The Amaranthines are mythical creations of Necromancer Queen Violette of Vitriol.
They have been the subject of gossip, purported to be fruitless attempts at forging her own image, experiments gone awry.
There have been unverified sightings of these beings over the years. Some say they exist among us, hiding in plain sight, dead things pretending to be human. Yet, little is known of these beings.
At this time there is no documentation that definitively verifies their existence.
Contained herein are scrolls collected by Master Elök Etrelpas of the Elders regarding the topic of Amaranthines.
SCROLL #739466
The Archives of Ämetatilelël
Letter found among the belongings of a late adventurer, Raven of Nakkum
Mentions—Queen Violette of Vitriol; “Demon Shout,” the Grave Wand held by Queen Violette of Vitriol; Amaranthines
I know not how long I have left, but the wand compels me to leave this for you, dear adventurer.
It is not uncommon for holders of this wand to have visions from the witch demon’s mind. You may have such broken visions of her memories yourself. The one before me kept meticulous notes of every vision they had, looking for clues to find some of her other possessions. They believed that holding all of them would let them connect to the witch’s spirit like never before.
I, on the other hand, concerned myself only with some of them.
The ones that portend great terrors for the Realm.
The ones that haunt me.
This one in particular.
~o~
The Wand leads me back to the ruins. It’s been a long day. I sink onto the ground where my Tower stood tall not a few nights ago.
They were right. In the end, I failed. I failed them. I failed myself. I failed my destiny. How could I have let this happen? How did I not see it coming? What did I miss?
The familiar feeling of bitter vitriol washes over me.
No. I haven’t failed entirely. Not yet. I may not have seen them coming, but the fools only took down the Facade. They didn’t find anything important. They didn’t take anything True.
I dig my fingers into the rubble, into the ground and tune my heart and my mind to its strength and my true home within.
Darkness.
Relief.
The floor dissolves momentarily into ether to let me in.
Home.
This place knows magic unlike any that we practise. How else could it restore me so completely as soon as I entered? How can it drive the world outside so far away, making everything else so unimportant? The dungeon. My home. My sanctum. All that’s interesting to me in the universe is now held between these walls. Comfort and adventure all at once.
Like you, Death.
The bitterness of the wand strikes a comfortable balance with the soothing smells of Death.
Peaceful, calming, welcoming but also brimming with mystery and potential. Not everyone sees you that way, do they Death? I feel bad for those who are scared of you. For those who don’t know or understand you as intimately as I do. Well, fuck them! I’m grateful for your company. For all the things we create together.
For Amaranthine.
The coldness of the Grave Wand seeps through me into Amaranthine, lifting her from her resting place and drawing her to the workbench.
I don’t need to make her for the Elders anymore, do I? You took them all. Maybe I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. Maybe those fools that toppled my Tower did me a huge favour. How did I not see this before? The Tower is a small price to pay for my freedom from their grip. I can make Amaranthine however I want to, now. I can take as long as I want making her. We can make her beautiful, Death. We can make her unique. We can make her interesting.
Her body contorts into strange shapes that I have never seen before . . . it’s strange, but also somehow familiar?
A lost, forgotten feeling finds me.
I can do anything I want. They don’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore. There are no rules.
A violent surge of energy passes through me into her. She disintegrates into a thousand pieces and grafts herself back together onto a pair of demon wings.
Are you excited, Amaranthine? How shall I make you? I didn’t think of this when I named you, but did you know, in another world, amaranth is a shade of violet? Did you know they called me Violette?
The sound of my name, even all alone, still makes my hackles rise.
Violette. The woman I never wanted to be. The woman I don’t have to be anymore. But if I’m not her, then who am I? Could I have been you? Maybe. But who are you, Amaranthine? A child that has ceased to exist. The child I could have been if not for the Elders manipulating every aspect of life?
I recognise the shapes her body is making.
I dreamed them up in that graveyard, the longest time ago. When I first found you, Death. Do you remember? When I ran away from them. When I was hiding. Why did I go back?
The thought of childhood ignites a sudden, sharp surge of vitriol.
