Sphinx

Sphinxes are Others of karmic balance, driven to preserve it no matter what. Their race was created to serve as sentinels.<ref name=":0"/><ref>The lion, the bird of prey, neither suggested slow reflexes. Her mother had been made to be a warden, a guardian of a holy place. - Excerpt from Void 7.2</ref><ref name=G>Genies. All of the problems a sphinx posed, with a great many of the same capabilities, but sphinxes were created, and genies were natural, born of elements and divine remnants. - Excerpt from 9.x (Histories)</ref> Each sphinx will generally follow a set pattern, gaining power over those who break a specific karmic rule, such as answering a question falsely or deviating from a long-standing tradition.<ref name=":0">“Sphinxes are creations and natural Others with a heavy tie to the karmic balance,” Diana said. “They’re often used as divine guardians for temples or sites of power. Different sphinxes follow different rules, gaining certain rights and powers from karma and destiny, provided the other party deviates from a code, offers a mistruth, breaks from tradition, or something in that vein.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.2</ref><ref>Verona crouched in the rain, which was reduced in intensity by the wards others were drawing, her head hunched forward so the hood offered more protection, tilted so she could look up through the corner of her eye at it. To do otherwise would mean rain in her face. She felt like she had to put the pieces together using what the other side had. It made her reluctant to think of Law and Law-based Others. The ones who worked based off of the Seal. They tended to be pattern-driven, tied to the fabric of things. Some were manufactured, like stone lion statues that guided flows of karma and spirit around them, while acting as guardians. The hot girl totem spirits were like that. Shrine spirits were like that. Others were more natural: Petitioner spirits with their rigid rituals of questions, Sphinxes needing and being empowered by a failed question-and-answer ritual, the bogeymen and urban legends with their specific patterns and narratives they carried out. - Excerpt from Finish Off 24.7</ref>

They are sensitive to things that alter or damage the balance, with demons and their taint being unpleasant to painful to be around,<ref>“A window was broken.”

“Wasn’t us,” Tiffany said. “It just happened. I didn’t see how.”

“I’m sure,” Isadora said. “I know what you’re going to ask, Mr. Thorburn.”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have a sense of the big picture. Or just what it means when you come to my doorstep, smelling like… something foul. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“He… doesn’t smell,” Tiffany said. “You don’t have to be such a bitch.”

Wait, what? This wasn’t the Tiffany I’d been talking to just seconds ago.

“There’s an irony in those two statements being paired together. Nonetheless, I’ll cut this short, so you can be on your way. No. Not with the sort of business your family has done. If you try anything, I’m going to work against you, if anything.”

“If you could put me in contact with some of the other locals-”

“No, Mr. Thorburn, and goodbye.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.5</ref> those from the choir of madness are enough to completely cripple them.<ref>The demonic howling had brought everyone else to their knees. Even the sphinx lay on her side by the door.
[...]
The Sphinx still hadn’t risen. Paige was stroking fur, but got no response. The sphinx’s chest rose and fell, but the angle of her head and the sheer quantity of hair that had fallen in front of her face made her expression impossible to see. Armfuls of hair, really. Thick, luxurious, and on a head that was larger than most. Paige didn’t even try wrestling with it. She only touched onyx fur.

A descent into madness is a bigger fall for some than others, Rose thought.

Hopefully the sphinx would survive that fall, in the end. - Excerpt from Judgment 16.5</ref> Because one of their duties is to remember things, even if connections are cut or erased from existence, they can hold onto fragments or more.<ref>The wrongness reached through each and every one of them.

It lanced through Isadora, and she did what she could to distribute it, to break it up so that it would damage every part of her a little, rather than deal a grievous wound. It didn’t wound her awareness as it did the others.

She remembered, at least in part. One of her duties was to remember, and here she could retain the fragments she’d held on to, the ideas she’d established.

It helped that she hadn’t maintained a close connection, that she hadn’t been on a first name basis with him, and that the impact she had made on him had already been partially erased, the scars filled, then smoothed away. The ripples that extended outward had less foundation to travel across, and were easily shored up. She no longer had his name, but she knew who he was, and she could identify him as Thorburn, as the diabolist, and put the rest of the pieces in place. - Excerpt from 7.x (Histories: Aftermath)</ref>

When born, the strongest of a litter will eat the weaker siblings,<ref name=egg>“Do you have any conception of how old I am?” she asked. Her voice was more dangerous now. She was big enough and her voice had enough low notes that I could feel the vibration of it in the air. “How few of the mortals alive today are able to trace their ancestry back to the day I was a cub breaking free of my egg? When the first thing I did after that was devour my weakest siblings?” - Excerpt from Subordination 6.3</ref> and they are genetically incapable of caring if someone dies so long as the death is in the right place and time. However, they can learn from experience and can emulate human emotions. Likewise, they can suppress the instinctive drive to attack the ignorant, but telling a lie to a sphinx allows them to exercise their right to atone the balance, which often ends in death.

Known Sphinxes

Phix (human-lion-eagle)
- Isadora
A independent Apsasû<ref>“That would be our second case. Third? We have the altered. Others target humans. Some powerful ones target groups of human. It is far less common today than it once was, but some succeed or succeeded. They take a distant or hard to reach village. On the rare occasion, they take a city. I was personally involved in one case where an Apsasû, a divine servant and protector of humanity, took it on herself to shelter a group of humans. She kept them in what you could describe as a Garden of Eden, curing all that ailed. Faith, physiology, and mind twisted and knotted despite or because of her efforts.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.4</ref> (human-bull-bird)

Trivia

While "sphinx" is traditionally held to derive from the greek word "to strangle" a compelling argument<ref>Bauer, S. Wise (2007). The History of the Ancient World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. pp. 110–112. ISBN 0-393-05974-X.</ref> has been made that it's a loan word for demotic Egyptian meaning "created image". Tying into the appearance of chimeric temple guardians throughout the worlds cultures, the Shedu for example.
It is not clear in the story how Sphinx's are created<ref name=G/> versus those who arise naturally,<ref name=":0"/> certainly they can breed<ref name=egg/> which would presumably make them more common then Giants but the matter still needs explication.

References