Securing and supporting him from behind was a creature even more unnerving — a scorchborn; a humanoid abomination born from the decaying swamps of the Midlands.” [B1.C13]
With bodies composed of the diseases and toxins of their birth environment, scorchborn are bringers of plagues. They radiate pestilence, their mere touch enough to rot flesh. Their appearance varies greatly, depending on their origin and state of development. With many, their humanoid shape can unravel into a flat, sprawling mass, a grotesque tapestry of root, lichen, and fungi.
APPEARANCE
This change was not an aberration. It was her nature.
The undoing of substance, the invasion, the breakdown, the remaking of her body by what was foreign — that was not a failure of her self, but the expression of it.
She was a living record of all she had consumed, a being that broke and rebuild itself, altered by every influence.
SHAPELESS RESISTANCE
CORE AND FORM
"Barbarthara could be split – riven, shattered – and still exist, so long as her core, the condensed knot of root-flesh that made her her, remained intact. So long as that survived, and drew new sustenance, she could reform." [B1.C16]
Their core is a thick, fibrous knot of root and nerve from which they function. As long as this core stays intact, scorchborn may flatten, detangle and greatly alter their form. They may also harden individual roots and form extensions similar to thorns.
LIFE AND GROWTH
She took it in —
to filter, to forge.
That act, the taking in, was reflex. Older than thought. Older than pain. Older than fear. The first and deepest instinct of the scorchborn.
And for most of her kind, it was enough. The common scorchborn sprouted in one place. They anchored in one stretch of swamp, where their roots sat in rich, nourishing soil for a lifetime. In such a vegetative life, they absorbed without thought. Substances were taken in at ground value — little to no filtering needed. The swamp fed them what they needed, and while their bodies adapted to the slow rhythm of mud and water and rot, they grew into what the swamp made of them. Minor rejections, minor selections — a new twist of leaf here, a thickening of bark there, once in a while, a harmless sift of useless sediment — but mostly, the soil fed them well enough, and they adapted respectively.
ROOTING
FUNDAMENTALS
"As her roots bore into the runt’s arm, they spread like threads, thinning into filaments that wove their way beneath his skin. They latched onto his veins and his flesh. She drew with ravenous urgency, pulling greedily at everything she could reach: liquids, nutrients, all that would be energy, life and growth for her." [B1.C14]
In general, scorchborn cannot survive without an energy source. To not wither and starve, they needed constant rooting, an anchor from which to draw sustenance. When rooted, they can make their host compliant by secreting subtle enzymes, chemicals that may soften the host's resistance, dull his pain, and lull his senses into a haze of euphoric submission. individuals like Barbarthara may hone this ability to influence their host's subconscious mind.
CONSERVING ENERGY
If not rooted to an energy source, scorchborn may compress the intricate lattice of lichen, roots, and fungi that adorns their bodies into a dense, knotted core, with their heads buried deep within such twisted mass. Like that, they reduce and cocoon themselves into a survival state.
HOMELANDS
SWAMPLANDS
“Let the swamplands still lie at the foot of this mountain prison, the realms she remembered so vaguely from her first sapling years — lands of warm rot and shifting mud, beyond reach of web or witch. Let them exist. Let them never have been taken. She needed to believe that.” [B1.C16]
THE SWAMP
Scorchborn grow in the Sastomian Swamplands at the south-western base of the Albweiss Mountains.
As the story progresses, more information will be added.
INDIVIDUAL SCORCHBORN
A glossary of characters that have been mentioned or appeared.
BARBARTHARA
BARBARTHARA
“Bear it. Become it. Whatever it was. There would be a new self after the unmaking. There always was.” [B1.C16]
HER BEING
Origin
Stems: 47th root. 14th branch.
Affiliation: Unknown / Independent
First mentioned: [B1.C13]
APPEARANCE — DEVELOPMENT OF HER FORM
“This was the process of change. Filtering and expelling Death, just to take it back in. Growing from Death. Growing through Death. Not dying. Becoming.” [B1.C16]
As a scorchborn, Barbarthara is not a being with a fixed design. Amidst the Shaira, she learned to separate what strengthened her from what would rot her through the fine fungal lattice that was part of her, but never entirely of her. It is this living network that soaks up what enters, breaks this matter down, sifts through, transforms what could nourish, and expels the rest.
