Demon Royals

The Demon Royals consist of the Demon King Shikodori and his twelve princes. They banded together, sometimes unwillingly, to forward the agenda of the Demon King Shikodori. After he made himself into a nine tailed kitsune by finding the heart of a world serpent, he sought out the hearts of the other serpents to make himself more powerful and he collected the people who became his princes along the way to make the search go more swiftly so that the hearts could not be found before he was able to.

The world serpents created and shaped the world as it is now. The magic that exists is the ambient remnants of the serpents forging the world. The serpents themselves were worshipped and revered by many. The act of even thinking of harming them was seen as blasphemy to the highest degree, especially by those that were part of the group Serpent’s Tide who were followers of the ancient world serpents. They praised the makers of their world above all else and their main goal is to keep the balance between development and nature. If something were to disrupt the flow of nature’s magic or go against nature itself, the followers of Serpent’s Tide would try to either right the wrong or remove the problem in its entirety.

This religion thrived for centuries but began to fade after The Demon King and his Princes killed the serpents one by one. With no idea if there was still a serpent alive or not, the followers of the Serpent’s Tide went into despair. The more strong willed of the followers banded together to kill the Princes and The Demon King, but they met a cruel and bloody end. In order to make sure that none of the followers tried to attack them again, The Demon King hunted down every single one of them and killed them without mercy.

The goal of the Demon King and his princes is to collect the heart of the celestial creatures, the world serpents, are the core of what makes a god or goddess. Known to the gods as “Shards”, the fragments of a serpent’s heart are nearly radioactive with power. These shards have a mentality of their own and will go to people they see as compatible with them and merge with them, thus creating a god or goddess. The shard’s mentality is based off of the serpent the shard belonged to, such as the serpent Xerxes was very inquisitive and actually is quite happy with the fact he was killed. He uses the shards of his heart to find people he finds interesting or that are as inquisitive as he is and will merge with them so that he may learn from them. When someone else that has the another shard of his heart comes close, the shards share information with each other, thus making him learn quite a lot over a wide variety of aspects.

Two shards that belonged to the same serpent are called sibling shards, or brother or sister shards. Two shards are capable of lightly resonating with each other to make more powerful magical effects due to accessing the power of another shard, but a sibling shard resonates at a much higher frequency and gives a multiplicative boost to the magical abilities of those resonating their shards.

Any shards that are not either stolen or exploring stay with the only living world serpent, Dianava, who resides at the deepest part of the ocean where only very few creatures can go to. She protects the remaining hearts for when they are able to become whole again, at which point the serpent will resurrect.

Shikodori and his princes hunted for Dianava and the shards she protected until the Demon Prison was made and they were all cast into it and locked away along with most of the other demons in the world.