Family: Sword devil
Type: Magic material
Habitat: Under lakes or embedded in stones
Disposition: Protective, devoted
Diet: Men's essence
Blessed swords are former cursed swords who underwent a divine ritual to rid them of the malicious intent bestowed upon them during their creation. This ritual results in the loss of their physical bodies, which are replaced by bodies formed purely of mamono mana. Through this holy ritual the sword is also reforged to resemble a high quality blade that emits a faint blue light and sometimes displays a holy motif.
The woman and the sword remain inseparable in this new state, as they were after they fused together as a cursed sword, and still see their husband as their owner, but if they don't have a husband they are driven by a desire to purify and defend those they come across rather than a desire to corrupt and harm them. The sword can be seen by anyone, but only her husband can see her body, meaning to the casual observer the sword appears to be levitating and moving of its own accord. They can move the sword through the air to fight in a traditional way akin to any other sword fighter, but can also move it through the air in strange and unpredictable ways to catch their opponents off guard. Rapidly moving the sword through the air quickly drains them of energy, however. When they are depleted they cannot manifest a physical body nor can they move the sword through the air on their own.
When a blessed sword is held in the air, either by her husband or herself, her sight and hearing are comparable to those of the average human woman, but when the sword is thrust into the ground or submerged under water she has increased ability to detect vibrations through the metal of the blade. The blade is unnaturally sharp and is durable enough to withstand being plunged through solid rock or submerged underwater for years at a time without receiving damage or developing rust.
A blessed sword usually resides in a lake or embedded in a stone near a human settlement until a man walks by who strikes her fancy. She will use her incorporeal body to temporarily possess the minds of those who draw close, gleaning hints of their character, and only accepting those with noble hearts that wish to protect and defend. When she deems a man worthy of being her husband she'll telepathically call to him and guide him to her exact location, where she’ll either allow him to draw her out of the stone she is embedded in or present him with the blade when he stands at the lake's edge. If he accepts becoming her husband she will accompany and safeguard him wherever he goes.
A blessed sword will often encourage her husband to embark on journeys to help and protect those they meet along the way. Each time they give aid to those in need the blessed sword's heart will swell with gratitude and lust for her husband, and she’ll temporarily manifest a physical body to drown her husband in affection and pleasure as thanks for his good deeds. The essence the blessed sword receives from her husband drastically prolongs her ability to rapidly move her sword through the air, which makes combating those who wish to cause people harm on their journeys even easier. Eventually they will come to a point where they fight together with complete synergy, the blessed sword being wielded by her husband one moment before suddenly flying through the air to strike from an unexpected angle with the grip of the sword returning to her husband's hand as quickly as it left to be fought with once more.
Name That Mamono: Syl
Syl is a typical example of a blessed sword in that she earnestly wants to protect those who cannot protect themselves. She greatly values honesty and honor and seeks those attributes in a husband, though she differs from the norm in that she also greatly enjoys playing practical jokes on people, her future husband especially, for example by using her ability to briefly interact with the physical world to hide items and make a game out of giving hints as to where she hid them. Syl has a playful personality with a high-pitched girlish voice to match.
Like all of her kind Syl has an incorporeal body that is entirely composed of mamono mana of a light blue hue, but she chooses to present herself as wearing a flowing dress that fades into mist at her knees. The sword she is bound to takes the shape of a straight double-edged blade with an elegant crossguard and a two-handed grip.
Cambions are a common, low ranking member of the succubus family. They are occasionally referred to as half-succubi, a term some consider denigrating. They lack the wings and tails of succubi but do have horns and alluring bodies, so technically speaking the term half-succubus is not entirely inaccurate.
Cambions lack the magical affinity that many other members of the succubus family have. While this does not mean they cannot cast magic, their magic is highly mana inefficient. Oddly enough cambions do excel at converting and storing decently large quantities of mana. Furthermore, they do not have any specific preferences for where they live or what they eat, and hence can be encountered wherever humans live as well.
A cambion’s horns can vary greatly in size and shape. Some horns require the cambion to have strong neck muscles while other cambions have horns so small that they barely protrude through their hair. Their appearance varies greatly from individual to individual as cambions span the whole spectrum of physical and racial traits that humans have and then some. Nevertheless, despite the great variety in their appearances, all cambions have a supernatural attractiveness to them that easily matches that of their succubus cousins.
