Alucinades

**Alucinades**

Alucinades are born out of hallucinations, terror, and powerlessness and are cast in the mold their creator fears the most.

They are creatures shaped by madness itself and have been given life by the mentally ill person's divinity. Alucinades cling to their creator like parasites, drawing nourishment from their insanity. The alucinades' actions, abilities, and appearance vary, depending on their creator's thoughts about them. Certain alucinades are like envious children who refuse to allow anyone to form a close relationship with their creator, while others choose to slowly suffocate and drive their victim down into the abyss of madness.

Most alucinades are extinguished when their owner dies and their soul transitions to a new stage, but some cling on to their owner's soul and follow them into rebirth. Some others survive their owner's demise, living on in Elysium by finding a new victim to feed upon. Below, there are three examples of alucinades.

**The Semblance:** Hamad fled from Syria with his family and now lives in Germany. He is trying to learn the language and adapt to society, but the memories of the war refuse to loosen their grip on him. Time and time again, he recalls the numerous atrocities he witnessed, and how he was forced to shoot his best friend. His horror and hatred have created an alucinade, who takes the form of an Arabic man dressed in a long, bloody cassock with an ammunition belt across his chest and an automatic shotgun in his hands. Its head is completely wreathed in sooty, orange-yellow flames; its voice is merely crackling and gurgling. The Semblance usually sexually assaults Hamad at night. However, when Hamad is violent towards others, the Semblance becomes milder, more permissive, and almost loving. Hamad now believes if he kills someone, this sacrifice may induce the Semblance to release him.

**The Wild Beast:** Annabel is a middle-aged woman who lives in a small house in a London suburb. She has repeatedly been admitted to psychiatric care, but by using heavy medication she can live a fairly ordinary daily life. Lately, however, she has started to feel as if she is being stalked. In particular, a strange creature, which occasionally moves on two legs and at other times on all fours, has started skulking around outside her house. The creature is two-dimensional and can only be seen from one direction; it is flat as paper and can insert itself through slits and cavities. Its eyes are large and ruddy, and when it gapes, a three-dimensional maw opens up around its jaws.

Annabel barely has the courage to go out and always has her curtains drawn; she's been caulking shut windows and doors with putty and duct tape. She writes about the creature on her blog, where comments mostly are derisive and mortifying.

**The Child:** Trisha lives in a slum outside the Indian city of Bangalore. She became pregnant at a young age, but the child was a girl. As it was not welcome, Trisha's family forced her to have an abortion, despite her great compunction. Now, six years later, she has a busband and two boys, but she has never been able to let go of the void she feels for her lost child. In her grief, she has breathed life into a creature of madness, which has taken the form of a child. It appears as a dirty baby girl, who stares at her from down the street or cries and calls out at her in the night from the nearby rubbish dump. Trisha has begun to neglect her two sons and gives whatever food she has to the baby girl, trying to console and calm her, in order to subdue her own sorrow and shame.

*\*Information taken from the Kult: Divinity Lost Playbook*