Legends of Belariath

Tribes and Clans

Spirettes

NOTE: Spirettes are not a normally playable tribe of Chirot. NPC use only.

Description

Tall and lanky, lean of build and almost skeletal like. Their wings alone must reach over the 15 foot marker and are constantly wrapped about their figures like old leathery cloaks. The only difference in that kind of appearance is the talons that jut upwards and coil black and cracked in appearance at each junction of the wings. Their faces are not maws but rather a wrinkled seeming older man. The eyes are large, heavily lined; grey to near white coloration and some display the gold markings that fleck around the iris. The lips are thin, yet when pulled back into a grimace of dark satisfaction the teeth are not sharp but crookedly set and oddly spaced. Their tongues are purplish in hue and are rather long and well rounded. Almost fat in appearance. What hair is owned is stringy despite how clean these creatures are, from deep blacks to almost grey or silver depending on age. These beasts so foul of nature are indeed very clean. Fastidious about it as a matter of fact they bathe nearly twice or more a day. Perhaps it’s ritualistic but few argue with their needs on this subject.

The height is something different all in all, one can tell by the wings and the ears that jut above their heads seem paper thin and fan out at the tips that these once were Chirot, but the height of these creatures is from seven feet to a near breath taking eight feet in total. They tend to loom forward over their victims or those they rule. A curve to their back and almost hunch like if you will. Frail in body... but not in mind.

Their breath is fetid, for the creatures rarely bother with meat and contend themselves with a sweet fruit that’s native and somehow grows in a dense area of trees. Shaped much like a pear and yet its coloration is almost purplish black which might explain the coloration of their tongues. Heavy leaf like lettuce is another favorite and this is where the stench of their very breath seems to come from. They have it boiled and mingled with the fruits inner meaty pulp and spread such over thin crispy type bread. This alone makes up their meals and perhaps it might also have something to do with their intelligence, their sharp eye sight and keen hearing. Something that is exuded from the plant and worms its way into their frail forms to keep them going.

The wings themselves seem just as frail as those tall bodies and yet they can support the creatures as well as one other for it’s not just the length of them but the sheer width as they grow older. The normal age for death is somewhere around 400 years, the oldest documented was 416 years of age before he was actually killed in some ‘mining’ accident. Their fingers are longer then normal, tipped with sharp grubby seeming black talons and their feet as well have abnormal sharp talon like nails that likely are used when a higher perch is to be found.

Background

The mainstay of nightmarish reality are these things that now loom before you. Fetid breath, that looming tall skeleton like body, those wings and ears and the split of a smile that speaks of death and control in one fell swoop. These are the Spirettes. So named over some 500 hundred years ago, a race of Chirot once. Once. They had sifted from their brethren over a fracture within magical ways. They had broken free of the main stream and decided to delve within darker magic’s. Magic’s forbidden or misunderstood. They’d tripped across it on accident and began digging for more and more until that is all what the entire group did. Played. Wanted, it became an obsession and then an addiction. Until of course, one rather lovely sunny day when a maiden well prized by a Chirot elder went missing. The stories go that the girl, Destiera, had been out searching for mushrooms and had long since missed her supper time. The search parties weren’t called for, for several hours after until the darkness blanketed the lands. They found her three days later, sprawled within the boughs of a fir tree, at least, half of her. The other half was found oddly sticking up out of the ground. Gruesome things to discover but so as well were the whispers concerning the markings on her. One recognized the strange rune and as a whole, the village itself went to Tomsheres home and pounded until he answered. Answered he did, this Chirot, with a blood thirsty smile on his face and a tome in his hand. He looked for the entire world so very calm. Domineering. Uncaring of what they accused him of. Of course he’d done this, of course he’d not been alone, but look.. LOOK! Look what it brought them!

