The Flenserchord Zither Altar or Ecdysis Pin is an outlandish war engine built for long-ranged melodious slaughter. More of a haphazard harp ensemble than a traditional zither set commonly seen in the eastern nations, the Flenserchord was prototyped in the earlier days of the Naga civilization, when the Snake Men slew scores of primordial monsters and harvested their remains for thaumaturgical research. The Flenserchord Zither saw its battlefield debut after the Blood Naga forged pacts with the Ruinous Powers, quickly becoming one of their deadliest artillery weapons. Millennia later, the perfected Zither Altar performs multiple functions for the armed hosts of the Snake Men, all of which involve the inducement of gruesome physical molting upon its audience in some shape or form.
Tapping into the Aethyr, the Naga learned to transmute living flesh through the timbre produced by their esoteric devices. While the sound-making instruments of other races served to maintain the pace of their armies or provide reprieve to the burdened, the Naga found a method to cruelly impart their own biological properties onto the bodies of other races through a prearranged sequence of notes.
The Snake Men molt twice a year, shedding their scarred and worn scales to grow larger and stronger with age. The intensity of their raids is reduced during these occasions, as the serpents must wait for their new skin to toughen before engaging in violent conflict once more. Across the Hinterlands the shed snakeskin are gathered together and brought to the temple-laboratories where they are used as catalysts for various spells or as components for special artefacts, including the Zither artillery.
Mounted atop an ensorcelled gilded carriage called a Rajarot, the Flenserchord Zither is a bizarre contraption composed of snakeskin netting, incense coils and censers, the ensorcelled bones of giants or great beasts, and the profane cords of the instrument secured between holes on the bone frame. Two alluring human Khureshi instrumentalists, trained at the Blood Cult theatres of Dhagon, Morakot or Nagara Ishsva by Naga preceptors, perform at the weapon's strings. These women have become living conduits for the Altar's harrowing power and are immune to the effects of the Flenserchord's flaying magic, though their fates are inextricably bound to the Altar for the rest of their mortal existences. Below the raised platform of the Altar rests the rostrum of the conductor Naga Kanya. Here the Naga priestess harnesses the aethyric tones of the Zither and condenses them into pure shredding Dhar energy, which is then directed towards her chosen target. Hallucinogenic smoke emanating from the censers of the carriage and the hanging coils cause those approaching the Altar with hostile intent to lose their bearings.
When the weapon-instrument performs, those with the witchsight are able to perceive impossibly long filaments of Dhar whip through the air from the Altar, their sinuous movements matching the changing tempo and pitch of the device. When these filaments reach the enemy, they violently slice the skin and flesh from the targets' bones, flensing through metal armour as if it was paper and even cutting through certain magical defenses. To those without the sight it seems as if the victim's body is suddenly peeled like layers of fruit by invisible forces acting in concert with the melody produced from the Zither Altar. Even the hard scales of the Lizardmen and their war beasts are stripped away in the wake of such assaults. Airborne targets fare no better, for the invisible scourges can travel as far as one can hear the music.
The most spectacular and horrific effect however is reserved for the serpents’ human cultists and Fang Thralls. On contact with the Dhar whips their bodies bloat as their skin ripple and turn iridescent, their bones realign and their muscles warp. Eventually their human forms slough away and what emerges from the shredded pile are the Callow, filth-encrusted albino man-serpents that have no fear and attack in a frenzy with fangs and claws.
Despite indoctrinating the human Khureshi populace with the belief of ascension once they proved their worth - as well as truly possessing the power to mutate the physical forms of the lesser races into something approaching a Snake Man - the Naga and their brood are loath to allow large numbers of such mutant humans to join their ranks and disrupt their rigidly organized hierarchy. The existing politics of the marga are troublesome enough without more castes complicating the arrangement, even if the new additions are placed at the bottom of the pecking order.
As such, the warping of the Fang Thralls into bipedal man-serpents is but a temporary affair, instigated only to bolster the Snake Men’s otherwise fragile frontline of fodder with vicious and unbreakable combatants at key junctures. While the Callow are initially blessed with an unholy resilience and an intense rush of energy, a grim fate invariably awaits them whatever the outcome of the fight. The mutation process irreversibly rearranges the former humans' organs and completely removes the digestive system, ensuring that they die in anguish within a few hours to a day after the battle. Unaware of the truth, the human Khureshi cultists believe this transmogrification to be a blessing bestowed for their courageous service, viewing even the agonizing demise that follows as the final process of them shedding their mortal coils to enter the paradisiacal afterlife.
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