The Last Fight of Osiris Lupercal

Whisperer in darkness

House Lupercal was at the height of its power when the Edekhan Empire stretched from Carthago to Xyambala, from the Laconian Continent to the Alerian Continent. Almost half the world, and another half soon to come.

Their sigil was a man-wolf, a man with a suit of armor and his other half a wolf, a beast with his plated armor shattered across the ground, red stained claw and howling to the moon, like if it had two heads, maybe a resemblance to the Gemini.

They were direct descendants from Ares himself, and took a great deal of pride in it.

Maybe 1000 years before the Shattering war, maybe even more, the boy Osiris of House Lupercal was born. He had a twin brother, Hastur Lupercal, a sickly and twisted boy, unlike his brother Osiris, who was born blessed by the God-Emperor with beauty and easiness for oratory, he had the voice of an angel and the looks to match one. Proud and muscular, beautiful and with a sweet voice, Osiris nevertheless always accompanied his less fortunate brother Hastur, never leaving him behind and always protecting him from harm’s way.

The two were close by Edekhan Standards, having regular sexual intercourse and being together almost all the time. And so, the two of them learned the same, attended the same academies with the same assignments, and graduated in the Second Energy Academy. The both married at the same time with their nieces, Hastur decided that his more popular brother should be the ruler of his house and stepped aside, with Osiris Lupercal being the leader of House Lupercal at the age of 36.

And then, the comet appeared.

The Green Comet, a sight to behold in the sky. Hastur heard it in a dream, he dreamt of a god trapped in solid rock traversing the night sky waiting to being liberated, with countless ghosts following him as his entourage. The psychics around the world had the same dream, but Hastur was not of them, so when news of the Green Dream arrived to his ears he became amuse and bewildered, the comet filled his sleep with dreams, with vision and messages that only a psychic could witness, and being part of that selected group without being really one scared and interested him. He began to surround himself with psychics, studding them and trying to understand them to somehow obtain their powers.

Meanwhile, Osiris built a Lighthouse to study the Green Comet, getting a help from Hastur and his entourage of psychics in trying to understand the phenomena that they were witnessing. Osiris gave the Lighthouse to Hastur, and he used it as his personal retirement place, personal library and experimentation den.

Osiris did have those dreams also, but saw his brother started to change with them, behave in strange ways and followed visible patrons along the comet, as some kind of force, but remained resistant to it and surround himself with mountains of work and responsibilities to do in order to distract himself.

Hastur started to became somewhat deranged from his usual demeanor. In Edekhan culture homosexuality, incest and polyamory are not taboo and not frown upon, but transgender and cross dressing yes, because you are disrespecting the will of Ares by choosing another sex to identify with instead the same that he gave to you in his divine will. And so, when Hastur started to use the gowns of his mother and betrothed he started to raise more than one eyebrow. She started to light pyres against those who talk to her using male pronouns, and insisting in acting like a woman.

His brother Osiris seeing the disrespect to the God-Emperor Ares that his brother (sister) was committing decide to punish her and send her to the Lighthouse and exile her there. He did not want to kill her, but he still had to obey Edekhan Law. If it was for him, he would have allowed such display, he loved her sister, in any shape of form. If she wanted to be a woman, she would, no matter what, brotherly love was more powerful than culture or religion.

And so, during the two year time lapse that the Green Comet circled the solar system, Osiris helped his sister to become a real woman, calling all sorts of “Flesh Weavers” to arrange parts of her body into the right combination. Countless surgery’s, even mental trances thanks to her psiquick entourage. By the end, Hastur was a genderless and deranged shadow of its former self, scarifying his body to draw runes in it to attain the favor of the comet, of the multicolored host that traversed the night sky with it.

By all accounts Hastur was a walking heresy, driven mad by the comet and its effects on the minds of the empaths around him. But still, Osiris loved her, he loved her sister and everything that she was triying to do.

Both sited and waited, studding the stars and the sky. Osiris slowly began to understand the visions of his sister, she saw the great and infinite space outside the planet and saw countless ghastly forms, host of ghost traversing the space with a myriad of colors, the multicolored host, like step riders, like a great wave swallowing the earth. The infinity of the night sky gasped into his ears, the comet was only a tool to free oneself from the mortal coil that enveloped the minds of all. The empaths have seen this, there was a being trapped in the comet, and soon it would crash unto the earth and sprung free from its rocky shackles. It was going to be weak after millennia of entrapment, and so after the fall they would have to nurture it back into form.

“But I cannot do this alone, I need my brother, I need his strength and courage. Alone I am nothing, but with you I feel complete. The rest is confetti.” Hastur said to him, sealing his fate.

