The Blood Court

The beings that would become the Asura were once the Gandharvas, a space-bound civilization composed of a progenitor hivemind and led by a semi-autonomous leader caste. They were traders travelling in mighty fleets across the cosmos, temporarily staying in one system to replenish and repair their vessels. If they had a home planet, any information on it or its ultimate fate has been lost to obscurity, for the Gandharvas kept no written records and rarely shared what they knew.

During the Second Great Cataclysm, the Gandharva throng present on the ark, Infinity Horizon, was cut off from the rest of the Gestalt. Left leaderless, the swarm was quick to degenerate into a feral and ravenous host that devastated and corrupted the local lands for centuries…that is, until the emergence of the first Asura – the one who betrayed. Being cut off from the greater gestalt consciousness had little impact on him, for he was the first leader-caste Gandharva to become free and aware of his own individuality. And…with individuality came a desire for power, self-preservation, and ambition. He killed off the rest of the leader caste so that he and his offspring alone would command authority over the great host.

Thereafter, he led a century-long bloody campaign of conquest, felling even the mightiest of kingdoms and slaughtering its inhabitants to a man. None could resist the Dark tide.

Yet, the Great Betrayer himself would be betrayed by his scions, and chaos would follow within his curved realm of Rasatala as each heir attempted to wield control all for themselves. At present, the court lies fractured with the Betrayer’s originally vast empire now divided into a mosaic of various petty dominions and strongholds, as much at war with each other as with outsiders.

To other cultures of Infinity Horizon, this Gandharva offshoot is referred to as the form-weavers because they seemingly are able to mold flesh at will.

However, in reality, the Asura have no standard inherent anatomy, having the form of a shapeless, writhing dark sludge highly sensitive to light.

There, it is merely the formless Asura finding dead bodies as a convenient vessel to latch on to – the skeleton providing a rigid support frame for greater function and the rotting soft parts around it a ready source of nutrition and shielding from direct sunlight.

The lords of the Blood Court take the possession of the dead a bit further and, as some might say, make it into an ‘art form.’ Grafting parts from various bodies, they fashion for themselves resplendent amid macabre “suits” of armor.