Miriana's Black Book (Lore and monsters)

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(Credit https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1147.html)

The peony star

A cold, dark forest. Uneven ground; treacherous.
Look up: empty, lightless sky. Except one.
An aeon distant, a small point of light. A single red star.
Watch petals of fire bloom and wilt. Life and death, light and dark, a shining answer to all of it.
Something hurts. Ignore it, follow the star.
Stumble. Ignore it. Faster. Something hurts. Faster.

In Sredin, there is a cautionary tale of a youth who climbs a cliff face to bring his lover a red flower. He plucks the flower, but in his eagerness slips on the way down and falls to his death together with her.

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Mya

Hearth-mother of the dwarves, wife of Moradin. Dwarves who do not join Moradin's immortal guard in the afterlife are consigned to fire and their ashes scattered in lava, to return to the mother's womb.
Mya is thought to favor cats, but perhaps it is more accurate to say cats favor hearths.

Domains: Life, Light, Knowledge

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Camelia's senescence

An unknown illness that has ravaged Miriana's sister since birth, causing her to age at an unnatural pace and wilt like a flower.

When medicine and prayers alike failed to cure Camelia, a single star answered Miriana's pleas.

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Blights

Ambulant offshoots of the vile Gulthias tree, as bloodthirsty as their namesake ancestor. Gulthias craved immortality, and attained it by consuming blood enough to drown a hamlet in. Even when a stake was driven through his heart, his relentless, merciless life force infested it and grew from it the first Gulthias tree, of which there are now several more.

Though his methods were crude and unrefined compared to the blood-sorcerers of antiquity, they can be said to have granted him true immortality, the immortality of a persistent disease.

Twig blight

Foul, desiccated shrub twisted into the form of a tiny man, with all the personality of a drought and empathy of an epidemic. Dried out as it is, it seeks always to water itself, ideally with blood.

Needle blight

Tall, gaunt humanoid tree covered in needles as sharp and long as daggers. Most cruel and most lonely of the blights, they hate others and ward them off with needles, yet also crave proximity and blood.

Vine blight

Squat mockery of a man made from living vines. Alone among blights, they hold fractured pieces of Gulthias's dying mind and so are sentient and capable of speech. Truly, Gulthias lives.

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Lizardfolk

Cunning, emotionless predators that make their homes in the seemingly endless maze of the Mahr river, only vaguely known to much of Livest's population. They avoid the city and occasionally pick off lone or weak-looking travelers.

There is no malice or sympathy in a lizard-man's behavior, and they do not know love or hate. All things are either fearsome, helpful, or food. Though their forms appear human, they are more often seen as monsters, for how could such a creature of base instinct and cold calculation in any way resemble humanity?

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Quippers

Tiny, bloodthirsty fish that gather in schools, the bane of fishers all along the Mahr. Should they be caught in a net by accident, they are so aggressive as to even turn on each other and turn catch and net both into so much bloody chum, which only serves to attract more of them.

The Mahr was once an untouched frontier between civilization and wild lands, and it resents being conquered with a spiteful passion. Infernal beasts like these are the claws and teeth with which it fights for every inch of ground.

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Auntie Yezebel

A crone who manipulated the angry and resentful druid Viktor to obtain a treasure of the druids and deliver him and his brother to despair. Older than the hills, uglier than death, and bitterer than wormwood.

A barrel of sewage with a thimble of wine in it is sewage. A barrel of wine with a thimble of sewage in it is also sewage. In this, there is power.

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Basilisk

The king of serpents, an infamous monster that has appeared to haunt the shadows throughout history. Its gaze turns to brittle limestone all it beholds, and the stench of its breath alone can kill. Few reliable accounts exist of its true appearance; showing it a mirror to turn its stare on itself is said to be the safest means of destroying it.

A basilisk hatches from a neglected egg laid by a rooster, so stories say. It is a festering evil that grows in the shadows of neglect until it becomes unstoppable. As it grows, the king assembles its court, and unnatural reptiles herald its advent.

Nothic

Accursed wizard, twisted in mind and body by its all-consuming obsession. The rotting gaze of its single eye lays bare bones and secrets alike. Its craving for knowledge, power, and magic remains, but the aim of its ambitions has long vanished together with its former self, leaving nothing but insatiable want.

Desperate mages are easily tempted to seek trade with a nothic; magical baubles for secrets. The University of Livest secretly employs one as librarian for its restricted books, ostensibly as a reminder to never lose sight of what is truly important. However, a nothic's insight and experience have far more practical applications as well.

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The Fallen

Extinguished stars which once lit the heavens with the gods of humanity, now turned dark and malign. The cause is unknown, and subject of heated theological debate. A persistent theory that the stars' fall may be related to the pact of gods and humans and the founding of the church, one way or the other, is invariably dismissed with the anger only a nagging suspicion can provoke.

As their former comrades seek to fill Heaven with light and one day eliminate all darkness on Earth, so do the fallen build an anti-Heaven without light, hope, or struggle. In principle, the church advocates truth and opposes the erasure of knowledge, even harsh knowledge, leaving it vulnerable to heresy that preaches ignorance. Where light can burn, the darkness soothes.

Gloaming Star Hesperus

The two-faced star of dawn and dusk, foremost among the fallen. Once, they were the most august star in Heaven, the only who could share the sky with Queen Sunna at dusk and dawn, who heralded the day and held the night back. But the First to Fall now radiates only darkness, hastening the fall of night and prolonging its stay.

When aspiration turns into envy and ambition into lust for power, Gloaming Star Hesperus watches and offers power. The only cost is that one spread the darkness in one's own heart, and continue to do so after death. To observe that this mirrors the pact of the gods with humanity is the greatest blasphemy known to the church.

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Guardian Giant

An ancient giant that was tamed by a saint and set to guard treasures or places of vital importance. Its one-eyed skull mask endows it with servility and supernal vision that pierces through deception, while its base nature gives it vigor, patience, and overwhelming strength. The ornamental wings of the bone mask invoke White Wise Gienah, tamer of the platinum dragon, who is often depicted as a giant raven with pure white feathers.

Where the dwarves oppose the darkness beneath their mountain homes without exception and decry its investigation or appropriation as dangerous folly, the human church supports bending to the light's ends what can be bent. To do so is to bring order to chaos and inherently furthers the gods' mission. To serve such powers or deal with them equally, however, is a very different matter.