“This was change. And change meant life.” [B1.C16]
B1.C13: Witch-raised, humanoid
The Shaira’s brews had brought her close to death more than once. Various potions, some laced with weaver poison, had made her crumple, had withered her down to her core. Parts of her had blackened and peeled away, flakes like dead bark. Her senses had flickered out. Sight, hearing, touch — gone for hours, sometimes days. But nothing had killed her yet.
Fleeing the Shaira, Barbarthara's skin was a dark, diseased mass, riddled with fungal growths and spore-like protrusions, covered only in ragged, brown cloth. The tattered furs hanging from her body were soaked with thick, oozing secretions.
"Beneath her furs, her bloated, distorted form pulsed grotesquely. Fleshy growths and dripping pustules writhed under her spongy skin; it was her skin heaving and breathing, her whole body exuding poison, both into the air and directly into the wizard through her touch." [B1.C13]
B1.C16: Errant arachnid form
"To absorb was her nature. To take in sustenance. To feed on the world and its creatures. It was the foundation of her existence, the marrow of her life. And now, it was the thing that would end her." [B1.C16]
Within the Weaver King's insides, Barbarthara was exposed to the full volatile arsenal of his poisons. Every compound he had ever crafted, every intention he had etched into his glands leaked from failing sacs and ruptured membranes, bleeding out, bleeding into her.
"Barbarthara lay deep within the ruin of what had killed her — and what she had killed. And in that steaming cradle of pulp and venom, she gave in. The toxins flooded her. They made her senses swim and set her mind flickering at the edge of unconsciousness. And as her thoughts frayed, and her form spasmed and shivered and stretched toward something else, Barbarthara did not fight it. Because this was not only pain. Not only poison. This was change. And change meant life." [B1.C16]
Repeatedly filtering and expelling these substances, she underwent a cycle of rot and refinement that resulted in drastic changes to her form. These have not yet been revealed.
LIFE
Swamplands
"There was nothing now but the mountain’s inner confines and the vast, uncharted unknown beyond it. She recalled little of the world below, save for vague, distorted echoes." [B1.C14]
Barbarthara had been taken from the Swamplands when she was a sapling. She has close to no memory of her homeland or the scorchborn that grew alongside her. She remembers them as "lands of warm rot and shifting mud, beyond reach of web or witch". [B1.C16]
Amidst the Shaira
"It was in the hands of the Shaira that Barbarthara first became aware. It was through them she learned to feel her own shape, to register the motion of her shifting mass. Through them, she learned the passing of time around her and the changing of tides within her, the patterns of what she consumed and what it made of her. It was with them that she grew a mind. A self. And from that moment forward, change had been her only constant." [B1.C16]
When she was but a sapling, Barbarthara was taken by the Shaira. Sine then, she had been both a tool and a subject in their experiments. For a decade, they had used her for their ambitions, twisting magics to influence and manipulate the bodies of other beings. Likewise, Barbarthara had been forced to feed on various potions and poisons, amidst them that of the Albweiss Mountain weavers [B1.C16].
"Barbarthara had borne witness to unspeakable horrors inflicted upon captives, both wizards and beasts alike. She had done nothing to stop it — could do nothing to stop it. To survive in that place had demanded obedience. To endure meant to comply. Survivors lived on silence." [B1.C14].
Together with Ahrask, avian beast Sahir and his wizard Salgier, she escaped from the Shaira in [B1.C13].
ABILITIES
Sustaining Herself
Without constant rooting or a significant reserve, Barbarthara withers quickly. She cannot survice for more than a few hours, less in cold climates.
When first encountered, Barbarthara was found to both sustain herself on Salgier and infuse him with her secretions, while also directing his incantations to activate the golem.
"The sharp, root-like structures that were her fingers pierced his flesh, the tips of her jagged nails embedding themselves into his skin like thorns growing into the very marrow of his bones. The wizard’s arm twitched uncontrollably under her touch, yet he did not pull away.
Their connection was a strange, symbiotic bond — her presence was both protective and parasitic. Every drop of poison fed his corruption and drained his vitality, yet in that moment, what she gave to him also became of him, adding to his Rothar and seeping into the stone plates fused to his back." [B1.C13]
In [B1.C14], it was revealed that "the witches had fed Barbarthara on both orks and wizards before. She knew how to extract from them without outright killing them — at least, not immediately."
After feeling from the Haraak, she takes root on Nagrak. In [B1.C16], she feeds on the Albweiss Mountain Weaver King.
Changing and Becoming
"Oh, but Barbar thara knew PAIN
And she knew POIsON.