He tried to show them but they’d not bother to look. Didn’t want to look. Their fear and their note of his uncaring that he’d torn apart a young Chirot in the prime of her life was enough to convict him and those that were with him. The trial went quickly. Judged and sentenced to death the lot of them, 14 in all. They all pleaded not guilty and showed off their new found magic’s the hard way. It was a mistake. They’d pointed to another elders young son, beckoned him forth and he’d come with no fear. Their amazement wasn’t in what the boy did at the start, but how they made the boy dance for them; answer to their every word, how his skin seemed to sink inwards and his eyes go blind and vacant. How he danced in the air without wings and how the one controlling him seemed to gain a sick pleasure, grow taller and then order the boy to kill himself. Such was stopped of course, they’d seen enough. The boy was never the same again as if his life was sapped away. The fourteen were taken to cages to await their death at dawn but in the morning, they were gone and their guards looked as the boy had been.

Years went by, more then one hunting party searched for these freaks of their own race and nature and never were they found. It was silent, things began carrying on as usual until the younger Chirot began vanishing once again and this time, it wasn’t just one. Tracks were followed until nothing was left to be followed. Signs. Plans. Nothing worked and nothing was gained. Tales began of what it could be from perhaps a dragon with a hoard close by, to tales of unicorns and fantasy or even those of humans come to collect the Chirot for slaves. It was none of these things. Six months after the vanishings had begun, they stopped. And one lone missing boy was found stumbling close to the village. None however could say what happened next or recall the same as the next. What they do remember is the boy at a good age of becoming into adult hood, had looked old, wrinkled, hunched beyond his years. Wings that of leather hanging and grayish in coloration. His eyes so very vacant and from behind him, came something else. A darkening feel to the surroundings, a suppression of nature itself. Wings over sized and those eyes like the boys. It came, curled a sinewy arm about the boy and lifted off as if… it were nothing. The feeling persisted. Some claimed something had held them to their place, making them unable to move. Others claimed they’d seen something more then just a taller dark seeming Chirot. Some claimed it was a demon. No one was right. Yet they were all telling the truth.

So many years later, such tales are told around the camp fires or late at night to young Chirot. Don’t go out at night, don’t linger up there, the Spirettes will get you! It has been laughed off for years now, long since its power to frighten them or believe in the old tales wasn’t really worth their time except to see the younger ones get a start and a shudder.

Yet they are here. Deep into the dense forests they’d taken up residency far to the east of lands near undiscovered, using those they capture as slaves. Using their magic’s to control them. To build them a rotted seeming village of homes within large trees to mountain scales. It’s a quiet place with only chanting and demands ever heard to linger on the air. The entire energies are as if one is suppressed, held down. Weighty. Those that live and work there, if you can call it that, are hunched things, almost lifeless, moving slowly, clumsily. Fetching water, digging wells, making buildings. Creating parchments and candles. They are but slaves to the minds of the Spirettes. Once they were left to themselves and their numbers grew. Using those captured to keep their numbers thriving. To learn and breathe the magic’s of the Spire. That which is both death and life and yet something in between. A control of mind and body, a sickness they give with a touch and a few words. Like leaches. They are to frail to care for themselves and after all why should they? Slaves will do the work. Their addiction is all they need. All they use. But now, now somewhere in Nanthalion, some several hundreds of miles away, a new magic has been gathered and the strong taste of it spurs them onwards. Talk has begun. They want it. It’s powerful. It could make them more powerful.

Power corrupts and though this is only a story, its still a chilling notion. But is it really a Story? Not anymore as those in Nanthalion and even further to the North, will tell you. Their destruction and path has been expanding. Their slaves growing and picked from all races. War had come in the form of these monsters but their origins are still up to that mystery. Old Chirots speak of them as if to speak it may bring them down upon you. Others whisper a tale that perhaps one of the Elders chosen within the clans of the Chirot once shared a secret he guarded of Sheara with Tomsheres. Perhaps that is where this began. Perhaps it wasn't so much magic but a religious secret. Perhaps.

OOC Note -- Spirette are not Player Characters, but are NPC's to be used in Quests or Events at the Quest Teams permission.