Painted Men

"Far away, in a land below the roots of all mountains and above the crones of the skies, the sons of the demiurge sealed the well of creation inside a sphere of pristine marble to keep its secrets to themselves. Yet the sons are gone and the sphere...it has cracked."
~ Excerpt from Tales of Lost Fears

Shaped by the hands and quills of long-forgotten creators, the Painted Men are a species of sentient pictograms that rule over the hidden realm, which lies beneath the boundaries of three-dimensional space.
While they were once able to exist on every surface in Cenorad, they are currently trapped within floating spheres of folded dimensions upon the "Fields of Spheres", following the disastrous failure of an ancient ritual that was intended to fulfill the greatest dream of their species.
Yet even though their physical shapes are trapped upon the Fields of Spheres, they are still able to interact and influence the beings that inhabit the "World of Volumes", thanks to the viral properties of the so-called Mär, which are strange, arcane symbols that sit at the center of each Painted Men and that are able to infect the minds of other species with an overpowering urge to spread them to as many surfaces as possible.
And given that each new copy of their personal Mär, grants them a sliver of symbolic power which they can use to chip away at their dimensional prions, the Painted Men are more than happy to work together with the members of the Cartesian Society in order to spread their symbols to even the last surface of the world.

Basic Information

Anatomy

The Painted Men possess a purely two-dimensional body, which consists of various colorful lines. While they are able to shape these lines into every conceivable twodimensional shape, they generally take on an appearance that is at least vaguely humanoid in shape.
As they grow more powerful these shapes become more and more distorted, to the point that a single glance at them can cause a wide array of negative side effects, such as intense headache, temporal blindness or sensory overload of the observes sense of sight.
The only part of their bodies that remains consistent no matter how powerful the become or much they change their appearance is their Mär, which is a complex geometric symbol that serves as the core of their being.

Biological Traits

Shadow on the Wall

The defining trait of the Painted Men is the two-dimensionality of their bodies, which limits their movement to all surfaces that are in direct contact with the one they currently inhabit. Because of this limitation, they are currently trapped inside of floating and intangible orbs located on the Plain of Spheres.

Plague of Sigils

While their shapes might be confined to two-dimensional space, they are nevertheless able to influence threedimensional beings, as their Mär have the ability to imprint themselves into the minds of anyone perceiving them, which enables the Painted Men to subtly influence their behavior towards the distribution of these infectious symbols.

Eaters of DImensions

The Painted Men can "flatten" the threedimensional world around their Mär, which grants them the ability to dampen or outright nullify numerous supernatural phenomena and most types of Arcane Arts.
The radius in which their sigils are able to induce this dimensional flattening depends on how far they were able to spread their Sigil Plague.

Genetics and Reproduction

Since the time when our Creators decided to...leave...us, our numbers have remained unchanged.
~ Grace-that-roosts-beneath-the-Spindle's Spine.

The Painted Men are unable to reproduce and instead are "born" whenever a Mär reaches a certain amount of symbolic power. Given that the knowledge on how to create new Mär has been lost to time, the chance that their number will ever again increase is slim if not outright nonexistent.

Dietary Needs and Habits

The Painted Men don't eat, they don't drink and they never rest. Their desire to bring about the conversion of the higher dimensions is the closest analogue they have to these fundamental needs.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Unlike other species that number in the tens of thousands or even tens of millions, the total number of the Painted Men is incredibly low, which allows a Painted Man to personally know all members of its species. Due to this their social structure is determined by a complex web of interpersonal relationships, which is commonly referred to as the "Cartesch Matrix" by the members of the Cartesian Society.
While the relationship between two Painted Men is frequently classified as either "love" or "hate", these terms fail to accurately represent the true nature of these relationships, due to the fact that the emotions and personalities of the Painted Men are also purely two-dimensional, which means that their emotions lack any "depth" and finer nuances, which means that it is incredibly difficult for threedimensional beings to properly comprehend their current moods.

Uses, Products & Exploitation

Your false magic holds no power in the presence of the Cartesian Truth.
~ Picso, Patternfinder

Due to the Märs ability to influence the subconsciousness of three-dimensional beings, they have managed to infect numerous communities all over Cenorad and even permeate entire cultures in the guise of cultural or religious symbols, with the flags and emblems of many nations and organizations usually containing pieces of multiple different Mär.
Yet given that the memories of most mortals are a fickle thing and the fact that not everyone that gets exposed to a Mär possesses the artistic capabilities to adequately replicate their complex and intricate shapes, many of these derivative symbols lack both the anti-arcane and infectious properties of a true Mär and are therefore mostly harmless symbols that are just significantly easier to remember than others.
In addition to this generally unintentional usage, the Mär and their innate anti-arcane properties are utilized as the centerpiece of the art of Symbolism, which unsurprisingly forms the core of the Cartesian Society's supernatural power.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

While their primary bodies are currently trapped within the "Plain of Spheres", they are able to create copies of themselves in all locations that are marked with their Mär, given that they have been sufficiently flattened to allow the Painted Men to reach them from the compressed dimension of their prison.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

The Painted Men's field or rather plane of perception is fully limited to the surface that they currently reside on, or which has been marked with a copy of their personal sigil.
The only known exception to this limitation, are individuals who are currently observing their Sigil and persons that reside within an area that has been "flattened" by the Painted Men's magic and therefore contains a notably reduce 3rd-dimensional component.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

When asked about their name the Painted Men twist their body into a so-called Khm ("Tale Sign"), which is an incredibly complex and often circular symbol that incorporates various elements of a Painted Men's Mär and repeats them in an individual specific pattern.
The number of these pattern repeats ranges from 1 to presumably 210, but due to the complexity of the symbols, it becomes incredibly difficult to accurately count the repeats within a higher-numbered Khm.
Due to this, most members of the Cartesian Society instead refers to the Painted Men by various nicknames such as "Crawler-in-the-Dust" or "Dancer-beyond-the-Door", which are based upon the presumed meaning of their Khm.

Major Organizations

Cartesian Society

The Cartesian Society is a misotheistic cult, which regards the Painted Men and their Mär as the key to cleanse the world of all supernatural and magical "impurities".

Major Language Groups and Dialects

The Painted Men communicated exclusively through pictograms, written words, and symbols with other species. How they communicated with each other is currently unknown.

History

Failure makes for an interesting story, does it not?
For without it the ultimate triumph of the hero would feel incredibly stale.
~ Marvelous-Beast-of-the-Beastial-Maiden

Once upon a Time

Even though the Painted Men experience time rather differently from three-dimensional beings, with entire millenniums feeling like mere seconds, they know next to nothing about the genesis of their species, as by the time when the first of their kind archived sentience, their enigmatic creators had already been disappeared into the mists of time.

Pandemie of Sigils

After having lived on the same surfaces that they were "born" on for an undefined amount of time, the Painted Men encountered the first group of threedimensional beings, which unsurprisingly shock their understanding of reality to its very core and opened their eyes to the existence of the numerous dimensions above their native ones.
Yet once they had managed to overcome this frightening revelation, the Painted Men soon realized that their Mär had the ability to influence the behavior of these abhorrent "Volume Beasts" to produce copies of their Mär, which in turn granted the Painted Men more and more symbolic power as their Mär began to spread around the world.
While it is unclear if the Painted Men actively fostered the spreading of their Mär or if they simply allowed the Mär's innate infectious nature to run wild, the end result of this very first "Sigil Plague", was a nearly worldwide distribution of the Painted Men's Mär, which caused their symbolic powers to swell to unfathomable levels, to them that the most powerful members of their species became known as the "Eater of Magic" for their ability to nullify any and all arcane powers within a multi-mile radius around themselves.

The Great Mandala

Continuously empowered by the ongoing spread of the Sigil Plague, the Painted Men began to realize that they now possessed the power necessary to realize an outlandishly ambitious pipe dream, which had been consciously fostered within the collective minds of their species since their discovery of the higher dimensions.
This dream which was simply known as the "Flatline" due to the straight line, with which the Painted Men symbolized it, consisted of nothing less than the forcefully compressing all higher dimensions into the Painted Men's plane of existence, thereby flattening the entire world into a singular, flat layer.
In order to make this dream a reality, the Painted Men and the countless Volume Beasts under their control created a titanic sigil of unfathomable complexity known as the "Mandala of Conversion", which incorporated the Mär of over 200 Painted Men into its shape and whose symbolic power would require the presence of tens of thousands of "faithful" individuals in order to be activated.
Yet like most other large-scale projects that aim to fundamentally change reality itself, not everything goes exactly as planned and so when the Great Mandala was finally activated, something naturally went wrong. While the activation of the Mandala still "flattened" an enormous area within the blink of an eye, it not only failed to affect all of Cenorad, but it also trapped the Painted Men within levitating globes of intensely folded dimensions, which are nowadays known as the "Umbral Spheres".

The Conclave of Cartesch

While the creation of the Great Mandala and their subsequent imprisonment within the Umbral Spheres could have very well been the end of the Painted Men's history, so did it merely mark a great upheaval. For after having been sulking within their self-made prison of presumably several centuries they were discovered by a new group of Volume Beasts, which proved even more receptive to the "suggestions" of the Painted Men's Mär than their original followers.
Thanks to this fortunate turn of events, the Painted Men now once again posses the ability to affected the events of the threedimensional world, which has enabled them to slowly scratch away at the folded dimensions of their prison.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

Hideous yes, but so much more useful.
~ Scale-Maiden-of-the-chanting-Ocean

From the perspective of the Painted Men, all other species are bizarre and strange abominations that wander through a web of incomprehensible dimensions utterly alien to them. Yet despite their hideous three-dimensional shape these so-called "Volume Beasts" are nevertheless valuable tools required for the realization of the Flatline.

Theme song

Lifespan

Ageless and immortal, though other Painted Men can temporarily incapacitate them by "bleaching" their Mär.

Average Height

Variable

Average Weight

None

Average Length

Variable

Body Tint, Colouring and Marking

Their bodies can take on every perceivable color, yet even if they try to blend in with their environment their colors always appear somewhat off from their surrounding.