Aebegai

Aebegai (pronounced /ˈɛbɪgaɪ/) is a bonelord of Varra who controls a large plateau known as the Cuthmart. Also known as the Hungry One, Aebegai is notorious for imprisoning prey within its enormous ribcage, to slowly feed on their élan vital.

Description

Aebegai's main body looks like a gigantic, slightly elongated ribcage, with the spine running across the top. The front of the ribcage is blocked by three overlapping sets of hand bones, while the back is similarly blocked by an enormous pelvis. Various other limbs attach to the spine. Attached to the side of the spine at intervals are six long, quadriarticulate legs, made up of giant femurs and tipped with what appear to be the oversized skulls of some kind of ruminant, the jaws opening to a full 180 degrees so that both upper and lower jaws can be flat against the ground when it walks. Branching from the top of the spine are three long, mobile necks made up of more vertebrae, each bearing at the end a single humanoid skull, slightly bigger than the skull of an ordinary human but grossly undersized for Aebegai's bulk. It is through these skulls that the Hungry One speaks, and it is apparently through them that it senses its surroundings as well. The skulls all look similar, but their voices vary in pitch; the frontmost skull has the highest voice, and the rearmost skull the lowest. Finally, branching from the bottom of the spine are a dozen long tentacles made of still more vertebrae, each ending in two sets of foot bones both joined at the heel to the tentacle, and positioned with the soles facing each other to make a sort of claw. These tentacles represent Aebegai's main method of seizing prey, and are left coiled within the ribcage when not in use. When Aebegai's ribcage is full, the tentacles snake out between the ribs and wrap around the outside of the ribcage to further secure it.

In all, Aebegai is about 5.8 meters long, and when standing in its usual posture about 6.2 meters tall, not counting its necks and heads, which if fully extended straight up (which they seldom are) could add another 6.1 meters. It is estimated to weigh about four metric tons.

Domain

Aebegai's domain, the Cuthmart, is a long desert plateau, extending almost a thousand kilometers across the continent of Junuth, and averaging over three hundred kilometers in width. The Cuthmart is as barren as the rest of the deathfields, with some scraggly thornbushes its most prominent vegetation. There Aebegai's undead servants patrol the land, more concerned with keeping out agents of the other bonelords than of fending off mortals. This isn't to say that mortals are safe on the Cuthmart, only that they will be attacked out of hunger or boredom rather than territorial protection.

Although the Hungry One has some of its agents investigate the élan crystals scattered around the plateau, it does so in quest of new magical powers, and shows relatively little interest in the crystal worlds some of them contain. This means that residents of those crystal worlds can hope to be left relatively alone by external forces—Aebegai has no desire to bother them, and any other significant forces would have to get through Aebegai's realm to get to them. However, while residents of these crystal worlds can therefore live unmolested as long as they stay in their worlds, any commerce they might aspire to have with other crystal worlds or with Varra itself would involve crossing the Cuthmart and facing its hazards.

The Hungry One itself has no palace or other headquarters, but roams its domain freely. It does not object to its servitors constructing edifices, however, and various castles and other such structures do exist scattered around the Cuthmart, tenanted by some of Aebegai's most powerful servants. Aebegai has even been known to use its powers to create buildings itself for some of its most favored servitors.

Powers

Aside from the powers common to all bonelords, Aebegai has developed a number of powers of its own. The power it is best known for, of course, is the one that gives the Hungry One its epithet. It is able to trap living organisms in its gigantic ribcage and draw on their élan vital, augmenting its own power and healing any injuries it might sustain. While it can control the rate of this drain, and can drain all the élan vital from an average human in a matter of minutes if it wishes to, Aebegai normally chooses to feed more slowly, gradually draining a person over several days. It has the power to magically sustain beings in its ribcage as well, so that it can, if it desires, leave victims inside itself for long periods without food or water, saving them for its time of need or simply keeping them prisoner.

Among Aebegai's other powers is control of the air; Aebegai can cause and alter winds, from light breezes to hurricanes. This includes moving air around to alter its density in different places, creating areas of high density that make it difficult to move, or of low density or even vacuum to suffocate its enemies. Its control is fine enough to produce and control sound, as well, taunting foes with strange noises and voices with no obvious origin. Aebegai also has the ability to solidify volumes of air, temporarily or permanently, into a hard, transparent substance it calls chule. Aebegai uses this power for construction of walls and buildings and sometimes to entrap enemies within blocks of chule.

Servants

Like most of the bonelords, Aebegai has a variety of undead servitors. While it has the usual contingent of skeletons and ghosts and other common undead among its agents, Aebegai has also created—or discovered—other types of undead not known elsewhere, and enlisted them in its service. Aebegai particularly enjoys creating new types of undead out of various collections of bones, perhaps sharing between them the personality and consciousness of the organisms the bones originally came from. Perhaps the best known of Aebegai's undead is the ananqar, a great sphere made of multiple skulls, with a framework of other bones in its interior. While very powerful, however, ananqars are rare; there are thought to be fewer than fifty of them in existence. More common among Aebegai's servitors are macamars, things like snakes made of bones with skeletal hands for heads; pankers, huge, spidery life forms made mostly of leg bones; powks, small and fast quadrupeds made of an assortment of bones; and hallacks, flying things with a pelvis for a main body.

Some of Aebegai's agents serve more subtle purposes, however. The quaan are floating ribcages that allow other beings to scry in their interiors. The lawa are things with tongues made of phalanges with which they can read thoughts. The ws are roughly man-shaped collections of floating bits and fragments of bone that usually go dressed in robes; they are perhaps the most intelligent and magically powerful of Aebegai's creations, and are rumored to have the power to travel to other worlds.

Aebegai's agents have little in the way of a formal hierarchy; it doesn't care for the tendency of many other bonelords to bestow titles and awards on its servitors. Its underlings are more or less left to their own devices as far as organizing themselves and choosing leaders, and many of them do choose to bestow names and titles on themselves and each other, even if those titles aren't officially recognized by their master. Aebegai is, however, fairly generous with granting them powers, and seems to keep them in control indirectly that way. Instead of officially advancing his favorite servants, he grants them powers that allow them to rise to power; conversely, a servant who falls out of favor may have some of his power revoked, leaving room for his rivals to supplant him.

Behavior

As its epithet implies, Aebegai seems frequently to be hungry, filling his ribcage with victims to devour and sate it with élan. Contrary to what many people believe, however, it doesn't keep its ribcage continually filled. Rather, Aebegai may go for weeks without "eating" anyone and then binge, sending its servitors out to collect prey for it to fill its ribcage with. Aebegai also tends to fill its ribcage if it thinks itself likely to soon get into a fight or another potentially damaging situation.

The Hungry One seems to have a deep interest in archaeology and in researching the past, particularly the times prior to the Ravaging. Many of its servitors are set on traveling to other parts of the word, far beyond the Cuthmart, to find and study remnants or records of ancient times. The ws are particularly suited to this task, but other agents are also sent with them to pursue these investigations. Aebegai has often been known to strike deals or alliances with other bonelords and even with mortals when it thinks it could be useful for its research. Indeed, Aebegai keeps up long-term correspondences and friendships with some distant scholars with whom it trades information. In some cases, it pursues these relationships under a false identity, and its collaborators have no idea they are in communication with a bonelord; some of its colleagues, however, know full well what they are dealing with, but believe it to be worth the knowledge they gain.