Cast of Abyssals (NPCs)

Death Knights

Typhon, Wink in the Storm's Eye
The First and Foremost of Winter
Ambassador to the Confederation of Rivers
Caste: Day (night)
Anima: vermin
Theme: buddy Mask of Winters, everyone's friend, the showman
Motivation: Savor what must soon perish.
While his full title is Wink of the Storm's Eye, he goes by Typhon to calm the locals in Thorns. Exalted by the Mask of Winters when he was impressed by the young man's fighting prowess and wit. Currently he wheels and deals for power for his city with the Council of the Concordat.

From a young age, the youth who would become the deathknight Typhon, Wink of the Storm’s Eye, might have been destined for infamy and a life of treachery. His mother belonged to a secret society of dispossessed scions of Great Houses—patricians, mostly—called the “Thousand Fang Society,” which sought to regain power on the Blessed Isle. The Society’s great plan was to murder the Mouth of Peace and frame the Scarlet Empress for the deed. As the young patrician himself expected, counter-agents of the Realm’s All-Seeing Eye quickly snuffed out this ludicrous nascent conspiracy, forcing the young man and his mother to flee for their lives. They ended up in Thorns with nothing but the clothes on their backs. In Thorns, the young exile persuaded his mother to let him perform the confidence schemes, unsavory favors and miscellaneous skullduggery that would restore their fortune. She acquiesced, and they made a reasonable home for themselves in the war-exhausted city. When the Empress disappeared, it seemed they could finally relax and stop living their lives in fear. The next year, the Mask of Winters conquered the city. The young exile did not fear the dead, but his mother found them abhorrent. She had not, she insisted, defied the Scarlet Empress and fled across the Inland Sea to become a peon in a dreary
shadowland. Against her son’s wishes and despite his arguments, she tried to
organize a resistance movement against the Mask of Winters. She proved just capable a revolutionary as she had been before. The Deathlord watched in amusement from afar as his soldiers slew her in her “secret” headquarters. Her son tried to defend her out of filial duty, but the
Mask of Winters saw how half-heartedly he fought. The Deathlord called for Monstrance and spoke in the mind of the young man who lay dying with a bone knife in his guts. Even at death’s door, the young exile impressed the Deathlord with his clever wit and his keen grasp certain uncomfortable political realities. The Deathlord offered this young man place in his service, and the young man accepted.

As a deathknight of the Day Caste, the Wink of the Storm’s Eye speaks for the Mask of Winters in the Scavenger Lands’ Council of the Concordat. He calls himself “Typhon” because the locals find a name less ominous than his Neverborn-bestowed title. Typhon believes in Thorns and defends it passionately to those in the Council who speak out against it. He puts a brave face and a politic spin on the Mask of Winters’ policies. When that fails to set his fellow Council members’ minds at ease, he resorts to bribery, backroom deals or underhanded tricks.

Typhon looks like a fit man in his early twenties, with a shock of close-cropped black hair and a roguish smile. Defying early expectations, Typhon gained some popularity and influence in the Council through his skill at dealmaking, favor-trading and influence-peddling, working out treaties and compromises that help both Thorns and the Confederation of Rivers. He even counts among his allies several Solar Exalts who respect the Mask of Winters’ power and have made non-aggression agreements with the
Deathlord. The Neverborn are less pleased with Typhon’s immersion in mortal politics and high society, but so far the young deathknight manages to vent their necrotic ire in ways that leave his courtly reputation intact.



Maiden of the Mirthless Smile
The Master Strategist
Caste: Dusk (dawn)
Anima: humanoid shapes in agony
Theme: general of all armies, the destructor
Motivation: Spit on the ashes of Creation.
She is a master strategist and commands armies of the undead for her Master, who could possibly be the Deathlord Walker in Darkness. Her "Wolf Catching the Snake's Tail" technique is feared by many among the Exalted. She owns a soulsteel Grand Daiklave named Ironic Jest.



