code_of_conquest_dnd/content/lore/the-seven.md

THE SEVEN — the demon kings — status: canon

Seven kings, seven armies, seven kinds of blood. Each is a person.*, secrecy: 0, relating up to faction.the-seven (Task 1 / cosmology.md). Tight sketches — a king, the blood it craves, its army, how it corrupts a mortal. Gritty, not cartoonish: each is a way mortals actually bleed. No questlines here; those hang off these ids later.

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id: person.kareth-the-red-king
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [faction.the-seven]
body: >
  Kareth, the Red King, first and loudest of the Seven. The blood he wants is the
  battlefield's — slaughter, the more of it and the less reason the better. His
  army is the horde, and it grows because he is generous with the promise of
  victory and the men who take it rarely live to complain that it was a lie. He
  does not whisper. He works through the rage already in a mortal, the feud that
  only needs a reason, the certainty that the sword is the short way through.
  Where Kareth has been, there is a field that will not grow for a generation and
  no one left who remembers starting it.

id: person.vael-the-quiet-knife
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [faction.the-seven]
body: >
  Vael, the Quiet Knife, the intimate one. The blood Vael craves is the kind
  spilled indoors — the trusted killed by the trusted, the poison in the cup you
  were poured, the debt settled between people who once shared bread. Vael keeps
  no horde; its army is a scatter of ones, each certain they acted alone. It
  works through the grudge held too long and the moment the knife looks like the
  only door left in the room. Kareth takes the field. Vael takes the household,
  and no one hears it happen.

id: person.morren-the-grey-mother
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [faction.the-seven]
body: >
  Morren, the Grey Mother, who comes with the fever. The blood she wants is thin
  and slow — the dying, the plague-struck, the ones given up on. Her army is the
  sick, and she is patient in a way the others are not, because rot does her
  recruiting. She works through despair, and cruelest of all through mercy: the
  pillow held over a suffering face, the kindness that is also a killing. Morren
  does not lie about what she offers. She offers an end, and for a great many of
  the Margreave's dying, that is temptation enough.

id: person.ghaul-the-yoke
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [faction.the-seven]
body: >
  Ghaul, the Yoke, the patient profit of the Seven. The blood Ghaul takes is
  worked out slow — chattel bought and sold and used until there is nothing left
  to use. Its army is the coffle and the counting-house, and it does not need to
  whisper to a man who has already found that a person is cheaper than an ox. It
  works through the ledger: the wage shaved, the debt made unpayable, the
  reasoning that a body one owns is a body one may spend. Ghaul is the least
  dramatic of the Seven and by a plain count of the ruined the most successful.

id: person.ishri-the-open-mouth
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [faction.the-seven]
body: >
  Ishri, the Open Mouth, the hunger that is never a meal. The blood Ishri wants
  is the blood spent chasing more — drunk to death, wanted to ruin, taken because
  taking felt like living. Its army is the appetite of anyone who has stopped
  being able to stop. It does not corrupt so much as encourage; it stands at a
  mortal's shoulder and agrees that one more will not hurt, and it is right until
  it is not. Ishri leaves the neatest corpses and the emptiest houses, everything
  sold to feed a want that was never going to be full.

id: person.nuun-the-hollow-choir
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [faction.the-seven, rule.possession]
body: >
  Nuun, the Hollow Choir, the many-voiced. The blood Nuun gathers is a mortal's
  own — the self-slain, the ones talked into the river or off the roof by a voice
  they took for their own thought. Its army is the emptied, and it is Nuun, of
  all the Seven, that most often does the old horror outright and wears a mortal
  like a coat, because a hollowed body is the only kind it truly wants. It works
  through the whisper, the crack in a mind widened patiently until there is room
  for something else to move in. A person going quietly, terribly wrong, and
  swearing nothing is the matter, is Nuun's ordinary work.

id: person.draeth-the-crowned-worm
type: person
status: canon
secrecy: 0
related: [faction.the-seven]
body: >
  Draeth, the Crowned Worm, the one that likes a throne. The blood Draeth feeds
  on is a ruler's to spend — a people bled by the one meant to keep them, for
  power that always seems worth the cost to the one paying it with other lives.
  Its army is whoever a corrupted crown can command, which is the cruelest of the
  Seven's arithmetic. It works through ambition, the small justified step and the
  next, until a lord is sacrificing the realm to hold the realm and calling it
  duty. Draeth rarely has to lie. It only has to wait by the chair and let the
  sitting do the rest.