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@comment(Set these values appropriately for each character profile)

@string(name="Lilith ")
@string(realname="Nehemiah alle-Marewyn Hivai ")
@string(playername="Player Name")
@string(id="758389")

@include (/mit/abstract/Characters/cover.mss)



@MajorHeading(@value(realname))

Ah, the feeling of fur to run your fingers through.  So much better
than scales!  And you've always liked cats better than hatchwings, and
witching your familiar to look and feel like a sleek, longhaired white
cat with sapphire blue eyes was easy enough!  Poor Hzial, what
happened to her?

Your fingers absently stroke the "cat's" head while you ponder that
question.  As far as you can tell, somehow her brain has switched off,
and your rapport with her is gone.  As a familiar, your cat-hatchwing
now makes an excellent footstool!  If you ever have a chance to talk
to the Demon High Lord again, you'll ask him to either repair your
cat, or give you back the lien on your soul ... and you might just
demand back your soul!

It's been two days since you've been able to talk to Hzial; the
longest two days you can remember.  Well, with the eception of one ...

@begin [i] You were born Allyana alle-Abraam Hivai, daughter to
Nehemiah Abraam the Horseman, and as such, you ahould have been
popular and well loved, and should have basked in your father's
reflected glory.  While it did start out that way, it was soon to end
with your mother's death.

Abraam had always been a drinking man; but your mother's death made
him a man who was rarely sober.  The only time you had seen him
reasonably happy was when he closed a del for his art gallery, one of
the most respected in the Realm.  Even then, his immediate reaction
was to open a bottle to celebrate.

You found the atmosphere at home intolerable, and so took to hanging
out in the streets.  When Abraam objected, you did the one thing you
knew would shame him: you tried to join the House of the Veil, the
Realm's most notorious whorehouse.  of course, you were turned down,
but there was somwething about the madam, a Clanswoman named Seamist
Sweetwater... you kept trying to get in.  And she kept turning you
away. 

Until that day ... you were returning home late that night.  You found
your father in the living room, drunk as usual, surrounded by pictures
of Marewyn, her jewelry, her clothes.  He looked up at you and cried
"Marewyn! You came back!"  With no further greeting than that, he
grabbed you, kissed you... raped you, all the time murmuring your dead
mother's name.

You escaped when he passed out.  Gathering what few possessions you
owned, you fled to the streets.  You eventually ended up outside of
the House of the Veil.  This time, when Seamist saw you, she took you
in. 
@End[i]

That happened six long years ago.  You renounced your father, and
everything that had to do with him, including his name.  Besides, you
like "Lilith" far more than you ever liked "Hivai".

It wasn't long before Seamist let you in on the greatest secret of the
House of the Veil; the whorehouse was a front for the Black Hand, a
coven of Clan witches who were here as spies and infiltrators for the
ruling body of the Clans.  She said that she wanted you to be the
newest member of her coven.  The thought of practicing magic,
especially this new type of magic, excited you.  You hoped it would
give you a means for revenge against your father, so you agreed.

For the next month, Seamist coached you in the ritual for contacting a
patron Lord.  You'd already decided you wanted to be a Chthonic witch,
and as such set your sights on contactiong the High Lord of Limbo.

@Begin[i]
A full moon shone through the balcony window as you lit the last of
the black marrow candles.  You settled into a trance, and began the
summoning.  If it failed, ah well; if it succeeded and you could not
control the forces you called, you would die.  You didn't care; life
held little for you those days.  You began the last of the many spoken
spells you'd been casting all day in preparation:

"I call myself Lilith, and I knock upon the door between worlds. I
seek one of great power, greater than mine own, that such a one might
help me to find the way to my heart's desire.  If such a one there be,
listening at the veil, let him enter freely and of his own will, to
this, the sanctuary which I have prepared to greet him."

You stood, waiting for something to happen.  Just as you were about to
give up, certain you'd done something wrong, a voice boomed out ...

@b("You who name yourself Lilith, who art Hivai, I answer your call,
and will grant your heart's desire -- for a price.")

"I would know the name of the one I deal with," you replied, peering
into the mist coalescing in the center of the room.  A chill wind
begins to blow around the space, fluttering the curtains; a human
shape coalesces into the octagon you'd carefully chalked onto the
floor.  The shape is a man, in black, with gleaming black hair and
piercing red eyes.  An a resonant voice....

