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| Species | Duine Maslach |
| Order | The Damned |
| Classification | Undead |
| Dominion | Agikaani |
| Sphere | Agony |
| Origin | Abusive men who die without any accountability |
| Lifespan | Inmortal |
| Habitat | Their places of power and control |
| Food | Fear, desperation, misery resonance |
| Description | Grey-fleshed, rotting versions of what they were in life, usually wearing tattered clothing. Their eye sockets are empty. |
| Corruption | A man, male-identified, or masculine mortal who abuses their children, partners, subjects, employees, or others under their power and dies with no accountability may be corrupted into a duine maslach upon death. Arts of msawhat can create one with incredibly great power (25), but only if the person has been abusive in their life. Some abusive people can intentionally become duine maslach by murdering a significant number of their victims ritualistically. Usually, a duine maslach arises within a day of their deaths. |
| Esoterica | Duine maslachs are beings of arnum and msawhat. They can wield corrupted versions of the powers they had in life except for qi, heavenly essences, positive resonances, and the gates. Most take up use of imperium, negative emotional resonances, quaestus, feirua, uafas, infernum, black nommos, Damaskian powers, spirits, and rending in their undeath. |
| Special Powers | Duine maslachs cause unease in those who are near them. They have an aura of power about them that demands respect and fear out of those susceptible to it. Their empty sockets can see emotion, and anyone within their aura feeds them. They have six words of power: one to kill, one to maim, one to convince, one to confuse, one to stun, and one to cause intense pain. Every duine maslach has at least one victim, a target of their abuse, that they consider their property. These victims, alive or undead, are under the sway of the duine maslach, psychologically trapped. If they kill an abuse victim (of their own) after they are undead, that victim becomes bound to them as a lesser undead (usually an obambo or fragmented, but sometimes others) to serve their undead master. A duine maslach can sense where their victims are always. The duine maslach is unkillable by any mundane means. |
| Damnation | The role the duine maslach used to abuse others determines some of their powers in undeath. A lord, king, president, or other head of state or ruling class executive will have power to warp the realm they once ruled once a year for a single night. A head of household (father, grandfather, other patriarch) has the power to possess others of their bloodline if they are within 100' of their home. A cruel spouse will have the power to sense their surviving victims' living loved ones and torment them in their dreams if they are within 10 miles. A powerful business owner or manager will have the power to steal wealth from those they dealt with in life if they are still working at the same place or a similar institution or business. A clergy or teacher will have influence over former pupils by being able to send writing into their notebooks or journals or other writing materials if they are within the same town they were abused in. A policeman or prison guard will have the power to seal former victims in a cage of bones if they are in the same room. And so on. |
| Necromancy | Necromancers will offer powerful, abusive men the opportunity to become a duine maslach, presenting it as a means of extending their lives and power over others, then convince them and guide them through the ritual murders requied. Some may subject an abusive person to corruption intentionally (25), but this is rarer as it does not give as much power and influence over them. Some, of course, are abusers themselves and intentionally become duine maslachs. To control a duine maslach is very difficult (25), even with access to their victims or other things they want. Duine maslach are driven by a need to cause pain, however, and giving them opportunities to find new victims is often a method used to manipulate them. To summon one is easier if one has one of their victims to summon them to (16), but it is possible without one (25). Wielding the powers of a duine maslach can be difficult, but it is possible to bind one and use their various abilities. One long-standing tradition is to seal one into a wall or coffin with special ropes, but simply taking the rotted heart of a duine maslach will suffice. |
| Sending | If someone who knew the duine maslach in life can convince them to feel real remorse, some redemption is possible, but it requires sometimes impossible reparation to the victims of the duine maslach. In the very rare cases this happens, the abuser moves on. If all of their victims escape to safety and cannot be reached within a century, the duine maslach crumbles and moves on. |
| Weaknesses | Unless they had an immunity to fire in life, most duine maslachs are susceptible to it. If their bodies are destroyed, they are reduced and depowered. Any material with heavenly essence can harm them; liberation power and curacion are especially effective against them. |
| Behavior | Duine maslachs continue their abusive ways in death that they acted upon in life. They run their house, manor, business, or kingdom as they did in life, but becoming even more cruel and controlling. They obsessively keep their victims under control and stop pretending to be kind, torturing them openly and extending this torture to any who are around them. They use this terror to take even more power. |
| Dominion Culture | Duine maslachs are part of the ruling class of the Agikaani Dominion, powerful overlords who control what they consider to be the lesser undead. They are the upper levels of the warrior class, and the lower levels of the lord class, but they wield enormous power from their position. |
| Other Dominions | Among the Fellwood, Srisian, Sangarian, Durosian, and Raesian Dominions, duine maslachs are powerful overseers and lords who are given special powers (over fear, over cruelty, over control respectively). In the Qhanuum Dominion, they are lesser figures, usually used as brutes, and given some nullifying powers (against freedom). In the Pandemonian, Campionese, and Godless Dominions, they are rarely used, and among the Kaanian Dominion, they are employed to torment women in horrifying ways, but given no special rank for it. In the Dun and Wapek Dominins, they have special words of power for poisoning and freezing. |
| Mortal Interactions | Mortals often refuse to believe it when the duine maslach returns. A duine maslach quickly becomes a concern for the whole community, but Mortals often refuse to believe it when the duine maslach returns.any deny that there's a problem, allowing them to become even more powerful and dangerous. Eventually, it becomes too late for them to be stopped by common means. |
| Afterlife | Even a duine maslach who manages to find remorse in their undeath and move on will likely end up in the Hells. Only a miracle of Elysian power can truly redeem them and let them move on to a less punishing realm. Most end up in the in-between or the Grey Lands due to the high levels of corruption, but many end up in the Hells or the Broken Obelisk. |
| Notables | Righ Na Pian, Duine Maslach Manifest, King of the Highland Towers; Lord Iochd of Loch Ban, Great Ponomancer |
| Special Classes | Lord, Overseer, Hunter, Ponomancer |
| Sample Stats | PRO 12 ATH 11 STR 14 AWA 11 Emotionsight 14 Victim Sense 19 WIL 12 ROG 13 Unease Presence 12 Aura of Power 19 Words of Power 17 Abuse Tactic 12 Victim Control 16 |
GrandGuignol
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