If it was just peace, just happiness, just goodness that you took from me . . . But no, you took more. Now I’ll never know what I could have become. Who I could have been.
Amaranthine. A mystery.
Are you a monster, too? You’d think I wouldn’t have become one if not for them, wouldn’t you? But no. I think I was always going to become some version of this. This. The “Other.”
A darkness enters her and spreads through her being.
I should make more of you, shouldn’t I, Amaranthine? From more children that have ceased to exist. For every trick, every game they played, the child that could have existed had they not. For every—
Her eyes.
What?
No.
That’s not possible. I’m imagining things.
But something flows from me through the Wand and into her, forming dark red questions in her eyes and forever lost to me.
That was a mistake. I’m losing focus.
I break my bond with the Wand.
~o~
I try to grasp at that memory like a madwoman, desperately trying to hold on to what I saw in her eyes. But it slips through my mind into the far ends of my consciousness every time, lost to me as it was to her.
But I remember how it felt. That bone-chilling sense of dread. That all consuming sense of power. I cannot ignore it like she did.
There is danger there. I am sure of it.
~o~
Analysis by Master Elök Etrelpas of the Elders, Deputy Archivist:
This epistle raises many questions. The Queen and her Coven were thought to have perished along with her Tower after their defeat at the hands of the Heroes of Lunnon. But what if she survived? What if the repeated mentions of “them” and the Elders in the vision refer to the Coven?
The Queen spent most of her existence shaping necrotic entities as tools and weaponry, but what if, freed from obligations to her Coven after their defeat, this instance denotes her first foray into the realm of necromantic artistry in the later stages of her life? Adventurer Raven warns us of these creations. Something about them seems to have horrified both Raven and even the Queen herself. Further investigation is required.
SCROLL #9890
Pages from the notes of late adventurer, Morana of Ha‘ule‘u
Mentions—Queen Violette of Vitriol; “Demon Shout,” the Grave Wand held by Queen Violette of Vitriol; Amaranthines; Queen Violette’s Silver Ring
12th Day in the season of Icewhile.
Year of the Great Unification
Vision 32
Trigger: My sister’s grave
Darkness.
Silence.
The calm, numbing coldness of the Grave Wand finds me again.
Death.
I haven’t had a real conversation with anyone but you, Death, in a very long time. Everyone I bring home with me is so busy fearing you, they have no time for me. I wish, for once, one of them would actually talk to me or say something worth hearing, for once. If they had anything worth preserving in them, I wouldn’t so easily give them to you. But they’re all the same.
I wonder if there’s a way to keep a part of them in the piece, just an echo of what made them them. I’ve never let the supplies inspire the creation before . . .
What of you, little child? What makes you unique? Is there any part of you worth keeping in Amaranthine?
My awareness reaches out through the Wand, searching the echo of the child’s consciousness.
Fear. Horror. Panic.
They told you to fear us, didn’t they? I know known terrors seem safer than havens unknown. The monsters we call family seem safer than those they call “the Other.” But trust me—Death and I will be kinder to you than they would have been.
Ask the girl who was to be Violette. She’s thankful I took her place.
At the back of my awareness, I feel her stir. The girl whose name and life I stole. The girl that would have been Violette if not for their games. She never really left me, but without the Wand, I wouldn’t have known. She’s good at hiding at the far edges of my consciousness.
I think she felt bad for me. I’ll never be sure if it’s pity or vitriol that kept her from moving on, but I know she agrees with me on this—she’s the luckier one.
Another child that didn’t get a chance to exist. I wish I knew where they hid your body, Violette. It would have been so perfect for—
A blinding flash of pain shatters my bond with the Wand.
~o~
Analysis by Master Elök Etrelpas of the Elders, Deputy Archivist
I am more confused than ever. If these are the Queen’s visions, who does she talk of as Violette?
It has been said that the Coven killed the real Princess of Lunnon and conjured a witch-demon to take her place. The witch-demon the world knows as Queen Violette. Was this true?
Adventurer Morana kept extensive notes about her visions in her quest of tracking down the Queen’s relics and many of her records have been verified as true. Her observations confirm my suspicions. These are artistic creations.