A cambion’s strength and agility are on the lower end of average. Furthermore, while most cambions will learn a handful of useful eromancy spells few will study any magic beyond that. Their casting is simply too mana inefficient. Yet at the same time they are exceptionally good at converting spirit energy into mamono mana and then storing that mana. Hence it is much more efficient for a cambion to donate her mana to a trusted partner rather than do the casting herself. While cambions are more numerous than most other mamono species they are not a species that naturally bonds together in large groups and hence they are not able to rely on strength in numbers. This leaves them in a weak position to claim a husband. Therefore most cambions enter covenants with other mamono, preferably other members of the succubus family. A covenant is a magically binding agreement between the cambion and a trusted partner that bears some similarities to a demon’s pact. By accepting the covenant the cambion will serve the partner in an agreed upon capacity, relinquish most of her autonomy, and grant the partner unrestricted access to her mana -- basically she becomes her partner’s familiar. In return the partner accepts a high degree of responsibility for the cambion’s well-being including sharing her husband if she has one. It is not unusual for a well-off mamono to enter a covenant with multiple cambions.
Extracting mana from the cambion is preferably done through suckling. While it is a slow way of transferring the mana it is the only way that isn’t uncomfortable to the cambion. Only in emergency situations are faster methods of extracting the mana used. This breastfeeding is quite an intimate act, hence it should come as no surprise that the cambion and her partner begin to develop romantic feelings for each other over time.
A cambion’s average lifespan is short for a mamono; few will pass half a millennium. On the flipside, their fertility rate is also much higher than that of most other species. This has, for some reason, given cambions a detached sense of self that results in most cambions being altruistic and putting others before themselves. In some cases, especially among older cambions without a covenant, this can warp into fearlessness or even recklessness due to a fading self-preservation instinct.
Cambions typically do not have specific sexual preferences. Instead most prefer to simply go along with whatever their partner wants to do. Cambions who are in a covenant for a long time might take this attitude two steps further and neglect their own pleasure in favor of their partner’s. Cambions without a covenant might be a bit more decided and assertive about their desires, but at the same time also tend to develop a taste for riskier sexual acts.
Name That Mamono: Amaya
Amaya originally hails from central Kioko. Her mother has entered a covenant with a kunoichi samurai whom she serves as a valet and lover. They share a husband who ended up impregnating both women simultaneously, hence Amaya grew up with a kunoichi half-sister named Miyu. Both girls were trained in various martial arts and fighting styles, and eventually the ōdachi became Amaya’s weapon of choice. When the half-sisters began to grow too close for their mothers’ liking the two were separated; Miyu was sent to train with a small kunoichi clan in southern Amarante while Amaya was sent to Kilkelly in Elizabeth where she was trained by the marchioness’ trumpart honor guard. Amaya dutifully served her time with the trumparts and learned various skills in the process. Still salty about having been separated from Miyu, she decided to not return to her mother after her time in Kilkelly came to an end. Instead she entered a covenant with one of the marchioness’ baronesses to become her bodyguard. While her empusa partner is a few cards short of a deck she is also stacked and loaded. Having served her for several years now Amaya has begun to grow strong romantic feelings for the baroness and hates herself for it. Perhaps she would feel better if she could somehow insert Miyu into the equation too.
MARID
Family: Spirit
Type: Elemental
Habitat: Anywhere humans can live
Disposition: Rebellious, contrary, lustful
Diet: Spirit or demonic energy
Marid (mah-REED) are elemental spirits of darkness and confusion. As agents of chaos they revel in causing strife on any scale from a lovers’ quarrel to a world war depending on their talents and the scope of their ambitions. It’s fortunate for the world that most marids’ talents and ambitions tend toward the lower end of the scale.
A marid looks exactly like a human woman except for having hair and/or eyes in colors that are unusual among humans. Marid are quick to point out that they’re not humans, however. In fact they’ll boast about their “superior” nature at every opportunity unless they are in disguise, but marid enjoy deception so they frequently use disguises and false identities to perpetrate their schemes. When she isn’t in the midst of some charade one can often spot a marid by the contemptuous smirk that is her usual expression.
Marid have potent magical abilities, though far less so than their genie relatives. Some have been observed using curse magic, at which many of them excel, while others have been seen wielding magics as diverse as mind magic, necromancy, eromancy, and illusion. Marid aren’t forthcoming about which schools of magic come naturally to their kind and which they must work to learn, but scholars believe that each individual marid has a high aptitude for one or two schools of magic but only limited ability to learn any others. All of them can cast glamours to disguise their appearance. Marid favor subtle uses of magic over flashy offensive spells. They also have secondary abilities including disease immunity, poison resistance, and night vision.