Another image of Mirthless

Disciple of the Seven Forbidden Wisdoms
Caste: Day (night)
Theme: assassin seeking redemption, archer
Disciple remembers his exalted past, not with pain and sadness, but clarity of vision. He does not want to become who he once was, but to appreciate the finer aspects. Above all, he remembers the love he had for a man, now reborn as Harmonious Jade (solar night case assassin). In the First Age, they were lovers and Night caste assassins working together, of which he hopes to reclaim. Many abyssals see him as a renegade and traitor.



Falling Tears Poet
Wisdom's Cracked Vase
The Sorrowful Calligrapher
Caste: Moonshadow
Anima:
Theme: Unrequited Lover


Lady of Darkness in Bloodstained Robes
The High Priestess
Caste: Midnight (zenith)
Anima: humanoid figures in exquisite sexual agony
Theme: high priestess
Motivation: Seduce all who believe themselves virtuous.



The Seven-Degreed Physician of Black Maladies
Caste: Daybreak
Theme: The Necrotech Artificer


Apostate in Tatters
Caste: Midnight (zenith)
Theme: bard
Apostate is a virtuoso of the harp and rarely if ever leaves the Underworld or the Labyrinth. He is never seen in Thorns, but can be found always in the service of his master. "The Tone of Innocence" an ancient rosewood harp that belonged to the legendary traveling minstrel Taliesin. It is said that Apostate in Tatters is trained by Taliesin's ghost himself. At the completion of his education the Mask of Winter had Taliesin processed into soulmetal and turned into a tuning fork for Talamadh. This sacrifice is what enabled The Harp to accept Apostate in Tatters as her new master of Perfect Quality, adding +2 to Performance with this Harp.



Concubine of Laments and Brine
Caste: Day (night)
Theme: curious childlike assassin, Raksha hunted
A child from the north, Concubine was an odd little girl that sang to the water. But what she sang to was the Fae Folk. Finally, the Raksha could wait no longer, and sought to ravage the girl. The Mask of Winters whispered then, taking hold of the girl to exalt at the near moment of her mind's death. What remained was damned, crazed, and fae-touched.

Hand that Ceases
Caste: Dusk (Dawn)
Theme: ultimate warrior, devoid of emotion
Little is known of this man. He is dark, quiet, scornful yet emotionless.  He is a lord of blades, typically sword and scythe. His circle calls him The Child for the rages he can enter into, much like a tantrum.

Vile Whisper
Caste: Daybreak (twilight)
Theme: twisted, sadistic sorcerer, scholar of the abyss
In life, his was nothing remarkable as the retarded child of a butcher in Nexus. His father never laid a hand on his wife, though one look would shut her up. And his mother was a drunkard, abusing Charles in devious and sexual ways in her stupors, loving one moment then hateful the next. Little Charlie Hays. he was a runt, thin, gangly, and retarded. He began learning his father's trade of butchery on slum cats and dogs. Eventually he turned that work on his father when the angry man told Charles he would amount to nothing, would not take a place in his father's shop, and should be sold to slaves. Charles might have been dumb, but some part of him understood.

So angry, he cooked up his mother into meat pies, to sell in the shop and prove himself to his father. When he went to toss the bones, cargo moving from ships smacked him in the head. Tossed over, rats laid into his flesh and the deathlord did the rest. He keeps his father in his clutches, alive still in Nexus.

Shorn Heart
Aysel/Diane
Caste: Moonshadow (eclipse)
Theme: fine lady, pained innocent, hesitant warrior of hell

The woman that was Diane...is no more. The moment she exalted, the woman she was erased away by the soul of the fallen solar. Aysel of Whitewall awoke, remembering fragments of a painful death, and equally heart wrenching life in those final days before her death. She was once a member of a circle led by Gaius, dawn caste. Her current work is to be the lover of the reborn Gaius and await orders.

The Black Mother
Caste: Midnight (zenith)
Theme: loving mother