Hellhound

“My Prickly is a treasure. Yes, he growls in my skull. Yes, he tries to murder every man who looks at me wrong. But here’s the trick: if you hug him every day and slip him a jawbone now and then, he only fantasizes about killing you. And that’s what trust looks like.”

— Soki Noles, On the Care and Feeding of Familiars, Vol. II

Overview

Hellhounds are among the oldest and most consistent forms of Familiar-craft. A Bane—one of the Third Order Wrath-spawn—is forced into symbiosis with a canid host and bound to a Kthoniker through Contract. The resulting entity is a living weapon of rage, pursuit, and terminal violence.

Where most Familiars retain fragments of their former Tertia personality, Hellhounds suppress almost all of it beneath the overwhelming, animal-shaped current of the canine mind. What emerges is something terrifyingly direct: a hunter built specifically to tear apart whatever the Master points at.

Hellhounds are not subtle. They are not nuanced. They do not negotiate.
They kill.

Biology of a Bound Bane

The Anchor is always a canid—mastiffs and molossers are favored, but the bond works on wolves, coyotes, dingoes, and even Uplifted scavenger species from outer systems. The Anchor’s psychology supplies the one thing Banes lack: focus.

The bound Bane twists the dog’s nervous system into a tool for violence:

Subspace Skimming: The Hellhound can loosen its physical cohesion and slip partially into Redspace, reappearing through walls, locked doors, or even sealed Vehicles. In Realspace this presents as a flicker, a ripple of heat distortion, or a shadow moving wrongly.

Dread Projection: Hellhounds emit layered howls—some audible, some infrasound, some purely psionic. This induces a fear response so intense that even hardened soldiers can freeze or flee.

Overbinding of Pain Response: A Hellhound doesn’t stop when injured. Its pain becomes leverage, intensifying its frenzy rather than slowing it.

The biological vessel must be fed like any animal—but the Tertia form feeds only on wrath. Specifically, the Master’s wrath.

Psychology & Contract

A Bane’s mind is simple and brutal:

“I destroy what my Master hates.”

This makes the Contract surprisingly easy to draft. The Bane wants violence; the Master wants an assassin. It is one of the few symbioses where both parties feel they are getting the better deal.

But:
A Bane’s loyalty is conditional. It respects anger and only responds well to a Master who can muster and maintain a furnace of resentment. A timid or forgiving Master will find the Hellhound restless, dissatisfied, and ultimately dangerous.

Hellhounds do not obey commands that contradict their fundamental Vice.
If told to “stop” during a kill, they will push against the Master’s mind with something between a snarl and a migraine. If the Master persists, the Hellhound may turn on them.

Taboos & Costs

Primary Taboo: Mercy

Hellhounds cannot abide mercy. Calling them off mid-kill risks:

Disobedience

Frenzy

Direct attack on Master

Contract fracture

Subspace rupture

Daily Costs to Master:

1 FP/day from constant psychic gnawing

Insomniac (Mild)—the Hellhound’s restless whispering

Insomniac (Severe) if more than one Hellhound is bound

Occasional SP drain if Master suppresses their anger too strongly

Anchor Requirement:

Absolute, unconditional trust from the dog.
If trust is absent:

The Bane overwhelms the canine psyche

The Familiar becomes a Wild Hellhound

The supplicant typically becomes its first corpse

Ritual Components:

A laboratory tuned for acoustic convergence between dog howls and subspace harmonics

Sulfur (symbolic resonance with malice)

A blood-forged contract written across the dog’s skull before sealing

The transformation is painful for both Anchor and Master.

Use in Subspace Warfare

Hellhounds are the favored Familiars of:

Personal-assassin kthonikers

RAIs engaged in deniable wet-work

Blood-reforgers

Night wardens

Certain Houses’ black-ops divisions

Small packs of Hellhounds—three to five—operate like elite breach teams. Their skimming lets them appear inside secure bunkers or sealed habitats. A single Hellhound is a murder tool; a pack is a catastrophe.

Their greatest flaw is also their defining feature:
They cannot hold back.
A Hellhound unleashed is not a guard dog but a guided ballistic trauma event.