Cult
Unfortunately, all ties between the Kingdom and the Empire were not severed. Demons needed humans to avoid interbreeding. Selling one’s child to the enemy was punishable by death in the Kingdom, but some parents still agreed to it when they failed to meet their needs for survival. The Kingdom only valued merit. Those who could not succeed on their own received no help, their children left to starve in contempt. From one of the Kingdom’s alleged strengths came one of its most devious weaknesses. The girl was 15 when she was sold to the demon lord. He did not even ask her name. He had his way and soon she was with child.
She gave birth to a monstrous urchin, ugly and disfigured, so weak and limp one wonders why he wasn’t put out of his misery. He survived. One day, the demon lord’s keep was attacked by a human army. The demon was killed and the mother freed. Without a second of hesitation, she abandoned her child. The poor creature, named ASGAAL, born from pain and misery, reared in unhappiness, had been rejected by humans and demons alike. His body was broken but his mind was sound… and fueled with hate.
He left the smoldering ashes of his father’s estate to wander the eastern bank of the great river. These demon lands were far from the prosperous bustle of Tartarus. The ugly light of chaos had been cast on them. It was home to all failed experiments, rejects, and ill-fated mutations. A motley crew of outcasts and monsters who needed a refuge. The only creatures Asgaal felt close to. Some were kind to him, shared whatever little food they had, even graced him with a disgraceful smile. Asgaal finally became acquainted with feelings other than fear, shame, or rejection. For those akin to him, he vowed to find a better life, to carve a place for all those who were lost between the races, the half-demons, the half-humans no one ever wanted or loved. A place where the rejects would be the norm.
He gathered enough half-breeds who yearned to change their fate and led them south of the river. Behind a range of mountains, they settled on an arid land, in the indifference of all, building shacks, keeping stock, growing plants, not to develop, just to endure. Asgaal naturally rose as their leader. His first law was to promote equality for all. To make it applicable, everyone had to hide their ugly features behind masks of their creation. All would share the same anonymity. In this forsaken land, all were alike, no one stood out. If there was power in numbers for the weak, there was strength in uniformity for the weird. Most of the half-breeds were too broken to bear offspring, but more of their kind were born up North with every passing day, as demons kept experimenting with genetic mutations. This new faction was not to promote progress, balance, or disruption as its core value, but spirituality, a way for the hybrids to find meaning beyond rejection, to bring together their human and demon roots, to make one people from two races who had vowed to destroy each other.
Over time, the first half-breed leader, Asgaal, came to be known as GLOOM, the shadow. Had he even existed? Was he a legend? A male or a female? No one could tell. Soon, no one who had known him was alive. Only the mask remained. Another Gloom could come to life. Another leader who would take them further. A figure for all the outcasts to latch on to and to survive, carried with higher purposes than their human and demonic forefathers: discard the material and reach for the spiritual. And like a colony of anonymous but prosperous insects, the CULT was created, with no ceremony, no love, no hate, no plans for revenge and no thirst for power. Just the ambition to elevate the group towards spiritual bliss.
And thus ended the first age of Grimoria. Guardians to the West, eternal and unchanged since the origin, the human Kingdom in middle, striving for betterment of all kinds. On the other side of the great river, the Empire of demons, a force of perpetual disruption, and lost in between, the Cult, a shadow no one could tame. The original tribe of sentient beings had broken into four pieces. Wars had been fought and lost, progress had clashed with chaos, both challenging balance in their own way, to the point they had bred a monster.