@b["I am Kryssonyx, High Lord and Master of Limbo.  You may help me
as I help you, and here be your heart's desire..."]

You'd done it! You'd contacted Kryssonyx!  You were suddenly afraid;
should this demon-lord decide to, he could break every ward you'd set,
and walk about your world freely, eventually owning it all.  Luckily,
you had chosen to call on the demon world, Limbo, not the devil's
world, the Abyss.  Demons were honorable, and the High Lord would
likley respect the rules of this game...  You watched, fascinated, as
a ball of mist between his hands became a small lizard with wings.  A
hatchwing?   What good would a reptillian beast be against your
father, unless it bit him...?

"I do not understand, High Lord..."

@b["Ever has your deepest wish been to have a companion, one which
would never betray you, one who would always be by your side.  This
need has intensified since the incident with your father..."]

How could he have known @i(that)?  Had this demon been watching you?
@ux(WHY?)

@b["...and so I will meet it.  You know in your heart that what I
say is true.  This is Hziah..."] he handed you the lizard, and you
knew he was right.  @u(Something) clicked in your mind, and you could
"hear" the hatchwing's voice in your head, sending you thoughts of
love and devotion, friendship, companionship.... everything you'd
never really had since your mother died!!  Your eyes began to mist
over...

@b["There, little one, there is no need for tears.  You are happy,
that I can see.  But there is a steep price for the gift I have given
you... you must, in return, give me your soul upon your death."]

"I agree to your terms, High Lord ..."

@b["There is one further condition ... if you accept, you will be
forbidden to practice violence upon another human."]

"I understand, and accept, Lord.]

@b["Good, my brave Hivai called Lilith.  The contract must be signed in
the usual manner ..."] He held out a silver dagger and pricked your
wrist.  He caught the single drop of blood on a fingernail, and tasted
it ... @b["Our bargained is sealed, Hivai called Lilith.  I grant you
the power to shift the shape of any living thing of this plane.  Hzial
has much knowledge of the arcane, and will share it with you.  You
need only ask her the proper question.  You will train with my servant
Seamist.  Prosper, Hivai called Lilith."]  A breeze blew across the
room, and he was gone.
@End[i]

As ordered, you began to train with Seamist.  She taught you much
about the Darkhold, the book that was the ultimate expression of
Chthon on this plane.  Her favorite passage from that dread book was
"From dust you were made, as dust you stayed, and to the dust you will
return".  But she was holding you back from true power.  Seamist kept
telling you that you needed control, but it seemed she was the one who
needed control -- control of you.  Determined never to be vulnerable
again, you killed her, took from her the amulet she was never without
(you assumed it was her token of leadership) and declared yourself the
new head of the Black Hand.  Stunned by Seamist's sudden death (you
made @u[sure] it looked like she died in her sleep), the other witches
accepted your word that you had been named their new leader.

And all in all, you've done well by the House; now that a full-blooded
Realm citizen was running it, the House became even more popular and
profits soared.  One of your witches, Charity Goldenfield, and her
halfbreed son Maskilla Ishmael helped you set up the House as a drug
trafficking warehouse, increasing profits even more.  and you managed
to catch an infiltrator, Mitrani Lyon.

You had been pretty sure she was a Guard of the Realm.  As it turned
out, she was just an enterprising alchemist who figured out the House
was involved in running drugs, and wanted a piecce of the action.  She
hadn't meant, she said to trip over the activities of the Black Hand
... just to be safe, you Oathbound her that she would not disclose the
activities of the House of the Veil, and that she'd report any Guard
activities she heard regarding the House to you.  She is only
provisionally a member of your coven, having chosen no Lord.  that
will have to change, and soon.

Actually, your association with Lyon has proved profitable.  She has
occasionally tipped you off when that uptight crusader Ninevah Nimrod,
the Head of Internal Security, was on the House's trail.  That man has
been a thorn in the side of the House of the Veil since Seamist's
time.  He'd even nearly walked in on a Black hand ritual once, but
you'd managed to convince him he'd only interupted a kinky sex act.
Lyon's good eye has helped keep you warned whenever Nimrod decided to
set his sights on the House.