Unlike most mamono marid never take husbands. They take concubines. A marid’s goal is to find a man and trick or blackmail him into becoming her plaything, and the more complex and dramatic the scheme the better. It is this love of drama that is a man’s best hope of escaping a marid’s clutches… or getting into them on his own terms. A marid’s rebellious nature is so strong that it makes her vulnerable to reverse psychology -- with clever wording, and if he’s not too obvious about it, a man can get a marid to do what he wants by suggesting that she do the opposite. After falling for such a deception a marid will be unwilling to admit that she was manipulated by “a mere human.” She will convince herself that she did what she wanted to do and that she wants to keep doing it. A marid will never be a meek and submissive wife, but a man who plays his cards right can convince her to make him her partner in crime. She might even be fine with that arrangement as long as she believes that she’s the senior partner.
Name That Mamono: Faiza (FIE-zah)
You can trust Faiza, she never lies. Those things you heard about her being a small-time grifter who uses magic to rig games of chance? Vicious rumors perpetuated by rivals who can’t match the scale of her ambition! And the claims that she is a 400-year-old virgin, and that she can’t even speak to a man if he can see her face? LIES! Faiza is no shy flower who gets tongue-tied at the sight of a man who is tall… and has a rugged chin… and pretty eyes… no, indeed! She is merely… selective, yes! Not just any man will do for a girl who wants one who is obedient… who will wait on her hand and foot… who will pin her down and ravish her… I mean, who knows his place! Faiza will have a man when she finds one who is truly worthy of her! That is the Lords’ own truth! You can trust Faiza, she never lies!
SYMBIOTE
Family: Slime
Type: Parasite
Habitat: Cursed ruins, swamps, murky water
Disposition: Protective
Diet: Blood, spirit energy
The symbiote is a seldom-seen type of slime thought to be between a mimic and a roper. They have no rule when it comes to appearance; every one is an exception as they primarily exist within the minds of their hosts. They tend to be dormant most of their lives, as they require a host that accepts them to thrive – most mammono either reject them or have too strong of a passive mana aura to allow a young symbiote to slip through and infest the body.
A symbiote’s real body is the slime transferred by certain types of bugs and leeches in swamps, or the odd drippings in some cursed domains, and this allows them to go relatively unnoticed. A symbiote is an exceptionally hard to spot monster due to its lack of humanoid form and color shifting abilities, second only to the mimic-type slime. She has no sight, hearing, or sense of smell at first, only the passive sense of what mana rests around her, and she is drawn toward any living source of such mana. She has no real fighting strength at this stage and is effectively blind as she searches for a host.
Once she finds a host a symbiote infests it wholly. The host may become sick for a day or two while the body gets used to the foreign invader, but it will calm as the symbiote changes the body around them and the symbiote adjusts to its new host. The symbiote experiences new sensations for the first time after adjustment – sight, smells, touch, taste – and develops the mind to assist its host as it begins to drown in these new sensations. The host will also begin to sense changes in themselves – heightened senses as the symbiote drinks in everything it can, a new sense of mana perception, and the capacity to tap into the symbiote’s innate abilites along with an increased hunger as the host is now providing for the gluttonous symbiote living within.
If the parasite infests a mammono she will be unable to grow and nurture, so her host will be instilled with the overwhelming need to find a source of spirit energy, even more so than most mamono already are. They will be driven to great lengths in order to catch a human or an angel, and in introduction will share said source of spirit energy with the symbiote, even after full infestation of the new host.
Should the host be a human the symbiote has no further need to hop bodies, for they have found the mate they need to actually continue living. An angel can also succumb to a symbiote, as they too produce the spirit energy required to keep one alive. The symbiote will reward such a match with boons such as increased stamina and strength… and exponentially increased libido. She will begin manifesting to the host, first in dreams and then in glimpses of her here and there until she finally grows enough to break free of the host’s body and appear within the real world, where she can make all the fantasies and devious daydreams she created a reality.
Once the host and symbiote are one the symbiote will do everything and anything to keep her host safe and happy. Seeing that a majority are wild they don't care for laws or rules, and will shatter any and all to keep their host safe and well as they live out the rest of their lives indulging in all the sensations they can experience.
Name That Mamono: Castalia and Meryl
Castalia is an infested pariah bonded to Meryl the symbiote, and the two have been on the hunt for any source of spirit energy ever since they intertwined. They move from city to city but have thus far been unable to get the score they have been looking for -- though the heists they’ve pulled off have netted them enough to live comfortably for the remainder of their lives they cannot rest until they find someone compatible with Meryl, as she is dying due to lack of energy. The pair is careful to never show themselves off; all anyone ever sees of them is a purple cloak and a shadow.
tygertygerAug 11, 2023 9:50 PM
"When you have bought your own load of hooey, you know exactly what it is worth." -- Bruce Sterling
