Dreadsworn
"Eternal servants of none but Death itself."
Introduction[edit]
Aged spirits that had gone without a purpose, the Dreadsworn now owe their allegiance to the Empire wholly. They are not often utilized in the public sector, but are rather sent toward locations of importance where they act as a definitive line of security and defense. They are unique in both their appearance and behavior, and as such are separated from the rest of their kin by specified name and classification.
Origins[edit]
In ages past, legends of a species of creatures known as Sirens spread across coastal civilizations and even further inland. They were regarded as beautiful aquatic spirits and were believed to be loyal to the elder spirits of the sea. Sailors often spoke of them in tales that painted these Sirens both as ill-fated omens as well as protectors of the wayward and the lost. Some said the Sirens preyed on mortals who wandered too far out to sea, yet some civilizations, like Arcadia, believed them to be guides to the afterlife. In fact, Most writing describing Sirens paints them as servants of Samsara, and it was once thought that anyone who died among the waves of the oceans would be guided to the Boatman by the Sirens so that they could pass on in peace. Scholars today believe that it was this connection to death and the Great Spirit that brought about the negative rumors that painted Sirens as monsters meant to be feared.
With the advent of the Emerald Heart’s arrival into Rhyst, it is now believed that these Sirens lost their purpose and subsequently their minds around the same time that their old master fell from grace. Severed from his connection to the Styx, Samsara could no longer fulfill the duty tasked to him by the dragons themselves, and over the last age, the spirit has almost entirely absconded into the distant horizons at the end of the seas.
Without a purpose or a domain, most spirits devolve into the beastial state of an elemental, and that is precisely what they were when the Empyrean IV discovered the Dreadsworn on its journey to the “Edge of the World”.
The reports are unclear, given they were not given by IV itself, but the Empire’s records reflect that by making contact with the lost Sirens, IV was able to provide them with a new purpose, and with that purpose they amassed in the skies of Isegrad, ready to serve.
Present Day[edit]
The Dreadsworn are called so as the title given to them within IV’s writings. They appear almost as wraiths or shadows themselves, collected in cloaks of fog that hide the visage of gaunt and starved merfolk. They seem to feed off of a connection or a proximity to life itself, though they explicitly do not harm their new masters. Isegrad supposedly began working with the Dreadsworn first within the prisons to test their capabilities, and have since sent them on dispatched assaults across Kal Azul and even into unknown territories around the world.
The Dreadsworn are proven to be potent enemies to the extraplanar, for they once guarded the entrance to the Styx itself. Though they no longer serve Samsara, there connection to Death is one of their more prominent and unignorable features, and even now they might deliver a living creature into the afterlife simply by engulfing them in their misty embrace.
A slew of Dreadsworn were sent with the Umbra Valiant and the teachers meant to staff Nera Academy, as the Empress believed they would serve as perfect guardians of the students there.
Trivia[edit]
The Dreadsworn all have small, glowing green-blue eyes, though they are often hidden beneath their thick cloak of smoke and fog
The Dreadsworn are genderless, like most spirits, and are not believed to behave like the rest of their kind
Despite Sirens becoming increasingly rare, outside of the Dreadsworn there are still rumored sightings reported almost solely by sailors driven mad due to being lost at sea