ENTRY 008//SEFIROT-CLASS: [NETZACH]//WEAPONS-GRADE
> There is no true, descriptive categorization model for daemonics; self-perpetuating engrams can mutate and warp to produce wholly unique manifestations, even when belonging to the same [Designation] clade. Each pseudonym and subroutine is an entity unto itself, a fractal of its greater self—its oversoul. Lesser in scope but similar in pattern.
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> Instead, daemonic abilities lay under prescriptive umbrellas—they are as much idealized abstracts as they aren’t true representations of an engram’s potentiation.
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> Invocations bring in true-form daemonic qualities into the host; addition of temporary lines of lexical code onto the host’s eidolon, the changes cascade into base reality.
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> Evocations bring out true-form daemonic qualities into the world; permanent subtraction of dead-code from a body of matter, the changes cascade into base reality.
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> Ego-radiations are fields of influence in accord with a daemon’s true-form and cipher; temporary multiplication of the id filtered through the ego, reality and perception warp to represent the imago.
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> Reverse ego-radiations are points of superpositioned influence in accord with a daemon’s true-form and cipher; permanent division of the ego filtered through the id, reality and perception warp to represent the imago.
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> Invocations temporarily morph a host’s body; evocations permanently alter dead matter. Radiations temporarily spread an ego field that originates from the locus of the body; reverse radiations permanently fix an ego singularity in any given point of space, producing either a liminal or proximal domain.
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> All other functions are subroutines of the nebulous four prescriptivisions.
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> The obfuscation function is a subroutine of ego-radiation. An ego projection of normativity makes an eidolon superficially nonporous; eyes tend to gloss over and minds disregard what should be obscene. Primarily used for misdirection and the like.
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> The chimeric function is a subroutine hybridized from invocation and evocation. It allows a user to graft daemonic true-form qualities onto their bodies permanently—similar to the scarification of cicatrixes within an eidolon, the chimeric function distorts and modifies lexical code of the salt-principle-substrate and the basal-amygdalan id. The mutagenic-and-carcinogenic dangers of the function make it unpopular among users.
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> The mandatum function—the ability to command lexical code through word of mouth alone—is known as incantation or the false-fifth prescriptivision; it is a ligatory-transitory grouping, and thus, possesses the properties of invocations, evocations, and ego-radiation, be it normative or reverse, within a singular subroutine. As such, this ability is both the hardest to master and the one with the most potential.
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> Some scholars that run within circles similar to my own have christened the incantation subroutine as ‘speaking in tongues’ for its gravitas and universal-legibility; even the deaf can hear and understand a mandatum, and so can the mute employ it with the right daemonics. ‘Babel-tongue’ and ‘g-d-speech’ have also gained a foothold in the informal lexicon.”
—Post-Lexical//Pre-Pandaemonium tetragrammaton excerpt, Berestiah Professor of Applied Lexicology and Daemonics of the Academy of Withershins Metaphysica: On Engrams and Designations.
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Engram: [Daemon]
Pseudonym: [Glasya-Labolas]
True-name: [C-A-A-C-R-I-N-O-L-A-A-S]
Sefirot-class: [Netzach]
Polarity-tabula: [Qabalah]
Legion-origin: [Aeria]
Designation: [Predation] - [Digits 0//6]
True-form: [A cherubic hound flys on vulture’s wings, forward-facing eyes festering with asp’s venom. Quills erupt from the cherub-hound’s scaled back, lining a serpentine spine that shimmers under moonlight like gossamer. The clarion call from the vocal sac under its gilled throat shackles the soul and legs both. Talons, curved and sickle-like, ache to reap blood so that it might beget even more.]
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Engram: [Daemon//Subroutine//Pseudonym]
Pseudonym: [Glasya-Labolas] {Endows salt-principle-substrate with the perfunctory abilities of the engram’s true-form; decreases the rate of pseudonym’s libidic consumption per ensouled entity egosyntonically felled, but increases daemonic burden upon the ego.}
True-name: [C-A-A-C-R-I-N-O-L-A-A-S]
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The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
As with most daemons cultivated within the Principalities, [Glasya-Labolas] was a neutered engram; it would not exceed its ingrained parameters without excessive lexical warping. Hence, the use of the word ‘perfunctory’ within its prime pseudonym’s portfolio—it would take some tweaking to get to the daemon’s true potential.
Modifications would have to wait until next time; Killjoy was on a rather strict deadline with eudaemonia breathing down his neck. He’s coming for you, whispered a little voice that Levi found hard to ignore.
Delusions festered much like disorders of the teeth—starting as small specks, graduating into cavities, and finally rotting away from the inside-out until the tooth was a husk of tartar. Only, in this case, the metaphorical dentin was Levi’s literal gray matter.
Autopsies done on eudaemoniacs always revealed mutagenic changes in brain tissue anywhere from being riddled with holes formed in accordance to the fibonacci sequence to being composed by a wholly different tissue type like dentin.