The Demented Man Cometh

Osiris had still his sanity with him, had a sense of civilization and high culture with him. And so, when the time to embrace the sanity slipping and skull crushing realization of Hastur came, he embrace it with devilish delight, embracing the weirdness he was into and merged it with Edekhan High Culture, giving him a sense of conquer when dealing with the outer space. He civilized the savages, brought strict rules and order to the chaos, and turned the rambles of a mad man into a manifesto of eldritch nightmares. What is worst? Committing a terrible act like an animal, savage and uncontrolled or committing it in an orderly way, with rules and times to do each thing? That’s the difference between mass murder and genocide.

Using his personal charm he came back to his seat of power and started to spread the word of Hastur to everyone who would listen. He massif the intentions of Hastur, turning them up to eleven, recruiting many young warriors and sending them to the Lighthouse to commence the indoctrination and scarification. They were recruiting a private army of brainwashed soldiers and Empaths. And soon they would need of them.

The word of Hastur reached the palace of Carcosa, the Yellow City, and all its nobles soon started to embrace it. The mass conversion of acolytes led to a certain improvement in method. Both Hastur and Osiris were warlocks, but as more and more nobles flocked to their beliefs, they started to really improve on the uses that the blood magic’s of the warlocks had on the practices of the Warlocks and Empaths of Hastur. The Flesh Weavers used forbidden blood magic’s to alter not only appearances, but also perfect the brainwashing of the soldiers that the Empaths were conducting. They used blood magic’s to attach animal limbs to them, mutating them using alchemy and creating half man and half beasts. A bear paw and a wolf claw could turn a warrior into an abomination of animal flesh, controlled only by their masters Osiris and Hastur.

Finally, the massification of the rites created too much heat around them, and the other Imperial Houses were starting to look upon the House Lupercal with disgust. Some even suggesting that they should be excommunicated from the Empire and destroyed completely. The charges of degeneracy and forbidden magi rituals were too many to allow them.

And so, the current God-Emperor at the time, Argalak of House Zelenin took mater into its own hands and dispatched a small elite army to quell the insurrection and the degeneracy of House Lupercal. The fist of the Emperor would fall upon them.

When word of the Imperial Army galloping against House Lupercal Osiris upped the challenge and declared his independence from the empire, declared himself “First Traitor and second God-Emperor” of all Edekhans, ready to took the Hastur Cult into the heart of the empire. He enlisted his knights and slave-warriors, and set forth upon the battle.

Hastur consulted his empaths, scriying the future for some good luck, and found an interesting thing. The Green Comet would be close to the planet the day the two armies would clash into open combat, and so he had a date for the upcoming battle. Hastur, his empaths and his flesh weavers embarked with Osiris and met the God-Emperor in the Black Forest of Leng.

The “Battle at Leng Forest” (coming soon) resulted in a total massacre of the Imperial Army, the comet had fallen from the sky against the Emperor himself and decimated his army. The crater that latter formed from the explosion became the Tomb of Osiris, when a temple to him and the deity trapped inside the comet let lose.

What it is only god knows. In terms of matter it was first a gas, then when it hit oxygen it solidify and became some kind of solid rock, a material that adapts to its place of unnatural birth, and surrounded by branches and trees it became some sort of trunk. It developed vines and branches that are course to the touch. That things looks like a giant tree, but alas a tree is not. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomer’s measure or deem immeasurable. It was just a color from outer space, a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond nature as we know it; from realms its mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.

The vines and branches killed the remaining soldiers, buried deep into their flesh and started to suck the energy’s out of them. It buried deep undergrown and killed the soil it lived in. Osiris, being the first to have seen it in its true form was shocked and entered a torpor that lasted centuries, with the tree branching inside his body to sustain him, being part corpse part tree. His blood and the blood rituals that he had made seeped into the tree and transform it as much as the three transform him. The deep runes of Hastur created a new being inside Osiris, when the branches reached his brain and absorbed his thoughts the Edekhan Culture became the basis of the new being that was going to be born. The blood of Osiris became the catalyst for the new being, the blood rituals its fuel. Finally, Hastur, the dear sister, the formless cultist that had waited 2 years for the arrival of the Green Comet received his gift. He became a vampire, craving blood and absorbing it from others to gain strength. The mutations that she suffered were comparable to the ones that the alchemist of the Flesh Weavers could give, but more titanic in potency. His brain rearranged itself, and the cursed blood give him powers like an empathy, she could read minds, control them and so on. A fully fledge vampire, to create a new cult to Osiris, the first traitor and new blood god.