Fleshwarping

The forbidden art of Fleshwarping, also called Fleshcrafting, is the artificial application of Ederstone and radiation bursts from Ederstone to living subjects to create specific results.
Theoretically, if someone fully uncovered exactly how Ederstone worked, Fleshwarping could be used in a more ethical way to intentionally mutate non-living objects or at least non-sentient ones. In its current state, Fleshwarping as it currently exists works best with people - ideally people that you have mentally shaped in specific ways using magic, manipulation, and torture. While formal Fleshwarping is universally considered immoral and evil, many people and cultures have influenced how mutations have formed, but usually in either rare circumstances or in very gradual ways.
Fleshwarping is supposedly destroyed as a craft and body of knowledge. In secret, mages unshackled by common decency keep the craft alive and quietly make new innovations. The Darzan University, greatest wizards of the world, are rumored to be exploring Fleshwarping (on "those who deserve it", of course). The Exalted Path in Desmia have their own Fleshwarping tradition currently at work in the Feywilds. Covert scholars in the Promised Path kingdoms of Boram are said to also experiment on condemned prisoners. Other powers might be looking the other way to see if they could be the ones to master the dark arts to their own advantage. None of these Fleshwarpers are nearly as bold as the great terror-engineers of old.
Basic Fleshwarping makes monsters. Advances Fleshwarping makes Fleshworks. Fleshworks are engineering tools and instruments that reliably and consistently act in certain ways. Unlike monsters, they don't grow old, tire, disobey, escape, attack their handlers, or get sick. So while monsters are flashy, Fleshworks are valuable. Too valuable to be destroyed, even by people who despise Fleshwarping. Fleshworks can act as automated bio-mechanical elevators, cleaning units, furnaces, automatic doors, and cooling units, depending on how they were designed. The greatest concentration of Fleshworks are in Eveko. While a few minor Fleshworks exist in Uvaran kingdoms, these are exceptionally rare and considered shameful. These are mostly smaller Fleshworks, things that could be torn out of their installations, carried off, and re-installed elsewhere with minimal hassle. The big stuff (like the elevators and automated cleaning units) are usually in the North, where they were originally made.
It has been speculated that Fleshwarping could be combined with industrial technologies from foreign lands to create truly techno-magical miracles. Only the most deranged and radical individuals actually suggest doing this.

Discovery

Fleshwarping has a long history of military application, dating back in its most primitive form to the First Kivish Scouring over a thousand years ago. These early forms of Fleshwarping were not sophisticated at all, but simply used the strife and agony of war to shape new Ederstone creations into more deadly and violent shapes. By using Ederstone violently, the Kivish Horde naturally produced more monsters. And over time they became more aware of the general trends of what kinds of violence against what people produced what monsters. This "science" became more refined in the Second Kivish Scouring, when the violent destruction of rebels served as an excellent laboratory for monstrosities. These studies were informal and often relatively basic, as the early Truthful Path found the idea of studying their victim's emotional states to be theologically distasteful.
The real mother of Fleshwarping was the founder of the Exalted Path Kivish, Karlana "the Mad Prophet". Karlana was a Monstercrafter savant, who was a cutting-edge scholar of monstrous biology. During the Third Kivish Scouring, she used the brutal warfare to more thoroughly study the principles of Ederstone. She found inspiration in many divided scholarships, combining the Reverent Path's orderly scholarship and archives with the Liberated Path's mystical studies in voluntary Ederstone exposure. During the Fourth Kivish Scouring, Karlana used early Fleshwarping to create devastating war beasts and instruments of power. She used these to create her Exalted Path heresy.
While the Exalted Path invented Fleshwarping, they didn't perfect it. It would be the Children of Verkohn and the Empire of Kizen who would do that, during the Fifth Scouring. They revived the dark art and institutionalized it, turning the greatest minds of the empire towards analyzing and perfecting fleshwarping.
When these extremists and their empire were crushed in 1750 ME, the world agreed to end Fleshwarping as a field of study. People could gently garden beneficial mutations that occur naturally, but the direct warping of people into tools was banned. Many Fleshwarped creations were kept alive and useful, and remain in use to this day. But new Fleshwarping was banned.
The knowledge was not as thoroughly destroyed as the great powers claim. Emesh, God of Knowledge, helped a number of actors preserve knowledge from the Fifth Scouring that was mandated for destruction. The old studies of Karlana the Mad Prophet have also been preserved in a number of places. Currently, the greatest archive of Fleshwarping knowledge is housed by the most harmless looking Kivish sect: The Promised Path of Boram. This is good enough for most immortals and authorities.

Related Materials

• Ederstone

Related Species

• Irradiated creature