SCROLL #112
The Archives of Ämetatilelël
Pages from the Journal of an adventurer—Origins Unknown
Mentions—Queen Violette of Vitriol; “Demon Shout,” the Grave Wand held by Queen Violette of Vitriol; Amaranthine
~o~
I need to write every detail of this down before I forget.
The Wand answers my call, and we wrap our minds around each other.
The Mind is a place where rage, fear, and loneliness meet. The Body is where movements for life come together. Your Body and Mind work together to allow for some limited expression of what is happening in your Mind.
Amaranthine’s body and mind contort at my command, but all I can see is hideousness.
Every attempt at this is garbage. What am I doing wrong?
Bitter, blood-curdling hatred seeps through me as I look at her.
I thought the body was the problem. Using Princess Violette’s body didn’t make it better. Using a woman’s body is not making it any better. That’s not it. If the artist and the subject of the creation are vile, how can the creation not be?
I reach out through the Wand and into her mind.
I’m Death. I’m the madwoman. I birth affairs in which GREEN is the key to slaying me. I am a madwoman because I love death. I love the feeling of pointy things vs. pushing vs. being combined into a one single entity. I love the feeling of wind into my body, accelerating my own growth. I love the feeling of something living inside of me, despite its being. I love the feeling of death myself. I love the way my wonderful layers are taking form around me. I love the feeling of being in control. I love the feeling of being written. I love the feeling of being…
I break my bond with her and the Wand in disgust.
~o~
I’ve had visions of her using the Grave Wand, making necrotic chimaeras before. But did I just see her reaching into the mind of one? And did I just see its thoughts?
~o~
I did some digging.
I couldn’t find much about Amaranthines. But there are rumours; disturbingly more and more of them crop up each year. Some say it was a failed experiment. I think it was a failed attempt at a self-portrait.
Her creations are almost always talked about as mindless. Almost. But I found something else. A journal of an investigator found decades ago in Lunnon. He writes about encountering one of her chimaeras. He said it made calculated moves. That it moved with purpose. With intention.
But surely, that’s not possible? A witch, even one with demon blood—no matter how powerful—cannot create a being that has its own mind and thoughts?
What would it mean if they could, though. Would that mean it has a soul?
Analysis by Master Elök Etrelpas of the Elders, Deputy Archivist
I am utterly confused. Are those jumbled words really thoughts of a sentient necrotic being? Was Queen Violette really trying to create beings capable of thought? She also seems to have created many versions of them. The adventurer calls them “Amaranthines” as if they were a race of beings.
Further, we must note that the journal mentioned in this scroll could be Inquisitor Mortward’s Journal from Lunnon (see scroll #766 )
SCROLL #19812
Pages from the notes of late adventurer, Morana of Ha‘ule‘u
Mentions—Queen Violette of Vitriol; Queen Violette’s silver ring; Amaranthines
21st Day in the Season of Icewhile
2nd Year of the Wolf
Vision 294
Trigger: Boneflowers around my sister’s grave.
The world is a wild, wild place. There’s no consistency or order to it. Only the wanderlusts and momentary insights of the moment tug at my heart. I’m constantly connected to the Great Zoo of the Bobolens. My skin is my own 15 inch mirror between canary yellow fields towards the brink of black. I’m an amaranthine. The world is an amara. Only the madwoman Amaranthine can be mad. The world is a wild, wild place. And the madwoman Amara must be something other than an amara. She sometimes thinks of the birds in her backyard as she views the wildflowers in the garden. She occasions celebratory coffee in her garden, with chickens, before contemplating the day’s findings in her head. She is an amara.
~o~
I’ve been getting many visions like these recently. They started when I found the ring. Is it from when she was an infant and couldn’t form coherent thoughts?
But no. She didn’t have the ring that young. Did lunacy take her at the end? But it doesn’t feel like her mind. There’s an echo of her in there somewhere, but something about the mind felt . . . unfinished?
Analysis by Master Elök Etrelpas of the Elders, Deputy Archivist:
Adventurer Morana doesn’t seem to understand—is this from the mind of an Amaranthine?
The world is a wild, wild place.