Steerpike

Steerpike in 1014AE

Demon-Priest

Jarvis Blackthorne (possible brother)

Cardinal **Steerpike,** true name **Jaster Blackthorne**, is the leader of the Order of the Seven Suns and a servant of Mordaghast the Underking. A mysterious and sinister demon cultist, he is the Demon leader's chief avatar and spokesperson in the terrestrial world.

Steerpike surrounds himself with six constant companions--the five Harbingers, and his Listener, with the seven of them forming the titular seven suns proclaimed in the name of his cult. Through his anointed Listener, Steerpike is one of the few humans capable of projecting himself into the Void and communing with Demons.

His status as a human puppet has earned him disdain among the other lieutenants of the Underking, especially from Generals Imshael and Malakai. The Cardinal was slain during the Final Battle for Everglow City by his namesake.

## Appearance and Character

Steerpike appears to be a human male in his late fifties. He has short grey hair with hints of color that suggest it was once red, and wears his beard in a mustache and goatee. His face is grim, with bushy eyebrows, thin lips and a long hooked nose. His unusual, protrudent eyes have a strange "colorless" look to them not entirely dissimilar to a mirror or glass. The Cardinal dressed only in fine clothing, as befits his title, but his vestments are almost exclusively black in color. He wears velvet gloves and pointed, leather boots. He is never seen without the ominous golden pendant he carries about his neck, forged in the shape of a seven-pointed star.

Over the course of the war, Steerpike's appearance degenerated; he became hunched, small, and wilted. His eyes were prosthetics, made to hide their real appearance--gushing, black pits, representing the final stage of his master's indoctrination. When empowered before the Final Battle, his clothes glowed white, and his hair stood up in ridged spikes from his scalp.

The Cardinal maintains a rather obsequious, unassuming manner. He is never anything less than polite and well-mannered to those he meets, and despite his somewhat sinister appearance, most people he meets tend to dismiss him at face-value. Beneath this exterior the man who calls himself Steerpike is a soulless creature, Mordaghast's dark will made manifest. He is a fanatic with no empathy for human life, loathing its "vices" and "sin," and even seems to take pleasure in the psychological and physical damage that he wreaks upon terrestrials with his actions. The Cardinal stops at nothing to please his god, the Underking, and while he has a form of ambition it only extends so far as to become a favored servant of his master.

## Skills and Abilities

Steerpike has been rewarded for his long years of service with alterations to his terrestrial body, and it is difficult to say if he can even be classified as biologically human. He has been gifted, also, with the ability to "convert" people into his Order; through the use of his pendant, he can impose his will upon them, eroding their minds and leaving them a husk of their former selves. This leaves a physical effect too, as the more of a victim's mind is eroded, the more their eyes burn away. The fully-converted, called the "enlightened," have only black pits where their eyes once were.

## History

Some folk stories in the West speak of a man who lived in the days after Vermithrax fell. This man committed a secret crime so great that it plagued his conscience ceaselessly. He fell into a state of despair, and prayed at a river for the aid of the goddess Aradia. He knelt by the river from dawn until dusk, and at the stroke of midnight, his lamentations were answered--for a Dark Stranger rose from the river. This Stranger told the man that Aradia was false, that all deities and belief systems were false, and the only true god was Stranger itself. The man cried then, and proclaimed that he repented his sinful ways, that he would give anything if only he did not have to relive his crime every time he opened his eyes. And so the Stranger burned the man's eyes from his head, and bade him to walk the earth, spreading the Good News to all who could hear it.

The story is told to Western children in a bid to discourage them from straying near rivers, and also to alert them to the dangers of Speaking-Demons. But the description of the man in the tale seems too close to the modern Order of the Seven Suns to be entirely fictitious...

While Steerpike's true origins were never fully revealed, dialogue from both himself and the Underking imply that he was born as the youngest son of Jason Blackthorne, named Jaster. He was terminally ill as a young boy, "dying" aged ten; it is implied his father, obsessed with controlling death, experimented on the boy and turned him into an undead servant that would later become Steerpike.

## Recent Events

The mysterious priest known as Steerpike arrived in the City during the Everglow Festival of 1014AE. While there he took over an inn, "enlightening" its owners, and relayed orders to the vile Succubus known as Mileena the Mad. He conversed also with General Malakai, who revealed the plan to attack the Riverford, and took the priest's listener so that he could not contact them again until he had aided them in their plans. Steerpike journeyed north, performing the rituals necessary to allow the Demon army to pass into the terrestrial world, leading to the Massacre at the Riverford. After, he came to Verdant Lea, where he concocted a scheme to win over the surviving Blackthorne fighters by returning Sir Jaxon Waynrite (after his cultist subordinates had captured the knight). He also brought enough provisions to feed the refugees, winning him the respect of Briona Manford, who agreed to take the priest back to the city to be presented to the Bloodhawk.

He became Hand of House Blackthorne under Dominic's kingship, and plotted with Nestor Knox to overthrow the Bloodhawk. Dominic found out and attacked them, however Mordaghast intervened to save Steerpike's life at a crucial moment, casting the Bloodhawk down and giving the Cardinal tremendous power. Steerpike initiated the Final Battle for Everglow City and was promoted to General of the Demon Army after Malakai's death. He managed to breach the upper levels of the city and initiate the ritual to bring his master into the terrestrial world; however, he was stopped by King Jaster I who finally put an end to the wretched servant, killing the Cardinal for good.

## Trivia

Steerpike is named after the protagonist of the Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake. The name "Gormenghast" was also used to create the name of the Cardinal's master, Mordaghast.