The Blood Naga and Snake Men share their cursed homeland with all manner of nightmarish creatures. Among the most dreaded of these are the Kin of Sbek - known also as the Pishacha Night Haunters or Fiends of Retelling. Bizarre and voracious living shadows that prowl the shrouded corners of dim Khuresh, their presence is felt even in the Lost City of the Old Ones where each darkly-lit vault potentially houses dozens of these daemon-spawn.
Existing in both the physical world and the Aethyr, the Kin of Sbek are intangible otherworldly creatures veiled in a perpetual pall of shadow and smoke. When seen clearly however, they bear the unnerving form of crooked skeletal marionettes whose size can be manipulated at will, from as small as a Halfling to as large as a Troll. Their motions are twitchy and similarly marionette-like with contorting limbs. They are prone to blending still into murals, tree-carvings or tapestries, before suddenly launching into rapid visceral action. What constitutes their “flesh” is coal-dark and absorbs light, squirming with smoldering veins of red etchings. Their expressions are set in an open-mouthed cackle presenting knife-like fangs in snapping jaws, above which rest hollow sockets emitting a burning red glow. Their utterances resemble the rasping noises of some dying animal or the clacks of breaking twigs or bone. The Sbek can manifest weapons of cursed metal and timber forged by no mortal smith's hand: twisted throwing axes and serrated klewang blades used to pry flesh from armour, and their clawed hands can extend shadowy tendrils to pierce through gaps or snatch prey.
Though more commonly encountered at night, the Kin of Sbek can be found during the day as well, for any being or object that casts a shadow provides a pathway through which these monsters can teleport, flickering in and out of material form until they lay their claws on their target. Mundane weapons pass harmlessly through their superficially fragile bodies. When slain with a magical weapon however, a Sbek folds in on itself before dissipating with a crunch.
More insidious is the Sbek’s ability to dredge up the traumatic memories of those intelligent warm-blooded beings that lay eyes on their forms. A profound sense of shame or guilt assails such witnesses, recalling warped memories of experiences that grow more vivid the longer eye-contact is maintained. Sense of time and space is lost, imagined fears become real. After a point these visions become intense hallucinations that cause deep depression, self-mutilation and/or catatonia. The Kin of Sbek sadistically exploit this phantasmagoria by circling their prey for long periods of time as the symptoms set in, before dragging the wretches screaming into the jungle.
Having long found a way to communicate with these capering abominations, the Blood Naga Queens have attracted many of the Kin of Sbek to fight alongside their armies as masterful ethereal infantry, invoked through the gruesome sacrifice of slaves or prisoners of war. Sometimes the Sbek demand stranger artefacts or organic components from the Snake Men or Naga themselves, esoteric props to be used on some ancient stage of fate in a dimension only they have access to.
The Kin of Sbek's origins are enigmatic, theorized to be the incarnated forms of ‘those who dwell beyond’ in the Pit of Shades, or experiments merging nature spirits with daemons during the Great Cataclysm. Still others claim they have always been there in Khuresh, lurking primordial elementals that could never be expunged.
The truth known only to the eldest Blood Naga Queens, is that they were created during the Great Daemonic Incursions following the disappearance of the Old Ones, through the influence of an entity called the Father-in-Shadow. Millennia ago, the Naga had experimented with light and shadow magic in an attempt to create a controllable and adaptable weapon that could strike behind the lines of the Lizardmen cohorts, as the Snake Men prepared for their inevitable rebellion. Though hundreds of trials were conducted the Naga were unable to make a breakthrough useful enough for their purposes and the project was shelved until the Great Cataclysm.
The Blood Naga of the future Immortal Coil marga, responsible for retelling the achievements of their serpent kind and glorifying in spiritual and organic experimentation, were the first to be enthralled by the Ruinous Powers. Pledging their forces to the first Daemon Prince in return for enlightenment, these Naga created a gigantic tapestry of horrifying sentience named Kroda’s Black Canvas, sewn together from the flayed hide of myriad races and infused with their tortured souls. Hideous caricatures of the younger races were carved into this canvas and lamps made of the stuff of Chaos birthed unholy life to shuddering humanoid creatures that stepped off the canvas, assuming abnormal solid forms. They fought against the early Saurus armies and later in the ancient wars of the Daemon Princes. When the First Damned fell they were freed from the greater part of his influence to strike their own deals and were largely forgotten by the wider world, multiplying through unknowable but undoubtedly grisly means in the depths of the Hinterlands. The Immortal Coil brood-sect still surreptitiously conduct rituals to gain the cooperation of these Children of Kroda, whose presence causes shadows cast from any light source to burn exposed skin and metal like scalding acid, deploying them only against the most persistent foes.
Comments