn during the final days
of the Shadow Purge it was revealed to him that Oblivion’s second avatar was
one such being.
== Gwythaint – Lairs ==
Gwythaints prefer caverns and sunken grottoes as locations in which to
create their lairs. Here, the dragons can bathe in the pervasive darkness during
the daylight hours, far from the sun’s hateful rays. Some dragons also make
their homes within the ruins of decaying fortresses or kingdoms brought down
long ago by their hideous breath. The subterranean chambers inhabited by
gwythaints are devoid of treasure, for the creatures have no interest in
amassing wealth and loathe coins crafted from the sun’s blood.
Gwythaints foment social corruption wherever they tread. Depraved
creatures such as goblins and Black Scale kiasyd accumulate at their lairs to worship
these dragons like flies gather on dead flesh. These cultists offer blood
sacrifices to their monstrous patron and engage in ritualistic fights to the
death to settle disputes and appease their master’s ire. The sapient minions of
these sociopathic sadists usually occupy the area immediately around their
dragon’s lair, and live in fear of brutal death as gwythaints are known for
their murderous impulses. The demented followers of these dragons who are not
themselves warlocks are little more than distractions for the gwythaint’s foes
and food for its appetite for debasement and torture.
== Gwythaint – Tactics ==
These dragons prefer to slowly kill their victims using their
plague-laden breath, watching from afar as innocents writhe and degenerate over
the course of days. However, when a more significant threat is encountered, gwythaints
are quick to use their claws to behead and disembowel those who dare challenge
their might.
A gwythaint targets the weakest foes first, aiming to kill them in
swift and grisly fashion so that their friends will be overwhelmed by horror.
Once this has been achieved, the creature focuses all its attacks upon a single
foe at a time until all who face it are dead. Foes who flee upon either seeing the
dragon’s horrible form or when defeated are usually blasted with demonic breath
so that they may carry diseases back to their homes and families.
If a gwythaint is accompanied by its minions, it treats them as utterly
expendable, caring not for any losses suffered by their number. So great is the
bloodlust of a raging gwythaint that it will often tear its own followers apart
in a frenzy. If a gwythaint is somehow defeated, it will bargain for its life,
but will not willingly serve anyone who does not outrank it in the hierarchy of
Darkness. Compulsive liars, these dragons will violate any deal made with its
foes as soon as it sees a chance to reassert its dominance in the future.
== Gwythaint – Creation Story ==
When the world was new and shone in its intolerable blasphemy,
Zoor’Ztsh, the first Dragon, made pilgrimage to the unholy mountain Oblivion
had raised from the underworld to serve as a beacon to all those who would make
right the terrible wrong that had been done by Time. Making his nest within
Mikhul Delvin’s deepest vaults, he divided his Athanc and the first thirteen
gwythaints were hatched. It is believed that at least three of these original
shadow dragons, Akurathear, Azidahaka and Eribonyxtaliff, persist to this day.
== Gwythaint – Language ==
Tartarian and Wyrmish
== Gwythaint – Names ==
Most gwythaints take first names in the tongue of demons, Tartarian. In
addition, they commonly take a number of surnames which are actually passages
and phrases taken from Oblivion’s holy text, Becoming the Adversary.
First Names: Chaetul-Morug, Kathmotnaelin, Faurmauth,
Malefiscei, Namdak-Futh, Otulkau, Shuvirktis, Vaeliang, Vorlianth, Waumdualduc
Surnames:
·        
Ildra y’khatt delyk elvand xtaiz
sayvghax (“Let the blood of the cowards flow as the water”)
·        
Kalst orkvort lorrachk ia asbiak (“There can be no truth without pain”)
·        
Inejalek ashpyerh iak mosxk esh
orxcik (“And the Darkness rained upon them”)
·        
Ashlraxk ia rext dvork kelxrad
orsdand (“Silence covereth thee and thy name”)
·        
Tastkalc ia belbigthn aszh kot dxirr
(“One who ushers forth chaos and disorder”)
== Gwythaint - Benefits ==
Species-Granted Fortes:
* Conditioning (Life Force)
* Insight (Emotions)
* Meditation (Fear)
Skill Familiarities:
* Academics (History)
* Intimidate
* Occult (History of Magic)
* Occult (Warlocks)
* Theology (Dragons)
These
dragons have Bite, Claw and Tail Slam Attacks which deal damage which varies
depending on the creature’s Status/Age category (See Table
x). Gwythaints are invulnerable to disease and poison, and can cast
rituals from the darkness precept using their Status as Caster Status. They can
see perfectly in pitch darkness.
Exhale the Winds
of Plague – All gwythaints have a breath weapon which infests
those caught within with demons which cause dreadful illnesses. Victims caught
within the exhalation of writhing blackness must roll Conditioning (Disease)
against the dragon who rolls and adds its Status, VIG Rating and Hate score.
Each victim that loses the contested roll becomes diseased. Each day the
disease damages the victim’s VIG score by the dragon’s Status or any value
lower. The gwythaint chooses the virulence of its breath weapon each time it
uses it, and all caught by a single breath make their individual rolls but
suffer the same amount of VIG damage should they lose the roll. The oldest
gwythaints can produce fevers so intense that they claim the lives of victims
in a single day, but if they feel unthreatened they will often choose to
prolong the victim’s suffering by diseasing them with a lethal but
slower-acting strain of demon.
Frightful Presence
-: All who look upon the horrendous form of a
gwythaint must roll Meditation (Fear) against the dragon’s contested Intimidate
roll or succumb to a mind-numbing horror, If the victim loses the contest they
flee (if of lower Status than the gwythaint) or take a penalty to all rolls
equal to the gwythaint’s Status for the rest of the scene. A dragon’s allies,
warlocks, demons and other gwythaints are not affected by its Frightful
Presence.
District of Misery
– So unnatural is the nature of a gwythaint that its
presence twists and corrodes the territory it occupies for any significant
period of time. The effects a gwythaint has on its environment are listed in Table x.
== Gwythaint - Weaknesses ==
These dragons have hypersensitivity to gold and cannot handle it under
any circumstances. Gwythaints are slightly debilitated by sunlight; daylight
and certain light-precept Rituals give these dragons a -1 penalty on all rolls
relying on sight, and all sight perception rolls are reduced by -2. Love is
utterly alien to a shadow dragon’s psychology and it can never take points in
that passion. Born of cosmic hatred itself, gwythaints must start with at least
one point of Hate. These dragons dislike fire but suffer no special penalties
from it.