Sinful Angel
The Sinful Angel is a grotesque, nightmarish abomination, the twisted outcome of an ill-fated attempt to summon an angel. It is born when an impure vessel and the essence of an angelic being fuse and corrupt one another.1
Appearance
Its body was once a human's, but it has been grotesquely distorted, stretched and swollen. Misshapen wings sprout at random from its back, their once majestic feathers now tattered and mangled. Its skin has a sickly pallor, marked by pulsing veins that seem to writhe beneath the surface.1
Instead of divine radiance it gives off an aura of oppressive darkness, an unholy energy that sows fear and unease in everyone who meets it. It moves in jerks and fits, as if struggling to contain the warring forces inside it, and it lets out anguished wails and mournful cries.1
Nature
A sinful angel can fly. It knows every language but cannot speak aloud; it reaches others by telepathy instead, and away from direct sunlight its telepathic scream of grief can kill those who hear it. A humanoid it kills may rise from the corpse as another sinful angel. The creature itself does not last: it perishes within a day of its emergence.2
Angels and their remains
Angels are the servants of the gods. Each major deity has angels of its own to act as intermediaries, and they look different according to the god they serve: winged warriors are the hand of Alarath, while Malachar has raven-winged servants as invisible as shadows. Angels live forever in the celestial planes of the gods, but when they manifest in the material world their influence is great. Nature, human minds and even the movements of the heavens are changed, and what they leave behind, a feather or the hilt of a sword, can hold unimaginable properties.2
The remains of a sinful angel lack those immense qualities, yet they can still be used in rituals, spells and potion-making. They are counted among the rarest and most powerful of materials, and although they are weaker than a true angel's, they fetch a high price on the black market. Such remnants appear only once every few centuries.2
Notes
Sources
This article draws on:
- SoVShadow Over Vansreik(Bad Badger Games, 2024), pp. 234-235
Images in this article
Shadow Over Vansreik (Bad Badger Games, 2024), p. 234. Art by the Bad Badger Games team.
Related articles
RegionThe EmpireThe human realm at the heart of the Lands of Exile, an absolute monarchy heavily shaped by faith, ruled from Marble City by the unbroken line of the Red Eagle and divided into five provinces under their Sovereigns.CreatureLinked-body mimicsFive shape-changing beings of the Yeni Dünya campaign that take the faces and voices of a band of adventurers in Aquila, and whose bodies share every wound, so that a blow to one is felt by all.
CreatureSkin StealerAn evil fey being born of a union between humans and dream walkers. It flays its victims, wears their skin and slowly takes on their memories, until it can perfectly copy their manner.CreatureDoppelgangerA shapechanger whose kind can be told apart from others, such as the werewolf, by the scent it gives off.CreatureDragonProud and cunning winged beasts whose magic is held to be the pinnacle of raw magical power. The northerners hunt them, smiths seek their fire, scholars write about them, and a few great dragons have left their mark on the Empire's mercenaries.CreatureHydraA monstrosity reported in the Crater of Mortenox, where the hunter Davos Fratz is seeking a way in to hunt it; a hydra also killed a noble's family as they swam in a lake.CreatureMusesBeings sought in vain by the bard Gazelle the Lamenter, who put massive bounties on their heads in his search for inspiration.CreaturePseudodragonA creature kept as a pet and companion, which its owners count as a great privilege.CreatureRestless WatcherA mindless, fiendish guard made from a humanoid corpse through an infernal binding, bound to protect one place against intruders. Many infernalists know the rite.CreatureSahuaginMonstrous creatures known from their raid on the town of Mossentry and from a perilous encounter on a voyage to the Islands of Farr.