Editing Conquest (section)

==Appearance==
When Conquest first appears he has a bit of a mullet, a white colonial-style jacket with a fleece collar and several belts, a rifle with a bayonet resting against one leg, and a "badass" beard with a waxed mustache. His eyes look like ‘painting eyes’, perfect in every detail but still flat and lifeless. He can manifest with two slaves chained behind him, their eyes like his, extensions of his will.<ref name="4.2.2">Conquest stood across from me, sitting on a stone.  He had a bit of a mullet, a white colonial-style jacket with a fleece collar and several belts, a rifle with a bayonet resting against one leg, and a badass beard with a waxed mustache.  Two aboriginal men were kneeling beside him, shirtless, with heavy collars shackled to their necks, chains leading up to his hand.  His other arm was outstretched, resting against one knee, hand open, with large green beetles crawling around the palm.<br><br>His eyes didn’t look human.  When I let my brain draw the connection, my first thought was ‘painting eyes’.  They were the sort of eyes I might expect to see in a really well done painting… every detail in place, but lifeless and flat.<br><br>When I looked him over again, I saw the entire thing fit.  I could have seen something similar on a tarot card, the posture, the very careful arrangement of elements.<br><br>A composition, a living symbol.  And somehow, this landscape was an extension of him. It was like he was ink, bleeding out onto the paper around him, and this… ''diorama'' was the end result.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/03/06 Excerpt] from [[Collateral 4.2]]</ref> 

When he drew himself up to his full height, he grew half-again as tall and his flesh pulled back in a pallid, corpse-like rictus.<ref>Conquest rose from his seat.  Which made for one ''hell'' of an understatement.<br><br>The landscape changed, as if conquest were attached to each and every thing by drawstrings.  The sun descended, in one smooth motion, as he rose, burning hotter, whiter, as it drew down, while the crimson bled out into the sky around it.  The walls around the hill washed away, like waves that had crashed against a cliffside and were now returning to the sea below.<br><br>His ''flesh'' pulled back, straining into something macabre as he swelled in size, as if simply ''standing'' involved an exaggerated change in size.  The sun, burning white now against a blood red sky, seemed more an extension of him, an ''accessory''.<br><br>“If,” he said, and there was a tremor to his voice that resonated through all of the metaphysical strings that tied him to this world, “you would gladly take any help that will keep you from that road, you will have to ''unhappily'' take a push down that road.  The beings that diabolists traffic with bring defeat and pain wherever they tread.”  - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/03/06 Excerpt] from [[Collateral 4.2]]</ref> His domain also began altering around him with every movement, including the sun turning white and attaching itself to him like a halo as the sky turned blood-red. Conquest's appearance began to gradually shift, with his clothing and flesh merging, melting and changing. He grew metal-and-bone gauntlets surrounding by tiny grasping hands extending from his sleeves. His eyes became pure black orbs and his slaves vanished into his billowing coat.<ref>My eyes moved to him, and I saw him looking down, pensive, but not looking down at ''us''.  He’d changed subtly, and was still changing.  The line between clothing and skin was fading, the individual elements that had made up his outfit and appearance were dissolving, while retaining the bits that still let me think he fit with the idea of ‘Conquest’.<br><br>He had overlarge hands, now, plated in iron and what might have been bone, or a very pale metal, effectively gauntlets, but I could also see smaller hands, grasping, scrabbling out as if they sought to claw their way free of his coat sleeves.  Or his rolls of loose skin.  Or chainmail.  Whatever it was that wreathed his arms, now that it was ceasing to be a coat.  I could see it changing, sloughing away from an endless source, taking on a new texture and form as it layered over itself.  Hot wax, melting flesh, layers of dust settling atop one another.  All those things and none of them.<br><br>His flesh was stretched taut around his face and neck, pulling his mouth into a hollow, perpetual grin.  Except his smile wasn’t really a ''smile'', whatever label I might stick on it.  Like the eyes had been ‘painted’, the smile was symbolic.  Just looking at it put ideas in my head: the rictus grins of the defeated; the expression of a general who had just won the war, caught between the joy of victory and the dawning horror as he left the battle behind and came to terms with what he had done.  Twisted into a frozen mask that he wore.<br><br>His beard and hair were longer than they had been, paler.  He was half again as tall, so broad in the shoulders it was bound to be symbolic in some fashion, and his coat trailed around him like a cape, now, the tips billowing and snaking through the snow as if being moved by a wind that I couldn’t feel. His slaves were hidden by his coat in one moment, gone when the coat flapped open again in the next.<br><br>He held the rifle with its bayonet, but the weapon was sagging too, not falling apart, but drooping like the materials were at melting temperatures.  When he shifted position, the sun remained behind him, as if the corners of it were anchored to his shoulders.  A pale halo.<br><br>The painted eyes, at least, were gone.  There was only darkness there. - [[Collateral 4.3]]</ref> He and his domain continued to transform as his emotions changed, such as his rictus-smile disappearing when he was worried.<ref>His little movements were making the landscape change, and I found myself adjusting my footing, to ensure I could move if I had to.<br>[...]<br>The Lord lowered his weapon, letting the butt-end of it hit the ground, interrupting me.<br><br>The stones and snow had moved and resettled, in the wake of the impact.  He was molding our surroundings.<br>[...]<br>He stared down at me with the black orbs in the midst of his pallid face.  He wasn’t smiling that horrible rictus smile, now.<br>[...]<br>“You ''toy'' with me,” he said.  He visibly changed, skin stretching tighter.  His face shifted to that rigid grin, teeth bared.  “I should mutilate you right now, so you remember the mistake of such insults.”<br><br>The fucking ''sky'' was changing in tune with his emotions.  Plunging us into darkness.  Black rage.  - [[Collateral 4.3]]</ref> Even outside his domain, the exaggerated size of his body and gun made him a formidable physical opponent in this form. He could become three times as tall as a normal human, unable to easily fit indoors.<ref>[[Void 7.6]]</ref><ref>[[Void 7.7]]</ref> 

While inside Rose's mind, he changes forms to a variety of people who have some influence over Rose, one of them being her [[Roselyn|grandmother]], tied again into the idea of conquest.<ref>
 - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2015/01/17 Excerpt] from [[Possession 15.5]]</ref>

Part of the regalia and appearance manifested could be called iconography. Take for example the military costuming and the enslaved figures it manifests. Further examples, Conquest has been shown with [[Wikipedia:Emerald ash borer|green beetles]] on its' hand<ref name="4.2.2"/> and was later seen holding an equally [[Wikipedia:Carcinus_maenas|green crab]]<ref name="4.8.1">Conquest was in a half-human, half-monster form, when we reached the top.<br><br>A green crab sat in his hand, its legs perched on his splayed fingertips.  He had three slaves at his feet, now.  None of them were Rose. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/03/22 Excerpt] from [[Collateral 4.8]]</ref> and even later was shown manifesting a moat with a [[Wikipedia:Asian carp in North America|big silver fish]]<ref>I reached the top, where Conquest waited.  But I supposed he didn’t sleep.  He just ''was''.<br><br>He was still in his halfway-form, half man, half monster, flesh stretched, beard, the eyes more whites than anything, wearing clothes that were part skin, part coat, part robe.  He held no animal, but I saw that the rooftop was bordered by a moat, where large silver fish swam in perpetual rings.  The only light was a pale reflection from Conquest himself, and from the halo-crown that surrounded the tower. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/04/03 Excerpt] from [[Collateral 4.12]]</ref>; all of these are ''invasive'' species in North America, generally described as those species that ''conquer'' a previously established ecological niche and thus damaging to the native environment.