She knew the inside of agony, the slow unravelling of a body from within. When nerves convulsed and screamed, when the self became a twitching vessel of venom and suffering. She knew THE DARKNESS too — not the lightless depths that filled the mountain’s lungs, but the other darkness. The one that bloomed inside when everything withered and burned. The kind that screamed through nerves, that twisted every sense into madness when the venom seeped too deep." [B1.C16]
Barbarthara changes based on the sustenances she takes in.
"Bear it. Become it. Whatever it was. There would be a new self after the unmaking. There always was." [B1.C16]
Amidst th Shaira, she learned to filter and use poisons.
"Barbarthara had been bled into, bitten into, and drowned in toxins. Soaked, scorched, spell-ridden. The Shaira had made her a vessel for affliction. They had poured spells into her spine, venom into her veins, apparent medicines into her marrow, hexes into her head. Hours. Days. Weeks. Each time the choice: rot — or grow." [B1.C16]
As long as her core, the condensed knot of root-flesh that contains her existence, remaines intact, she can reform and regrow, even after withering, turning into mush, or being crushed and cut in half [B1C16].
Secretions and Poison
Barbarthara is able to produce liquids that neutralise the stucky coating of weaver webs [B1.C16]. She can also create poisons to harm others and is able to infuse them by hardening her roots into a thorn [B1.C16].
Senses
Prior to gaining her errant arachnid form, Barbarthara had limited sight, smell, and hearing, perceiving the world primarily through touch. Her tactile sensitivity granted her remarkable insight, for example into the composition and internal states of other beings, subtle vibrations in the earth, or the delicate shifts in tension and motion within a weaver’s web.
"She extended her roots — parting, thinning, elongating. Fine fibres unfurled and reached into the web, weaving through strands, anchoring, reading. The silk reminded her of flesh — tendons and fascia, the fibrous nets that laced muscle and viscera. She had worked through such matter before. Had eased herself into veins and nerves like fungus threading into rot, drawing maps from within a host’s body.
This was no different. Through the net, she could orient herself. Every contact brought more information. The web spoke. At first, it was too much. A mass of signals. But Barbarthara filtered — one thread, then another, then another — until the chaos resolved into structure." [B1.C16]
After defeating the Weaver King, she gains a new form and awareness, though
"Inside the corpse, within the bulging, ruptured dark of the grand arachnid’s abdomen, there was no way to tell what was momentary awareness and what was memory and what was madness." [B1.C16]
It seems that the King imparted a fraction of his innate understaning of the Albweiss darkness into her:
"This knowing did not come from within her mind but into it, like a drip of dark understanding into still water. It was not hers, not entirely. It came with the poison. With the shift within. With her transformation. With the breach that had opened inside her. And there, a soaking, budding seed had settled that could not be scotched or stifled. And from it, knowledge sprouted — the quiet, invasive comprehension of the darkness she had fallen into." [B1.C16]
Agility
"Barbarthara pulled herself across the thicker threads, scuttling downward into the deeper dark. Her form twisted, reforming with every movement. Roots flung outward to grip, to hook, to lash across the threads as she fled, all instincts and terror. She climbed, swung, jumped, dropped." [B1.C16]
Barbarthara did not grow up as a rooted scorchborn of the Swamplands, but developed extremeties to walk, jump and climb. Due to the flexibility of her form, she possesses great agility. She is also able to flatten herself and squeeze into narrow crevices.
Controlling Other Minds and Bodies
"If the Shaira had imparted anything to her, it was the manipulation of minds." [B1.C14]
When rooting onto a host, Barbarthara may have them experience various physical sensations, such as warmth and the illusion of touch, as well as cold, sickness and pain to the point of collapse [B1.C14]. Beyond that, she had learned to use her given scorchborn abilities to control and contort the subconscious of others, which is, not merely to provoke reactions, but to cultivate and steer feelings that become indistinguishable from deep-seated instincts.
"With the Shaira, Barbarthara had first learned to distinguish what defined a being’s mind. At its core, it was impulses — layers of them. The conscious consisted of what she could best describe as impulses of spontaneous feeling, appearing and vanishing in bursts. The unconscious, in contrast, comprised of a buried strata of ingrained impulses, which were embedded and always traceable within the core of a being.
Barbarthara could not read minds, not like a witch. However, by honing her roots to an infinitesimal scale and threading them through the nerves of her host, she could send thousands of subtle stimuli — tiny provocations that elicited reactions she could study, interpret, and manipulate. It was a constant interplay of seeking and forcing, of probing, provoking and evaluating, until she could trace and master the impulses she wished to enforce." [B1.C14]