Long before the incident with Lyon, you and your coven had come to the
conclusion that Something Needed to be Done About the War in General.
It had dragged on for far too long, and it seemed like it would never
end.  You, personally, had decided that the Black Hand's original
purpose was outdated; rather than help one side win the war over
another, you wanted to gain control of both of them.

What stumped you was a way to realize your goal; while powerful, your
coven was pitifully small, and a rather easy target for a concerted
attack.  It was Charity Goldenfield who finally hit upon a solution:
she wanted to create a team of soulless bodyguards/assassins, zombies
subject to the will of the Black Hand.  It was a very Charity idea;
she was a Luciferic witch, and those aligned with the Devil Lord
tended to come up with that kind of idea.  Your big problem was: how
do you create a zombie?

Hzial gave you your solution, in the form of the Danse Morgana, which
would remove the soul from a living victim, keeping the body alive ...
she sent you into a trance, and wrote the ritual through you into a
small book, which you entrusted to Rose Bluemist, a slightly older
Gaeic witch and your second.  She translated it into ancient Gaiec
runes which she alone of all of you could read, and burned the first
book.  Rose was also able to provide you with the DeathBath: just soak
the living corpse in this brew, and it would be preserved for
eternity, unkillable save for the usual was you disposing of the
undead (fill the mouth with salt, sew it shut, and hang the creature).
She also provided you with the last step in the process, the Ritual of
Unlife, the rite that would animate a corpse.  You weren't sure where
a Gaeic witch got hold of such a Chthonic ritual -- maybe from some
archeological dig; she used to do that sort of thing.

It worked!  In no time at all, thirteen bodies were rendered soulless
by the Danse, and were confortably at rest in the DeathBath.  The
things went very, very wrong.

@Begin[i]
"They're WHAT?"  you remembered screaming at Charity.  "They can't
just get up and walk away!  How can twelve dead people just get up and
leave?" 

Charity shrugged.  "I'm just telling you... they're not there.
Lyon and I went down to check on them and do a preliminary set-up for
the unlife, and they were gone.  Don't ask me how; we're the only ones
--- I hope --- that even know they're there.  They just aren't
now..."
@End[i]

You checked on the bodies yourself, and sure enough, they weren't.
Not only that, but a few hours later Lyon reported that they'd turned
up all over the city!  People appeared to be blaming the Circle of
Bloodletters for the deaths ...  because there were no souls in the
bodies.  It was nice that someone else was taking the blame, but you
wanted the bodies back!  The real kicker was that she said that the
Justiciar was ordering all the corpses to be taken to the Castle in
the Clouds for "examination".

Wonderful.  Just what you needed.  Well, you at least had a reason to
get up to the Castle... as leader of the Realm's Doxies' Guild (you'd
been elected last year; it didn't require anything other than making
sure all the brothels in Capital City ran to regulation, and going to
a few dull Guild Meetings), you had a right to go.  There was a
meeting of the House of Guilds mentioned in the last newsletter, and
the place was decided as the Castle; closer for everybody, and an
ideal sightseeing opportunity. 

In fact there's supposed to be a Guild Meeting  up on the Castle;
something about Thieve's Guild raids on businesses, and allegations
that the current GuildMaster, Havilah Jacob, isn't doing his job.
Depending on what he has to say for himself, it may be time to elect a
new GuildMaster.

You need those bodies.  You need them NOW, and you need as many new
ones as possible, as fast as you can get them!  Due to the nature of
the rituals you're dealing with, you need to get a large number of
bodies together, unconcious, before you can really afford to Danse
over them.  You need to get the old ones before they become unpickled
and unuseable; you have about two days before that happens, though.
The girls all have syringes of BathPrimer...  that wonderful drug you
concocted that gives a man raging hormonal imbalances, and practically
forces them to the Veil's door.  They'll just inject anybody that
looks warrior-like, and hopefully they'll come running!  Then you can
keep them tied & unconcious for a few days, and that will be that!
You'd better go over the whole bit with the girls one more time.
Whatever you do, you'd better do it FAST, and NOW, and REALLY REALLY
COMPETENTLY or you'll get REALLY SET BACK in your PLANS!!!!

Calm yourself now.... What's in the past is in the past, and @i[that]
you can't change.  The future, however...!