Sarachon, the Curse of Plagues

"The LORD will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses... The LORD will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed."

Like a cancer at the heart of creation, the Demiurge of Plagues waits for the day when all will be consumed by rot and lingering doom. Sarachon is the Demiurge of every disease and ailment that inflict man or beast, or blight crop and ruins harvest. He rules the vast realm of every known illness, every strain of plague, and every yet seen infection, and wields them both as a weapon of coercion and transformation. Sarachon hangs the threat of leprosy and cancer above his victims like a dangling blade, forcing the choice between submission or sickness. When denied, he inflicts his poxes and plagues on them with steady escalation until they either surrender or transforms them into slaves, living dead that are little more than containers for his power than people. In the end, coercion appears as important as obedience to the Demiurge, and Sarachon will delay final judgement to savor a slow, lingering descent into utter defeat.

Any dream-visit of Sarachon is an ill-omen even for his most ardent worshippers. He rises from the dreamscape as a giant leper, sweet rot sweeping from infected wounds and with skin that writhes from the maggots that crawl underneath. His voice is like the buzz of countless flies and chirping rats, steadily rising in volume to the dreams like a spreading infection. No matter the reason for his visit, to impart knowledge or blessings, they are always followed by a wracking bout of illness for the dreamer that leaves them changed. The obedient live and grow stronger, but suffer from weeping sores, cancerous tumors, or other ailments that mark them as Sarachon's followers.

"Plague went before him; pestilence followed his steps."

Sarachon is second in power only to Herem, but unlike the Demiurge of genocide, he is patient and cunning. Just like a sickness, his influence creeps across the Adamite tribes, sometimes slow and sometimes like wildfire. It gathers like rot, taking over entire tribes and get stamped out by other, jealous Demiurges but never for long. Like illness, his presence is inevitable and whenever pestilence breaks out among the tribes, Sarachon's eyes upon on buboes and inflammations, allowing him to spy on them. His worship is widespread among the Adamites, both in hope of cures and to prevent his ravaging wrath. Nor is he jealous, generously allowing the Tribes that follow him to hold other Demiurges in their pantheon. Holy lepers spread his faith, and his sickness, across the world.

Despite his intellect and long-term plans, Sarachon cannot help but obsess when his plagues are stymied by endurance or medicine. Even when he can't do anything, he is drawn to watch, fret, and rage about it, to the detriment of what he is actually trying to accomplish. It is a fact both New Eden and other Demiurges use to distract the pestilent Sarachon and limit his influence.

When Sarachon takes to the world, it is as a vast swarm of plague-rats with their tails tangled until they all form one enormous creature, each infested with rot and sickness. He speaks through the entire swarm, a sweeping chittering tide that carries his voice to the front. These rats are followed by a host of flies so thick that it can stop arrows and turn swords, and Sarachon in turn use them as a weapon to spread pestilence and gnaw flesh from bone. Even the grounds he walks on suffers, spreading mildew and blight until the soil turns to dust. In the end, Sarachon wields illness as a rod to threaten and discipline the wayward humanity. One way or the other, they'll kneel.

"The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish."