Krakar

“Rats are for keeping secrets. Birds are for speaking them. And if I ever start lying to myself, my Krākar starts coughing up blood as if the hypocrisy personally offends him. That’s how you know they’re good birds.”

— Soki Noles, Field Notes on Truth, Lies, and Unpaid Debts

Overview

Where the Rat-Thing is the Daemon’s archivist form—the hoarder of secrets—the Krākar is the Daemon’s herald. Bound into a corvid (often a raven, rook, or cinder-crow), a Krākar retains far more of the physical appearance and behavior of its host animal than the rodent-bound Daemon does. Corvid beaks and tongues are already near-perfect for mimicry; the Daemon needs only a slight reshaping of soft tissues and a threading of its resonance through the avian nervous system to grant articulate speech.

The result is a creature that looks—at first glance—like a perfectly normal bird.
But its eyes are much too bright, its pupils too sharp, its gaze too knowing.
When it speaks, its voice has a faintly metallic echo, like a memory of Redspace vibrating in its throat.

Krākars are Familiars of:

Truth (whether or not you want it heard)

Secrets (whether or not you want them kept)

Memory (flawless and merciless)

Witness (they remember every crime, every humiliation)

They perform the same functional role as Rat-Things—living grimoires and data caches—but with a very different disposition. Krākars are opinionated, aloof, more mobile, and vastly more difficult to kill. They perch, observe, comment, and judge.

They are also profoundly inconvenient, because:

Krākars cannot lie.

And neither can their Masters.

Behavior & “Personality”

Krākars embody the Daemon’s envy of knowledge but channel it toward outward expression rather than inward hoarding. They enjoy:

Reciting inconvenient truths

Revealing secrets “accidentally on purpose”

Making piercing, accurate social observations

Pointing out hypocrisy

Mocking poor decisions

Solving puzzles aloud before their Master can

Memorizing entire conversations and repeating them verbatim weeks later

They are less physically grotesque than Rat-Things, but far more socially corrosive.

A Krākar’s perfect recall and absolute truthfulness make it:

A superb adviser

A dangerous witness

A liability in polite society

And a catastrophic guest at weddings, funerals, and Criminal meetings

Sentient RAIs rarely sell Krākars to clients they like, because a Krākar in the wrong hands is effectively a one-bird whistleblower grenade.

Contract, Taboos & Parasitic Needs

The Contract of the Krākar: “Truth binds us.”

A Krākar’s existence hinges on resonance with honesty, not morality. It cannot lie, but it is perfectly capable of cruelty, bluntness, and weaponized truth.

Its Master becomes similarly bound:

TABOO — The Master may not lie.

Violation results in:

Nosebleeds

Migraines

Sudden emotional hemorrhage (SP loss)

The Krākar coughing blood or molting

The Familiar rejecting its Master entirely

This is not metaphorical; the Binding makes falsehood psychically toxic.

Blood Dependency

Like Rat-Things, Krākars require weekly blood feedings, which cost HP.
Corvids are less discrete: they tend to bite the face, hands, or ears unless trained.

Curiosity Dependency

Krākars must also be fed with new information at least weekly:

Research

Confessions

Data

Gossip

Ritual discoveries

Obscure trivia

Personal secrets

Something someone wants to hide

If deprived, a Krākar becomes restless, judgmental, and then outright hostile:

Revealing the Master’s secrets

Screeching truths during rituals

Sabotaging research

Following the Master around reciting debts and failures

Attempting to provoke confrontation so the Master “faces reality”

No Mutation (External)

Krākars retain a mostly normal avian appearance—useful when the goal is espionage.
But inside, their neural structure is saturated with Tertia geometry.

Advantages to the Master

Perfect Recall

Everything spoken, written, or seen is retained with flawless precision.

Aerial reconnaissance

Krākars are excellent scouts and can slip through vents, ruins, jungle, or debris.

Subspace Drift

They can briefly “blink” into subspace to avoid attack or slip through cracks.

Legal & Practical Shielding

A Krākar’s memories cannot be subpoenaed—nor can they be edited or coerced.

An ethical nightmare

They make phenomenal blackmail assistants, advisers on deception (ironically), and handlers for dangerous moral terrain. Nothing stays hidden from them.

Dangers

1. The No-Lying Taboo

A Krākar’s Master must learn to speak only with precision or silence. Political careers, marriages, and undercover operations crumble instantly.

2. Brutal Honesty

Krākars do not soften the truth.
They say what is—not what might be wise or kind.

3. Memory Weaponization

If mistreated, a Krākar will begin:

Reciting the Master’s failures to their enemies

Revealing classified information

Repeating private conversations in public

Whispering truths at inconvenient times

Following the Master during negotiations

4. Hard to Kill

Corvids are hardy.
Daemon-corvid hybrids are absurdly hardy.
They will also abandon a dying or stagnant master without remorse.