The Binder Brothers

The infamy of "the binder brothers" is short reaching as much of the information about them has been purposefully obscured either by themselves or the Concordance. Primarily only identified by their title, the binder brothers are scarcely known about even among the most well researched witch-hunters as it is said they can change their shapes at will, being masters of the forbidden art of transfiguration in addition to planar travel and even binding.

## Spoilers

The infamous Binder Brothers once attended Scholomance, joining a year apart from one another. The first brother was sorted into House Emberwing while the younger of the pair was sorted into House Wyrmhart. The older brother was well respected by his peers and generally regarded as highly charismatic, meanwhile the younger brother struggled to match their idolized older brother's natural charm. It was shortly before the annual halloween gala at Scholomance during the younger of the pair's second year that their fate was forever altered. Disappointed by his lack of date and with the commons empty, the younger brother decided to go for a walk in the outskirts of the veiled forest where he encountered a beautiful woman who spent the night talking to him. As the night waned the Wyrmhart commented that he wished he could always be so confident; a wish the woman said that she could grant. Won over by their feelings of comradery and desire for the women he entertained her offer, and under waning moonlight signed a contract binding himself to the women in exchange for that which he desired most.

The women shortly after left, unable to remain as the sun rose. A succubus who’d utilized the thinning of the veil between planes which occurs each year on samhain to collect a desperate soul. When the younger brother returned to classes and began interacting with others he found that the part of him that nagged with doubt was gone, that he was confident to the point of arrogance even at times. That he felt uninhibited and proud. His new found confidence had the results he desired, dates came easier and he had no lack of company and friends.

His brother noticed this change and eventually confronted him, learning about the contract he’d signed and the women he met. After researching the situation the eldest brother of the two was mortified to think that his little brother sold his soul for such a cause and for a year he planned a way to liberate his beloved brother from the infernal women. The next halloween both brothers would walk into the woods and speak the succubuses name, calling her once more to visit them. The elder brother spoke on their behalf this time, offering to make a pact with the infernal in exchange for his brother’s soul. He sought to appease her, and made his demands clear. The brothers would collect her a bounty of souls by binding many creatures in her name, through her power. She would in exchange exude no influence over them, nor would she find a home within their minds and dreams. They would be free of her, save for the debt they owe. Entertained and greedy the succubus offered to accept the terms for a sum of no less than a thousand souls each. The brothers accepted and with that became warlocks with an insurmountable debt to a powerful infernal.

The brothers, however, had a plan. They would both utilize the succubus' powers to excel in binding and planar studies. They’d get jobs as Witch-Hunters and they would travel the world hunting and binding errant creatures. Only when they finally did become witch-hunters they quickly found they were at most binding one or two creatures a year, so it was that they at first sought to subsidise their payment of the debt by purchasing beings from Goblin Markets to bind; however that as well would prove unsustainable, as they’d need a place to keep the creatures, and the amount they could reasonably afford to buy within their life times was still insufficient. So they devised a new plan after several years of seemingly fruitless work.

They would unleash all the beings they bought and bound and stage a grand event where they would heroically stop a horde of monsters to elevate their careers and earn them further security clearance. In order for their new plan to work they would need to bind something powerful. Carefully, they constructed and fabricated a series of events so that they could play hero again and again until their promotion was undeniable. Eventually it would work, and they’d begin hunting bigger targets. It was the capture of a wrathful pit fiend that ultimately set the final steps of the plan in motion. They’d sign a contract with the infernal, swearing it to secrecy and assuring its cooperation, as they explained to it that the bindings they placed upon it alongside the Concordance were indeed not their own, but rather that of a succubus who the immortal pit fiend would now be subservient to upon his return to his plane, for in binding the fiend it’s true name was surrendered to the brother’s patron. They assured the fiend, however, that no such fate would come to pass, should it aid them in learning the secrets of anchoring and achieving quasi-immortality, so that they could safely and assuredly enter the infernal plane as many times as they must to hunt down and slay the succubus.

The pit fiend had little choice but to accept, and for nearly six decades they worked tirelessly with the being’s full cooperation in secret to develop the spells they would need to create the projected form of quasi-immortality. All the while, they amassed a greater and greater number of bound beings for their patron, unable to fail to maintain appearances. At last, they would devise the rituals. A macabre mixture of necromancy and planar magic, they would need to prepare a gating ritual not unlike those used to summon infernals, a sacrifice of flesh and bone needing to be made as well to serve as their new bodies, should their own be destroyed. Only they could not simply rely upon the gating spell to reshape the offerings into suitable bodies, nor could they rely upon the ritual to imbue the newly made bodies with life once they enter them. Instead, they would need a living sacrifice for each of them, a human being whose body would become their own should they die. Once the ritual was prepared they would need to remove their own souls and bind them to the very plane itself before channeling them back into their bodies, effectively living outside their own mortal coils, and whatever coils might come after.

With the spells and rituals at last designed and mastered, they set to their task of self-liberation. Disgusted by the price of their own immortality, but unable to turn back from a life’s work, they assured themselves their cause was just, and that they would be preventing countless others from the succubus's manipulations. That the lives they would have to end every time they died forever after this ritual would be repaid by their deeds.

The succubus was slain, and with it all the bound creatures the brothers had captured in their nearly 7 decade long inflated careers were suddenly released all at once. Where the creature where kept, chaos ensued, and the Concordance concluded that the brothers had betrayed them, with many theories arising on just how the mass attack played into it. The damage of the sudden release of all the bound creatures was primarily inflicted upon Concordance agents, and so it was simple enough for the Wixen world government to suppress that it ever happened at all, not wanting to make it public knowledge that such high ranking members of the government would mastermind such a large scale and senseless betrayal. The binder brothers have since been added to a secret list of terrorists, and a black-budget taskforce has been created to try and track and apprehend them.