Levi really didn’t want to have teeth erupting from his cortical folds—the very thought conjured intrusive images and a visceral shudder to travel through his spine.
Killjoy redoubled his efforts at recon; all the while, he couldn’t quite get that mental picture out of the back of his head. Teeth, lining the cortical folds. Could you eat someone’s thoughts with those? Or would you just autocannibalize your own?
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The compound was plascrete and ceranoplastic like the rest of Neo Babylon, barbed silver-wire lining the tops of its walls; daemons capable of flight weren’t cheap and that silver had been warded to High Hell and back. It was more than capable of stopping even a daemonically-augmented leap owing to the plascrete wall’s height and the sheer amount of barbed wire that lay atop—thicker than three men abreast and taller than a single man to boot, it had to have been lexically modded. Silver wouldn’t have held that shape, not in a millennium, and not to a degree that would have been durable against weapons-grade daemonics.
With the guard movements mapped down and their blindspots noted, Levi glided down on gelatinous wings made of semi-transparent neon. He had practiced a good two whole days with the daemon; invocation of its true-form had become second nature. Were it that death did not wipe the slate clean, the blatant and careless use of the newly-grafted daemon would have considerably sped-up the onset of psychosis and the violent delusions of grandeur.
Then again, with what Killjoy planned to commit, perhaps corruption had already fully taken root inside the lexicon of his soul—no sane person would do what he was about to do. The morally bankrupt tended to play with lives like it was a zero-sum game.
When Levi’s feet alighted on the plascrete, his maroon wings fractured like silent glass; the shards crumbled into fractals and then sublimated back into the ether, eating themselves into oblivion. Recursion, as a property, was present within all lexical constructs, not just the serpent below.
He ran, forgoing all stealth; the wards should have already sensed the foreign engramic signatures—be it his own ego or the pseudo-ego of his grafted daemon, weak as it may be with it being a factory-new, domesticated strain.
Neon flared throughout his ontology, unrestrained and flooding into every fiber of his being. A line of code repeated itself throughout the lexicon that described the totality of Levi ‘Killjoy‘ Basker, overwriting the script responsible for opposable thumbs with -////True-name: [C-A-A-C-R-I-N-O-L-A-A-S]////-
-////Designation: [Predation] - [Digits 1//6]////-
-////Lexical energy reserve: [90%] {Construct sublimation in effect.}////-
Each digit was a singular trait taken from [Glasya-Labolas]’s true-form. For every digit, neon consumption was multiplied by an increment of six. A full invocation, utilizing all digits, exacerbated neon burn by thirty-six times its norm; six digits were enough to manifest all true-form traits for a total of six seconds before the daemon’s neon reservoir was left entirely empty.
Archonic datums were secondary, limiting resources; they dictated the ebb and flow of neon and the scope of a designation within its own sefirot-class. Lexical dams, so to speak, filtering out raw power for precision and specialization.
With Killjoy having invoked a jagged-keratinous claw from the tumor embedded onto his soul, he rammed it through a mulligan thug that had been too caught up in the ether; not that her demise had been her fault, the blood was on Levi’s hands—literally.
The woman’s eyes went glassy as she looked down at three, foot-long spikes protruding from her abdomen. The shock sent her into a sleep she wouldn’t wake from until the serpent below ate itself into nothingness.
Levi broke apart the invocation’s instance -////Designation: [Predation] - [Digits 0//6]////- shredding the construct’s physical form to release it from the corpse and then reinvoked it as he began to run once again. It cost precious neon but spared Killjoy even more precious time.
-////Designation: [Predation] - [Digits 1//6]////-
-////Lexical energy reserve: [84%] {Construct sublimation in effect but halved; pseudonym: [Glasya-labolas], subroutine: [Bloodlust] active.}////-
There wasn’t time for any thought at the callous regard to murder; he’d made his peace with the killing, the justifications like sharp stones in his stomach. Anything was fair game to remove the Mulligan and his syndicate from the world—the end made the means no less guilt-inducing, though.
Levi would never be able to look himself in the eye the same way after this.
The blitz strategy worked for two more mulligans before the compound caught on and sirens went off through the local sub-ether. By then, Levi had already pilfered three distinct access engrams from the casualties’ souls; he invoked a veil of ether over himself in the form of maroon scales-elongating-into-feathers and entered the building.
-////Designation: [Predation] - [Digits 1//6]////-
-////Lexical energy reserve: [28%] {Construct sublimation in effect but quartered; pseudonym: [Glasya-labolas], subroutine: [Bloodlust] active; pseudonym: [Glasya-labolas], subroutine: [Obfuscation], protocol: [Moonveil] active.}////-
The wards lost him, reacquiring his location each time a different ganger found a body of their own and reported their missing tokens, tracking their engramic sigs through the local sub-ether—the access codes were as much a boon as they were a bane. Killjoy was on a short leash and he knew it as he scrambled, looking for the boss-man’s personal office.
The maze of hallways and rooms felt more akin to a liminal-proximal space than to Malkuth.
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