Eldritch
At one time in Ios’ history, all soulless were put to death
at birth. Even when these unfortunate elves were later
allowed to live, they were often raised by the Retribution and
generally looked upon with pity, viewed as a curse visited
upon the elves by the disappearance and decline of their
gods. Today, however, the soulless make up the rank and
file of the Iosan military and industry, and they defend the
borders of their haunted realm with blade, bow, and unique
Iosan firearms.
The soulless are eerily silent and inscrutable to outsiders, yet they are not the worst creatures waiting in Ios for those brave or foolish enough to venture past its borders. If the soulless were viewed with pity and unease, the eldritch were once considered abominations, and not without reason.
Indeed, ritual murder was but one of the terrible prices an Iosan had to pay in order to transform into one of these immortal fiends. The death of Scyrah and Nyssor changed all that, as it changed so many other things. For some time before the gods’ demise, the energies of Lord Ghyrrshyld had allowed several soldiers among the Retribution and other Iosan forces to rise as eldritch without the need for dark bargains and heinous acts. When Scyrah was slain, that same transformation spread throughout all the living, ensouled elves within Ios with the will to continue existing. Thus, whereas an elf once had to be willing to engage in unspeakable acts to become one of the undead eldritch, Ios today is populated by hundreds of eldritch who simply underwent the transformation suddenly and unexpectedly, bringing to their new state a slate of ambitions, temperaments, hopes, and fears as varied as any that ever occupied the minds of the living elves who once ruled this land.
Yet even though the eldritch who make up the new nobility of Ios are far from a monolithic evil, they cannot be said to be wholly blameless, for they still feed, as their more nefarious predecessors did, on the life force of the living, and they must still perform unspeakable acts in order to maintain their unnatural existence. That this life force is sometimes drawn from the soulless who make up the majority of the Iosan population may help soothe the consciences of the newly made eldritch, but it only does so much to blunt the horror of their predation, especially to those few outsiders who have encountered them.
The soulless are eerily silent and inscrutable to outsiders, yet they are not the worst creatures waiting in Ios for those brave or foolish enough to venture past its borders. If the soulless were viewed with pity and unease, the eldritch were once considered abominations, and not without reason.
Indeed, ritual murder was but one of the terrible prices an Iosan had to pay in order to transform into one of these immortal fiends. The death of Scyrah and Nyssor changed all that, as it changed so many other things. For some time before the gods’ demise, the energies of Lord Ghyrrshyld had allowed several soldiers among the Retribution and other Iosan forces to rise as eldritch without the need for dark bargains and heinous acts. When Scyrah was slain, that same transformation spread throughout all the living, ensouled elves within Ios with the will to continue existing. Thus, whereas an elf once had to be willing to engage in unspeakable acts to become one of the undead eldritch, Ios today is populated by hundreds of eldritch who simply underwent the transformation suddenly and unexpectedly, bringing to their new state a slate of ambitions, temperaments, hopes, and fears as varied as any that ever occupied the minds of the living elves who once ruled this land.
Yet even though the eldritch who make up the new nobility of Ios are far from a monolithic evil, they cannot be said to be wholly blameless, for they still feed, as their more nefarious predecessors did, on the life force of the living, and they must still perform unspeakable acts in order to maintain their unnatural existence. That this life force is sometimes drawn from the soulless who make up the majority of the Iosan population may help soothe the consciences of the newly made eldritch, but it only does so much to blunt the horror of their predation, especially to those few outsiders who have encountered them.
Encompassed species
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